William Reid: [00:00:00] All right. Good morning everybody. We're back again here in the studio and we're going to be moving into the design process steps that I've talked about in the previous episode. And if you didn't listen to the previous episode, you may want to do that because what I did there is I introduced the design process for residential custom homes.

Or major renovations that a lot of architecture firms and design build firms deploy for a project. And it's a methodical stepping stone process that most of them go through, and most of them even call it the same thing. But how they go about it and what matters to you is what's really important and what our goal here is today.

In the previous episode, what I talked about was we have three primary stepping stones to design to get your project ready to build, ready to break ground, and that is [00:01:00] schematic design, design development, and construction documents and that progression. And we're going to be talking about the first step called schematic design.

Now schematic design is the very first stage of design, unless you had to do some very early preliminary discovery with your architect, this is where actual design work begins. So very early on in the podcast, I talked about the discovery series. And what are some of the really important things that you as a homeowner need to do before you even contact an architect or design firm to begin working with you on your project?

And this is a really foundational, important part of the project because if you don't go through some of the discovery series that I talked about, you will [00:02:00] send your design team on a wild goose chase, potentially delaying the design, increasing the cost of design, missing your budget, and it goes on and on.

And that is like the very, very beginning of undermining a project—by skipping some of that early stages of the Discovery series, and I talked about the budget in the discovery series too. The budget is always going to be this looming dark cloud over everybody until it's really faced and discussed, and we're going to be doing that during the design process.

It's important to do that during the design process. So let's hope that you've listened to that part of the podcast or read that chapter in my book, and you've got a sense of some of the things that you and your partner can do by literally just sitting on the porch and discussing things, maybe whipping out your laptop and doing a little bit of number crunching.

These episodes are going to get a little bit comprehensive. [00:03:00] So I had to print everything out so I can actually read through it all. And what I'm doing here is—what I love about the podcasting is I'm able to take all the knowledge that I wanted to put in the book and I can talk about it in the podcast.

So I'm really actually elaborating on much of the content in the book and the things that I wanted to say in my own voice. But the book is a really good framework to empower you as a homeowner to control your design process and to make sure that you're on track, both from a design perspective and a budget perspective.

So think about the schematic design phase as the freest flowing, most organic process of [00:04:00] architectural design and interior design even. This is where all kinds of ideas are explored. So for example, you may have been thinking about a particular style of home, or maybe you're not sure and you have a couple styles of your home.

Or maybe what you thought you wanted isn't exactly what maybe you should have compared to all of the visions and ideas that you've collected through maybe your Pinterest boards or your house idea books or your web links, which was part of the Discovery series. Visualize this as a launching point, getting off the front porch, getting out of the bed, scrolling through the Pinterest pictures for hours on end.

This is getting up off your butt and [00:05:00] beginning the project, and you're going to want to take those steps off that front porch empowered, feeling like you know what you want, what your goals are. Who knows how realistic those goals are. It doesn't really matter. This is you going, "I think I want a mountain modern style home with an accessory structure for grandma."

"I want to spend $800,000. I want to do a remodel project. I want to expand my home. I think I want it upstairs. Maybe I want it downstairs. I don't know." These are the kind of things that you vet out. Now as a homeowner, I know that many people spend months, years, decades, sometimes thinking about a project, but I also know people get stuck.

They get [00:06:00] rolling around their—running around their home, talking about all the ideas they wish and want and had wish they had. Driving around hundreds of times looking at parcels and lots. Unsure whether to commit to buy a lot. In some cases people bought a lot and probably shouldn't have. But what's happening here is you're just kind of going in circles, right?

You're just going round and round. And this is why it takes people so many years to get to a project built out. Not to mention the actual design time and construction time. So this is a process. The whole Awakened Homeowner podcast and me Bill, as your home building coach is [00:07:00] providing a framework for you to wrangle all this up and into a system where you can actually get something done in a timely manner.

But it's also to really empower you by thinking about all aspects of the project. So it's great and it's fun to go thinking about all these ideas and go buy a lot. "You got a great deal on the lot." Come to find out—you learn that's really not a big deal. You paid a hundred grand for a lot, or 30 grand for a lot.

That's going to be the most insignificant aspect of the project when it comes to cost. Really what's more important is the design, the orientation, the neighborhood, the quality of the lot. So don't get all hung up on buying some great—"you got a great deal on a lot" because you might spend twice, you might get burned and end up spending a lot of money to build your home on that lot.

So think about [00:08:00] the schematic phase of design, the first phase of design is bridging that gap between all of these thoughts and ideas and running around in circles to actually seeing your ideas manifest into something that you can then really make decisions on. You haven't had that information in front of you to be able to make those decisions, so that's why you're stuck.

So the four core objectives of schematic design is to see your visions and ideas come to life in design work, and that is what your architect or your interior designer or residential designer is for, and they explore the design options and study construction cost and feasibility. So that's number two.

Number one was see your visions and ideas come to life in design work, but also understand that [00:09:00] there are different options that you could have for your design, and then studying the actual feasibility of it, and even the cost of a potential project. This is part of the solution.

Unfortunately the cost part and sometimes the feasibility part gets devalued or deprioritized and everybody just jumps on a bandwagon and just has fun creating these masterpieces and these big glass doors and whatever the case may be, a huge basement—come to realize that it may not be in your budget.

It's important for you as a homeowner to realize that you need to make that priority, the feasibility and the cost feasibility from a construction standpoint on the lot, but also the cost feasibility. Because sometimes the design teams don't necessarily put that front and center, right? So if they do, great, that means you're talking with a professional architect that says, "Look, I'll spend all kinds of your money designing, but I want to see it built."

A lot of architects want to see their projects built. You'd be surprised the percentage of [00:10:00] projects that get designed that never get built. Ask around. I've known many architects where they've shown me samples of their projects, and my first question is, "Did it ever get built?" And I would say—I'm just guessing now, I don't have the actual data, but I would guess 30 to 40% of the projects never even got built and for various reasons.

So the third core objective of the schematic design is to narrow down your design options into one direction. So that could be your style, it could be the configuration, the design of your project, the rooms that you want. Where the house is going to go on the lot. It can be all different kinds of things, but at the end of the schematic process, we're all going to want to be in a position where we go, "Ah, it's pretty close, let's go with it."

And the fourth: we're building a solid design foundation to build upon in the next step, which is called design development, which gets way more involved.

The [00:11:00] idea here in schematic design is to go through all the hoops to explore—put the house over here on the lot. Let's try it. Different options. Let's look at a modern farmhouse style. Let's look at a ranch style. Let's look at a modern style.

Hopefully you're not that far off when it comes to the style that you like, but it can be. Keep in mind, this is the free flowing organic process, but what you want to do is you want at the end of this to go, "We're going that direction. We're putting the house there. We're not doing the basement."

And we're going to go through that today about how you hopefully can get to that point. This phase is different from the others that we're going to be talking about in the future, and it's because this is the maximum flexibility phase. This is the creative—really creative part of the process.

Not to say that the other stages are not creative, but this is the one where hopefully you get dazzled. It's kind of like a design playground, right? You can just do all kinds of things, but keep in mind, the more [00:12:00] focused you are, the less design costs you will have, the more focused your designer will be, the more motivated your designer will be if they have a client that is focused and has clear direction.

Not to say that you should come up with all the ideas, but that you know that you want a particular style, you know the rooms you want, the orientations, you want the view that you want to maximize, all different variables. And that's part of that discovery series. So there I go emphasizing that discovery series. Your architect will absorb all of this information and then they'll analyze your property.

So that's a big part of this phase is this is the very first stage where they just start absorbing all of your input and hopefully you've provided that to them. I've had clients where they just didn't have the time or didn't know where to go, and we end up on a little bit—on a wild goose chase trying to help them, and that's okay. But it just costs you a lot more money and you may not get exactly what you want.

[00:13:00] This is the innovation opportunity, right? This is the time to look at ideas and pursue them. "Do I want to put a water tower on the property or do I want a basement? Do I want to put a big, huge shop over here?" This is the time to do all that. And not to say that you'll be making final decisions here, but we're going to talk about how you deal with that so that you can provide your design team focus. The more focused a design team is, the more motivated they are, the more focused a design team is, the better job they do.

So keep that in mind. It's your job as a homeowner to help them gain focus, and that's because of the input that you provide them. So the realistic expectation setting—so your first schematic design meeting can be compared to kind of like a big reveal party, right? It's really can be really fun where designers can be just as excited as homeowners actually to share their ideas. I can recall [00:14:00] many times when my design team sat down with a client and you can tell that they're just really excited.

What happens in a designer's mind is if they have good input and good direction and they start exploring different ideas, it could be different floor plans, it could be different options, but what usually happens is design starts to take on its own momentum and it starts to go its own direction.

It's almost like it has its own life. The design process—I know it sounds a little strange, but, so as a designer's working through a project they look at plan A, plan B, plan C, or they look at upstairs, downstairs, whatever, they're looking at their options, but they all of a sudden start to feel like it's going this direction.

And you can see that in a designer and an architect, a good one that is serving you, that is providing solutions to you. So keep in mind that they're going to be [00:15:00] excited too and pay attention to that because if they're really excited about a design idea or concept and they've listened to you—okay. And you're sensing that they're delivering what you want as far as your overall goal and scope. Pay attention to that and appreciate that and put value in that because they've done this a lot more times than you, right?

But keep in mind that the first presentations can vary widely because creating new homes and remodels is—it's very customized and a personal process for actually both parties, the design team and you. So what's beautiful about the world of design and residential custom construction is it's never the same. There's a lot of similar details and a lot of similar styles, but ultimately [00:16:00] custom home work, custom design work is done from the ground up by using a lot of different experiences and modules and so on. But we're creating this all over again every time to a certain respect for custom work. It's not a cookie cutter design.

So let's talk about the next segment and what actually happens in schematic design. So you've gone through the steps, you've selected your design team, and we're going to get into that later. I wanted to introduce the design process to you first as a foundational level of education so that we can talk about more details when it comes to design itself and also the designers.

How to find them and what to ask them and how to hire them. We're going to do all that later, but I want you to understand the process first and why some of the things that we talk about later are important. So let's break down the professional process step by step. That is in a lot of architect's minds and designer's minds.

There's going to be a variation here between a remodel, a renovation project, and a [00:17:00] new custom home project. But there's also many of the things that cross over that are the same principles when working on a schematic design for residential custom projects. I'm just going to start with a remodel project, and then I'm going to add in some elements of what goes into new construction, new home construction on a blank lot, and I'm going to touch on some of those main points that need to be addressed early on during the schematic design.

Okay, so let's just envision for right now, a typical 1970s, suburban track home that are all over the country that needs a major remodel and renovation, and maybe you want to do a kitchen and a great room. You maybe want to open up the floor plan. Maybe you want to add on a master suite—primary bedroom. You're not sure where. You know in your discovery stage, that these are your requirements. I need more square footage. I need more [00:18:00] bedrooms. I need more bathrooms. I wish I had a shop in the back. My kitchen's horrible. It's too small.

You are coming up with your criteria of the things that you want solved, not necessarily what you think the solutions are. You may have those in the back of your mind, but let's keep in mind that in the discovery phase of the very early stage, sitting on that front porch talking about what you want, that's what you're going through. You're not going, "Oh, let's move it over here. Let's add it in there." You can always do that, and you can do that during the design process later on.

But you have got your master objectives there. This is what you're going to want to look for in a designer. What I'm about to list out for you are the things that should be done. May not always be done. But good designers will do it. But you need to know what you need to know in order to say, "Hey, how about this? How about that?" So let's dig in.

So the phase one is what I call the deep discovery review. [00:19:00] Your design team will review your discovery package in forensic detail, we'll call it. They should be looking through and understanding it and disseminating it all to the proper people and just really getting a sense of who you are, who your family is, what your lifestyle is, what your objectives are, and budget is something that should come up and we'll talk about that in a minute.

They should be visiting your inspiration links and the files systematically so they understand some of the visions and ideas that you have. And you should be looking for them to be coordinating and asking coordinating meetings with you prior to beginning any design work so they can ask questions to gain direction. To gain focus, right? Because remember, that's what we're trying to do. It's to our benefit that our architect and our designers gets motivated by the project. And we can control that as homeowners by [00:20:00] saying, "This is what I love, this is what I want. Tell me more. What can you do for me?"

So they'll be doing all of this. They'll be studying your Pinterest boards or house idea books or whatever you've done to create inspirations. All that work you put into the discovery series, discovery phase should be used. And that's the idea.

The less time and effort you put into that, the less focus your design team will have. The longer it will take to get schematic design done and up on a screen so you can go, "That's what I really want." The more you do on the front end, the more pleasant the process is going to be.

Phase two: Budget integration. Now the budget has to be one of the top items even for all types of clientele, whether they're on a really tight budget or people that have unlimited funds, we'll call it, or have, or just building forever home and budget's not as top of priority, but most people still want to talk about that and should talk [00:21:00] about that.

Unless you're one of those 1% of the one percenters that's just not a priority—that you just want to go for it and build your massive estate. That's great. I mean that unshackles your designer to a large degree and they can just go for it. Now that doesn't happen as often as you think, as even some of the one percenters or the one percenters. The reason they're there is because they watched every penny. We're not going to dig into that.

But opening up the dialogue about the budget early on before any design work is done. Now hopefully your architect or designer initiated that to ask you and you can share what you think you wanted to invest in the project. You haven't done any costing. You have no idea how much things cost, but I bet you have an idea of how much you want to invest, how much money you have, how much you want to invest in this particular property or this project.

So if you're [00:22:00] thinking about doing a new custom home that's 4,000 square feet on a two acre lot and you're in a relatively decent area and you want to spend $500,000 on the project. This is worth discussing now because it's not going to be possible to design what you think you want versus how much money you have.

If you are in the $2 million range, $500 a square foot, perhaps 400, 500—I know you're going to hear a lot of weird, stupid numbers out there, like $200 a square foot. But if you're the homeowner that I'm talking to right now—and not to say that you have to be, you could be a DIYer or an owner builder, and that's cool too. Because that's just going to help you theoretically anyway, help you keep the cost down. Not always, but if you're the type of homeowner that's looking to hire an architecture firm, hire a general contractor and focus on your inspirations and ideas and getting it all [00:23:00] out to the people to build it and hire somebody to actually do that—that's what I'm talking about.

So if you're $500 a square foot, it's probably a good number to go off of. But you're talking about that, right? With your design team. It's got to come up because you don't want them designing this just beautiful masterpiece when you couldn't have even begun to invest that kind of money into the project.

So talk about that early on. In the discovery phase, you've already talked about that with you and your partners and you've come up with some kind of value that you want to put in the project. And then, based on that conversation in this phase two budget integration is, you can provide feedback and direction during the schematic design process to discuss options perhaps.

So what happens in the schematic design is you end up establishing like a master scope of work and then you may [00:24:00] come up with options or ideas. "Maybe I want a basement, maybe I don't, maybe I want all hardwood floors throughout. Maybe I don't. Maybe I want an accessory grandma quarters. Maybe I don't." So you come up with these options and ideas that—the earlier a design team knows that we're going to be breaking things out, the better.

And this allows to further focus the scope based on financial reality. This is part of the motivation too, because for an architect or designer to not really understand your budget and then just to go for it. That can sometimes undermine the mojo when it comes to design.

So the next thing in phase three, and we're talking about a remodel project right now. You're going to want to be looking for the design team to want to analyze your property, so if you have an existing home on an existing lot they're going to want to come out and measure your existing property [00:25:00] obviously in order to do the design with a certain level of precision so that when they're proposing designs, they're actually realistic and feasible.

And you're also going to want to be looking for the design team to document some of your home systems, your plumbing, electrical, HVAC systems within the structure. Because who knows, you may have to upgrade the electrical system. You may need to upgrade the HVAC system. And if nobody takes note of that early on and all, it could go all the way out to construction, right? If we really do a poor job planning and all of a sudden the electrician says, "Oh, your electrical service is inadequate. I need $8,000 to upgrade it. Oh, your HVAC system is not going to serve the expanded home size. You need all that's $25,000."

So knowing this upfront is going to help empower you to make decisions. Maybe you won't do the other bathroom because you know you need to do the HVAC systems. And then, the design team should be noting any [00:26:00] conditions out there that could influence the designs that they may want to propose to meet your goals. There's—in remodeling it's, frankly, it's harder, right? Than new construction to a certain degree because there's limitations.

There's the four walls that we're working with and structures that are limiting what we can do. And the next level is like when an architect or a designer will start peeking into the attic and under the crawl space to understand the home structure, and you're going to want to watch for this either now or later in the design process.

Because if they don't do that and they want to blow this wall out and realize that, "We can't do that because it's holding the roof up." Finding that out during construction happens way too often and it doesn't have to. So pay attention. And then you can be asking questions during that process by saying "Do we know if that's possible or can we do that? Have you ever looked in the attic?" That kind of stuff.

Phase four I call regulatory research. This is a big one. Because there are things out there that can drive what you can do on your property. And a [00:27:00] lot of people don't even realize that. I have future segments coming, multiple segments coming on limitations that already exist that will drive your home.

So they will be researching your local planning department, which is in your building department office. You have planning department and building department. And these are the departments that kind of regulate the size of the home that you can build, how close you can build to the property lines, the height, there's all kinds of things.

So a good architect—sorry, you might be able to hear a train in the background there. I'm up here in the mountains. So we have a rail yard close by. So the planning department's the first one to make sure that all those parameters are understood. It happens way too often where that's done too late or [00:28:00] not at all until they go to submit for the building permit and get shot down because you're too close to the property lines or the back property, or there's all kinds of things, like I said, so we'll talk about that in a future episode.

HOAs, homeowner associations can be a real surprise. You'd be surprised if you're in a planned development. And there are design review guidelines they call them, and there's design review committees. So understanding HOA guidelines is really important early on so that you don't waste time during the design process.

And then understanding the expansion options and limitations, right? So that's kind of like the regulatory research—the primary things that need to be done before any design work occurs if you're expanding or if you're building a new home.

So phase five is where the architect, they've taken all of your information in. You've done a good job of sharing your discovery stages with them. They're walking away understanding you, understanding your family, understanding your lifestyle, understanding the style that you [00:29:00] like. They have a sense, at least of the budget you're trying to maintain.

They have done some research on the property to make sure that we can design towards those restrictions so that we're not wasting our time and presenting design ideas to you that actually aren't even possible. Happens a lot. So they go away for—it could be weeks at a time on a project and do perform the schematic design.

And most architects and designers will do all this within their design software. There's software called Revit, or Soft Plan or Chief Architect. All of these programs are now able to generate 3D modeling so that you'll be able to visualize these ideas and we're going to talk about that. Because that's a big one.

So in a remodel project, what we want to be looking for in what phase six, the big reveal, right? What you can actually see in the design ideas. It's often that [00:30:00] in a remodel project. And like I said later, I'm going to add some elements to the new home project, but they'll create what I call an as-built floor plan. They'll create a plan of your home today as it sits, as kind of like the canvas of the project and the site, the lot, and they'll draw the plans—a site plan and a floor plan with all your rooms and the systems that you have in your home and use that as their beginning point.

And then they'll come up with multiple floor plans. If that's what you've agreed to with the architect is they'll come up with plan A, plan B, plan C of different thoughts and ideas to get that primary suite that you want. "Here's a second story option. Here's a single story option."

And then what they do—what I did with my design team, which we really thought was valuable, was we would take the new ideas and we would overlay them on top of the existing plan. [00:31:00] And then you as a homeowner can visualize at least a little bit better—visualize "Wait, where's this room? Oh, there's my old bathroom underneath the drawing. Where's my old kitchen go?"

This helps homeowners visualize, but it doesn't do enough for visualization. But I like doing that overlapping floor plan idea. And there's other added benefits with that too. For example people that need to interpret the plans like a contractor, a plumber, an electrician, they can see where the old plumbing fixtures were and where the new ones are, and that helps them visualize the project, which ultimately transpires into accurate estimating, right? So "then we're going to move the tub over 10 feet. We're going to"—all these kind of things so the overlapping idea of the new over the old is always a good idea.

The biggest one though, is 3D renderings. And if your architect or designer hasn't been able to demonstrate to you that they [00:32:00] do that in your early stages of interviewing architects and designers, then you probably should have never hired them to begin with. You want somebody—and nowadays every day it's a new day with technology as we all know, but it should be—you should expect high level quality renderings at this point from the exterior and the interior.

And back in the day when we did it when we first started doing this, we didn't have those capabilities and it made it a lot harder for clientele to make decisions. There's a lot more trust that has to be put into the designer. But guess what? The more that happens, the more misunderstandings happen when things get built. People walk in over the weekend and go, "I have no idea what is that? I had no idea what that was going to look like. I hate it."

So the 3D renderings are important and that's what you should expect even in the early schematic design stage. So ask that question early on. And then you're going to want to be looking for kind of a professional explanation, right? Kind of like a [00:33:00] monologue explaining the design and the concepts and the impacts and how they achieved your goals. And hopefully you're getting blown away by ideas that you never thought of.

This is the funnest part of the big reveal schematic design presentation. And this also tells you you've hired the right designer. If you go back to my earlier episodes about the profiles of designers, if you're somebody who just knows exactly what you want and you're just so rigid, don't want to explore ideas, then they're just going to regurgitate your ideas, and maybe you're happy with that.

But what I like to do is propose ideas to clientele that have never even thought of it. Only because it really makes sense, right? Designers, you have to give them some rope, let them do that. So you're going to—you're going to hopefully see that.

And then after you've gone through that, you are then going to have an interactive discussion with the designer. You're going to talk about the [00:34:00] pros and cons of each option, what you like and dislike, and possible directions that you could go. So in this big reveal moment we should be looking at as-built plans, multiple floor plan options, overlapping floor plans. I like 3D renderings. The professional explanation, right? And then the interactive process.

And that's where you can also bring up the budget. But let's talk about that. This is your very first kind of budget touch point, we'll just call it. You may not have to do a lot at this stage, but you may want to establish a budget touch point, to keep your investment goal the forefront. I call it investment goal because we didn't know what was going to cost. We were going through the discovery phase, and then maybe discussed in preliminary cost discussions for each of the options that maybe you're pursuing in the design.

Again, very custom business. So you're going to want to have a—and that's kind of like a [00:35:00] touch point, but it's kind of like a pause point too, and how scary it is it to move forward. But before we do that, let's talk about new home construction.

So the new home project process, it's—a lot of the fundamentals are the same. But there's some elements that should be incorporated into the early schematic design that require an investment from you as a homeowner, and one of them is the land surveyor. You may have listened to one of my previous episodes about the land surveyor. I had a dedicated episode to that.

The reason that's important is for new construction, sometimes you don't even know where the property lines are, right? You saw this lot, you bought it, and turns out you were looking at four lots and you were only on one. But really just documenting the property lines both [00:36:00] physically on site with stakes and the slopes of the lot and any obstacles, rock outcroppings, roads and utilities.

All this stuff gets incorporated into a survey drawing that's done through software that your architect imports into their software design, and when they're conceptualizing new homes, they can site the new structures on the land. This is what you need as a homeowner in order to make educated, informed decisions.

So you could be moving the lot around the site. Rotating it for view orientations, all kinds of things that should be explored in the very first early stages of schematic design so that then everybody can move forward on that. And then enhanced regulatory research is pretty important in new construction.

It gets a lot more complicated because you're dealing with a new development and there might be rules and regulations that you're not aware of. So the site specific design considerations is what I'm talking about. The site plan with proposed structure [00:37:00] footprints using the survey data showing the main home, the accessory structures even the hardscaping where the roads and driveways are going to be.

You might be looking at multiple floor plans, right? Different floor plan ideas based on your criteria that you went through the discovery phase. You've selected the rooms that you've wanted, and you're seeing different versions of this to achieve your goals. So you're hopefully, if you're looking at a few different floor plans.

Now, remember I said earlier, a lot of times the design takes on its own momentum where an architect just goes, "Oh, this feels right." And you might see them emphasize one plan over the other. That's okay. Pay attention to that because usually they know what they're doing when it comes to that.

And again, you're looking at 3D renderings. What's cool about in new home construction is if they're using Revit or some of these other architectural software, they'll—you'll be able to turn the home around and visualize it from different ends of the [00:38:00] lot, the view and that kind of stuff.

And nowadays you should be able to do that in schematic design. Because there's no point in moving forward into the next stage of design until you feel like that's where you want the house. That's the look of the house you like. And the last one is showing some of the materials and colors that you like, that you've shared from your inspirations and ideas.

Showing that to the architect and then displaying that on the schematic design, big reveal presentation. So that is what I'm talking about. In new construction, there's a lot more to it, but in the early stage schematic, all of the other things I talked about in the remodeling that were relevant. You are also going to want to see some of these elements in the schematic design so that you can make informed decisions that empowers you, but also empowers the designer and motivates and focuses the designer for that stage of the process.

All right, so now that we've gone through these schematic steps that I've [00:39:00] mentioned and we've seen what the possibilities are through the design work, we're getting to a point where you're going to need to make some big decisions here. And let's go through a quick checklist of the things you're going to want to think about in the back of your mind as this is getting presented to you by your designer. Did my designer listen carefully and check off the boxes on my discovery criteria list? So you're really paying close attention to make sure that they're addressing your specific needs. Did my designer research with my city and the HOA and explain any limitations? So the way you're going to find out [00:40:00] if they did that is by asking them, "Are there any limitations? Is the city making us do anything?" You could play dumb and just say, "Are they going to tell me how big my house is going to be?" And listen for that response to see if they've actually done that research. If not, then you're going to want to make sure that happens before any more design work is done.

Did my designer explain the floor plans and how they may impact my existing home? So in the remodel world, everybody wants to add on or double the size of their home or whatever but doesn't realize that [00:41:00] it's going to require to renovate the existing home as well. Moving walls around, opening up hallways to get to the new areas. Putting maybe an entire new roof on the whole house, a whole new HVAC system. Structurally when you add onto an existing home upstairs or even expanding on the first floor, it's likely you'll have to do some structural retrofitting for the project on the existing home that people don't realize affects costs.

So this is a really big one that you need to ask "How is this impacting my existing home?" Did my designer provide 3D renderings to help me make decisions for obvious reasons? Did my designer provide feedback on cost or a path to understand preliminary costs? So did that come up and [00:42:00] keep in mind that architects and designers aren't really construction estimators. They're not the best candidate for really pinning down costs, but they have more ideas than you do. So you can start there. But are they suggesting like a path to get to that point? "What can we do?"

And have I requested to engage with my design team, structural engineer or contractor for additional perspective? This is important because some of these ideas that are getting proposed to you could probably be feasible, but might be significantly impactful and expensive. So the question's going to be, "Should we talk to a contractor now? Should we get your structural engineer involved now? Are we okay? Do we think this is feasible or are we really pushing the limits?" And it's important because ultimately you're the one paying for it. Ultimately, you're the one holding the bag, right? When things go wrong.

So the red flags to watch out for are, vague explanations, right? [00:43:00] When it comes to the compliance and the reviewing with the city and the HOAs, if you're not getting clear, concise answers, it's probably because they didn't do any research or enough research. If they're not seeing any 3D presentations, I don't know, I'd probably really reconsider the relationship.

If you get any kind of dismissive attitude towards the budget discussions. Red flag, that's part of their job is providing solutions, it's not 100% their responsibility, but it's their job to be sensitive to that, to provide methods and pathways in order to achieve that. You should expect that from your architect.

If they don't really understand the impact of the existing homes or maybe the site in a new home, that means they maybe don't have enough experience or they haven't thought through that. And like I said, if there's no methodology for the cost feedback that's a big red flag.

Ideas may surface that you'd never thought of before in this big reveal, or maybe you like certain features of each of the designs. A positive outcome provides you with plenty of [00:44:00] information to give quality feedback to your design team. That's what you're looking for, right? You're looking for, "Oh, wow, look at all this stuff I can sink my teeth into so that I can provide my feedback."

Now, a good designer appreciates input and a great one puts their ego away and listens. But to elaborate on that statement I also like to listen to designers that say, "Let me tell you why that's probably not a good idea." In other words, they're telling us that's a dumb idea, but I'd like to hear that. I may not agree with it and I still might want to continue with it, but to me, that is the next level designer. Yeah, they put their ego away to listen to you, but you don't want them necessarily just regurgitating what you say.

You—it's okay that you have great ideas, but they might be able to share with you why your ideas might not be the greatest or how they could impact other aspects of the design.

Okay, so now we've seen the big reveal. Right now we're going to just break out a little bit. We're going to get into segment three, [00:45:00] and that is what I call the master plan strategy. As a homeowner, you've got a million ideas and you've just gone nuts with all the goals and ideas you have for remodeling your home. We'll stick with the remodeling thing right now.

Same thing can happen with new construction. But what I like to do for a client is say, "Okay, that's great. You love all this stuff. You think maybe you want to spend $500,000 on this remodel. What I would recommend we do, since we're not quite sure how much this thing's going to cost, is how about we do this? Let's come up with a master plan in this schematic design process and document every single thing that you want. Then what we'll do is we'll start to analyze it and see if there's options that we can extract out or modules, I call them, so that we can assign a value, a construction cost value to each of these modules or ideas so that you can then make an informed decision."

What's great about that is it's likely your [00:46:00] budget's too low. I hate to say that. It just seems like it's always the case because you haven't based that on real data. So it helps you make informed decisions and it just frankly just tells you where the money goes on a project. And if an architect knows ahead of time that you're going to want to maybe consider phases or options, they can design that accordingly so that the impact to the existing home in a remodel case can be managed. Sometimes you can't manage it. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

Like I said earlier, how many of you have been running around in circles through your house with ideas, right? Millions of ideas. But you haven't been able to figure out the solutions to make you feel great. Can you afford it? And all this kind of stuff. So that is the idea. The master plan solution—it's kind of like stress relief through visualization, so [00:47:00] seeing ideas laid out stops that mental spinning we talked about.

Relationship analysis so understanding how different project elements interact. So you might want a new kitchen, you might want a master—primary bedroom. You think you want it upstairs, you think all these things. But when you start thinking about in a master plan standpoint, and you may not be able to do all of them or want to do all of them, frankly, but you need to understand how they interact because if you want to add a second story, you're going to have to retrofit the first floor to hold up the second floor probably, right? So that might mean triggering the kitchen. So you may not do the second floor. You see what I'm saying? So this is that relationship analysis that's really important for the designers to study, but for you to know so that you can decide, make informed decisions about where to go with that.

And then the phasing possibilities is great. So now you've understand that relationship analysis. Now you can say, "Okay, let's phase that out." Because we can phase it out. Sometimes you can't phase stuff out. And then the system impact, right? I call it. So you're going to need to spend money on new roofs and new HVAC and [00:48:00] whatever in a remodel project.

And then in new construction, in custom homes. And I can think about a project I was working with in Napa for one of my great clients. And there were a lot of requirements and the needle moved a lot and the direction moved a lot from architectural style to where we ended up.

But there were also outbuildings and structures that we wanted. So we broke that all out into phases, whether they did them all at once or not. And I was able to assign a cost for the shop, the garage structure. The cabana and the pool experience, the main home, basement options for finished or not.

And it's a lot of work. But because I operated a design and build business, I was able to do all that in house and it gave just a lot of information for the client to analyze and decide and pick and choose all the little options that they wanted. So the real benefits, break down [00:49:00] like this, you have the compatibility check. Can you add the primary suite without destroying other parts of the room? The phasing strategy. The coordination of the systems of the home. And how about can you live in the home during the remodel? Huh? Have you thought about that? Because that costs a lot of money to rent a place nowadays while the remodel's going on.

But it might be more cost effective to do the remodel all at once. And financial clarity so now you can see the cost associated with that. Here's the goal of the schematic design. Let's talk about that. At the end of schematic design, you're going to want to say to yourself, everybody should be sitting around the table saying, "This is darn close to what we wanted."

It's not perfect and that comes later. But hitting the mark conceptually is the goal here. We want to know where it is, what it is, how much it is. So you might hear yourself saying something like, "Let's go [00:50:00] with the master plan, but leave out the second story and break it into two phases."

That might be where you end up. And what's great about that is you can design the project, you can end even engineer the project if you want. You can get cost for the project at the end, later in the design process and make the final decision if you're going to really implement it.

But if the architect can design the plans that way, submit the project to the builder "We want these specific options," everybody is in a good spot. So that is where we want to be at the end of schematic design. And you don't want to go any further. You may have to go back to iterations, if you're not feeling right. If you're not feeling the love with the design that you got you're going to want to pause. Don't be afraid to say that because you're saving everybody a ton of time and saving you a lot of money.

All right, let's continue on. This one's going a little bit long, but this is a really important part of the design process [00:51:00] that we want to get through. We need to validate—at this stage of the game, you need to go through a process yourself and make sure you understand where we're at.

It's probably been months now that you've gone back and looked at your investment goal, or maybe you've touched on it, but you need to revisit your original budget exercise. Is this still the kitchen in the same spot? Is the primary suite still 500 square feet based on your original investment goal discussions and open up the dialogue with your design team, and talk about that, and just make sure that you feel comfortable, that you're close enough.

Talk—reevaluate what work is going to be required for the project based on the choices that you're making. And here's a big one. Get a contractor's second opinion. Now it's tough to get a contractor involved early—this early in the process, but I bet you that your architect has some referrals that they can provide you. You killed two birds with one stone here, where you can interview contractors, have them [00:52:00] step in informally and just look at the plans, look at the site, look at the building, and pay them to do it.

You're better off to pay them, several hundred or maybe a thousand dollars, I don't know, a couple thousand dollars for them to spend time on it to get a contractor's second opinion on the solutions, the feasibility, especially the cost. I mentioned in the opening of the design process, the previous episode. These guys have a lot of information in the back of their minds. They know what they did for this last project that was similar. So go through that process.

I'm going to skip through some of my stuff because I guess I've got a little long here. But I just want to make sure that you guys are really empowered. So what happens now, you've gone through that, you're okay, you feel comfortable, you love your architect, your designer. What's going to happen next is [00:53:00] you are going to trigger the next stage of design called design development. The idea here is to transfer all of those iterations. So you might have come up with Plan C 0.4 with an option of this, then a variation of that. The design process becomes a little bit more stringent and they go move into design development where all of the—most of the design work occurs, right?

And the next three or four episodes are going to be specifically about design development. The detail work begins. The other thing they do is they start assembling their design team. And they begin like more of a regimented process. So the big picture here, let's close out on this schematic design episode.

The schematic design is your creative playground, we'll call it. The master plan solves the endless loop problem where you just don't know what and how much, and what are the best ideas. So doing a master plan for everything that you want [00:54:00] is worth investing in from a design perspective, and then you can make informed decisions.

The budget checkpoint is the toughest one to work with, that's the hardest. Who does that? Who can help you with that between your design professional and a construction consultant or contractor, bringing them in early, paying them to do it so they'll actually do it. Because these guys are busy. They don't necessarily want to spend a bunch of time if they don't have the project.

And just keep in mind that you are the general manager for a project. Even though you're hiring all these people, it's still your home and your money. So you are acting as a general manager. And there's different ways to tackle that too with your architect. And the more you relinquish those decisions to them, the less you have to do. But you have to put a lot of trust and faith in them.

So your action items are, review your discovery work before your first design meeting. Prepare your questions about your architects, especially about the visualization process because that's [00:55:00] where you are going to make decisions and then set clear expectations about what you think you want to invest in the project. Some people call it a budget. It's not really a budget, it's just how much you want to invest regardless of the project, frankly.

And, plan for iterations, plan for revisions and go through that process. You have to feel comfortable before you go to the next stage. Otherwise you'll waste time and money and you may not meet your expectations. So that's what I have for you today. It's called the schematic design.

It's stepping stone number one of the design process, and we're going to move into design development next, which is, I think I have that broken out into three episodes where most of the core design work occurs that will [00:56:00] totally govern the project when you are working with all of the design professionals and you get more official engagement with your construction professionals.

So I'm Bill Reid. I'm your home building coach from The Awakened Homeowner. Thanks for listening, and I will see you as we hop over to the next stepping stone of design. Thanks.