**Disclaimer: If this seems repetitive to our Marking and Clearing Guide, it's because a lot of the steps are similar. However, after clearing, these steps matter SO much more. That flag you push into the dirt is DIRECTLY where the corner of your house will go! It's a precise, to the inch placement deciding how your house will begin to take shape.**
Well, this week we were going to start featuring some of our selections, but we realized we forgot an important part of this whole process. It ain’t glamorous, but we’re here to talk about (in layman’s terms) picking where your house will go.
Seems simple, right?
You have your house plan with measurements, and you just stake it out where you wa - nope. They call it a custom home build for a reason!
Before you even get to that part, take these steps:
For custom homes, you’re usually building on a sizable piece of land. At least one where you have some options. You need to pick exactly where you’d like your house to go taking into account the below questions. How far back from the road do you want to be? Where do you want the driveway to go? What are the views you want to take advantage of? What is the view visitors see driving up? How do delivery trucks come in to deliver and get out easily? Yep, in some locations, this is an issue and just so happens, ours was one of them (as per the neighbors we canvassed)! In the different seasons, what will you see with and without tree leaves/other foliage? How will you be using your yard space and tree line that is left around your home and how your home is affected by that?
You need to see if your chosen spot is in a suitable area. That means checking with the city and making sure you don’t need additional permits (wetlands, etc.). In addition, if you have something like a septic field, that has to be placed in a VERY specific area, which limits your house placement even more.
Time to walk your property and stake out your house footprint!
Just to let you know, we staked it all out and then RE-STAKED our house an additional two times. If you're trying to find ways to waste a few hours, this is a great idea ;).
We used the Mike Parrish Team and they were phenomenal. Amazingly patient and helpful... couldn't have picked a better team to lead us through this process!
Perception of scale is so tricky!!! Despite all our efforts, we’re way closer to the road than we anticipated (still over 200 feet), but we couldn’t build in a couple initial locations due to land issues and our desired view from the driveway.
We felt like our new home had the same amount of yard as our current one. So we came home and measured to see if we were right... our new home had MORE THAN DOUBLE the yard! Wow!
For the past 26 years, we've lived 10' away from another house and our corner lot home has been seen from every angle. Now that we'll be living in the country, we want to be tucked into the peaceful woods to take advantage of all IT has to offer!
Last Thoughts
One thing we’re surprised with, now that we’ve started building, is how much higher the back of our house is than we expected. Our back deck/porch is going to be pretty high off the ground, since our land slopes towards the back. If your land even gently slopes, it could greatly affect your home.
Here’s another thing: if you’re like us, and plan on having a front porch with no railing...
MAKE SURE YOU DOUBLE AND TRIPLE CHECK YOUR PLANS AND ELEVATIONS THROUGHOUT THE PROCESS WITH YOUR PROJECT MANAGER. IT'S THAT IMPORTANT!
Too often we’ve seen this go by the wayside, and at the end of the build, customers have to put railings on their deck due to code. It's a bummer. Building code says if your porch floor is less than 30 inches high from the ground, a porch railing is NOT required.