William Reid: [00:00:00] All right, welcome back. We're gonna continue on with our discovery series here with episode three, and I guess I'll call this part three of the Discovery Series, that I recommend you go through before you even pick up the phone or get on the internet and start hunting for architects.

I call this the Art of Gathering, building a home that feels like you. This is all about collecting your dreams, visions, and ideas so that you can share all of your design preferences with your architecture designer. So we're gonna take your personal profile and your property profile that we spoke about in episode two, and now we're gonna.

Pile on top things that your architect and designer can be inspired by sharing your visions and ideas. So that's where we're at in the Discovery series, and I know it's overwhelming it can get so overwhelming that people can just get frozen up [00:01:00] and not even continue on with their project. And we're not gonna do that today.

I'm gonna try to. Share with you some strategies, some resources, and a way to organize all of your inspirations so that you can just get it done and not just get stuck in this abyss of online pictures and videos and so on. So that's the idea here is to help you gather all of the information you need.

So that you can meet your expectations when it comes to the design aspects of your project. And again, I'll, I emphasize this is way before you talk to anybody about your project. This is you and your partner or your family getting it together, getting on the same page, if that's even possible.

Sometimes it's not, but getting at least some focus because what's gonna happen after this? Is we're gonna look at what delusions are out there in the world, and then we're gonna look [00:02:00] at budgeting again before we even talk about or start talking with any architects or designers. So that's where we're at today.

So that very first step of sharing your dreams and visions is. Coming up with a narrative story about your new home or your remodel project. You may recall in the personal profile, we came up with a narrative story about your family, your lifestyle, anything that you could have shared with them so they get to know you.

And we coupled that with pictures of your family and as much information as possible. So the architect got to know you. Now we're gonna do the same thing. With what we call the design statement. So a design statement is actually a term that's used in the world of design, and this is like a general overall summary of how you envision your new home.

You living in your new home. Here's a quick [00:03:00] example, and it can be much longer than this, but in my book I wrote this, we envision our home to be a single story modern style with warm materials, four bedrooms, three baths, and a comfortable place for our parents to visit for extended periods.

A private office or workspace would be ideal for Jane as she works from home and has international calls at odd hours of the day. So this is just a snippet of what I think a design statement should be. You want to write a story, this is going to help your designers connect your lifestyle, your personal design preferences, your property, your personal profile, and they'll start putting the pieces together.

So that's what a design statement is. Now one thing as we're gonna go through this, design visions and ideas step is we're not gonna get stuck in solutions. This is [00:04:00] where a lot of homeowners get jammed up. I call it getting stuck in the mud. You run around your house. If you're doing a remodel project, you start running around your house and you start, oh, we could put the bedroom here.

We put the bathroom there. We could extend out here, extend back there. Or if you're building a new home, you're running around your lot thinking you know what you're doing. I. You know generally what views you like what style of home or size of home, but you start deciding where you think you wanna put it on the lot and so on.

And you just go on and on. This can really freeze you up and prevent you from pursuing the project at all sometimes. So don't worry about the solutions, worry about. Desires that you have, worry about the lifestyle that you want in your home and describe that to your architect and designer.

This is where the design statement comes into play. You'll eventually, as we drill down deeper, gonna have your own ideas, [00:05:00] and you probably have your own ideas right now. But again, we're gonna put those to the side right now and we're going to. Start collecting inspirations and ideas and visions for your project.

So the word inspiration is really just something, a visual that sparks you, that connects you, that connects to you that. You enjoy. So this could be a visual picture of the outside of a home. It could be the interior of a home, it could be a particular lot. Anything that inspires you, that makes you feel good, makes you feel like that's what I want is what inspirations are.

Inspirations are not necessarily, I like that particular cabinet style. Or that marble looks really wonderful, or, gosh, the window design on this project, this house is great. These are more [00:06:00] details. What we want to do with inspirations is just save the images that grab you. And the reason I emphasize this is because, again, this is where people get hung up.

They start drilling into it. Drilling into it, looking up this particular project, getting into the details, so on. So you don't want to go there yet. Now you can if you want later, but right now to get momentum, to get traction. We just want to be able to start saving inspirations. Now, there's ways to do this, and you've probably heard about a lot of these ideas, and I'm just gonna reiterate some of them.

It's not rocket science, but it's, how you go about doing it so that you don't get hung up and overwhelmed. So one of the, online applications out there is Pinterest, and Pinterest has been around quite a while now, and it's actually a very useful tool for not just home design, but just about everything in life.

If you've never used [00:07:00] Pinterest, I'd recommend that you give it a try and we're gonna use a couple different applications. Pinterest is definitely one that everybody, most people know about, most designers know about, especially interior designers and architects. So go in there and create an account and start searching for images of homes that you think you like.

Now, you may not know what you don't know, and you may not know what you like. But you must have seen a picture or two. Or you must know a particular style of home that you like, or style of kitchen or bathroom that you like. And for example, you could type in, white modern kitchens or modern farmhouse homes.

Then you can get into more detail by your searches. Now what Pinterest is gonna do is it's going to populate. Your screen with matches, and it's pretty amazing how powerful and how accurate [00:08:00] the matches are. Now what you're gonna want to do is create boards, so you'll have to go in there and learn how to do that, but you create a board and you could create it as simple as the Jones Project or.

And what I would recommend is create several boards, create one for exterior, one for interior, one for kitchens, baths, landscaping, so on, organize your project the way you'd like, but generally it's from exterior, interior, and then by room. And this gives you a way to organize your project. So that you don't get lost.

Now what you're gonna find is once you start saving images to your boards, Pinterest is gonna feed you more images and more images. The more you select them and like them and save them, the more it's gonna understand what style you like. Then you're also gonna become [00:09:00] educated. So you're gonna, say, oh, I love this home.

You don't know why you love it. You just you may like the colors, you just the feel of it. But then what you're gonna find out is you're gonna find out later in this process, what style is it? What architectural style is it that's used in the industry? Usually when you click on that particular picture, you can go visit that website and it starts telling you about.

The style of that home or the, even the colors used and so on. But we'll get to that later. Now I spent some time on YouTube, and if you haven't gone to YouTube lately, I recommend you go into YouTube and type in how to use Pinterest for designing a home. And there's some great designers on there that are showing you how to do it.

So you can streamline right to that. And learn how to use Pinterest properly because here's the secret about some of these tools, you'll be able to share these boards with your potential designer [00:10:00] candidates. So what's gonna happen is you're gonna create some boards. You can start simple at first.

You can always keep going back and keep going back, but you're gonna create these boards and then you're gonna be able to. Copy and paste the links to these boards and share these links. And we'll probably copy and paste them into a document. That's our, what I keep calling our project package or report that we're gonna send to architects.

And this is a really powerful tool. 'cause once that link is sent to somebody and you keep adding to it or deleting from it, it'll just keep updating it. So the next time your architect goes into that. They'll see more images. Another great feature is you can make comments, whether private or public comments on the picture, so you can say what you like and dislike about a particular picture.

So that's Pinterest. Now there's another application called HOUZ z.com, and it's very similar to [00:11:00] Pinterest. Once you make an account. You start searching for projects and their case, they call 'em idea books, I believe, you create idea books. So same thing as Pinterest boards. You can do the same thing in HOUZZ how is an interesting tool because not only can you do the same functions as you do in Pinterest.

By organizing your idea books by room or area. But once you click on those images, you'll see who designed the project. So houses specific to home design and construction. You'll see who built the project, who designed the project, and you'll see people commenting on that particular project, asking questions, and some of the people online will answer 'em.

So HOUZZ is kinda like Pinterest, but specific to home building and remodeling? So you could start with HOUZZ and go there, but I have found that [00:12:00] Pinterest has, it just seems to be more intelligent and it starts to feed you more and more of things that you're probably gonna now another thing about HOUZZ and why it's worth investing, the time is eventually.

You'll be able to search for architects and contractors in your particular area that have joined HOUZZ now, a lot of design and construction professionals have joined HOUZZ, so you can kill two birds with one stone there. We're not ready to do that yet, but. Again, if you start searching for design professionals in your particular area and see their portfolio, because what architects and contractors do is they upload their portfolios to their house account, and you can start seeing their projects that they're doing in your area.

Now this is, can be really valuable because, usually companies that spend the time on HOUZZ uploading their projects and updating their profile [00:13:00] are, generally more, probably a more professional company than some of the other ones out there. Not to say that people that don't use HOUZZ are not professional.

' cause in some cases. Really good. Contractors and architects don't even need it, frankly. But this is a really good start. So what's cool about HOUZZ is you can do both there. So you can create your idea books on HOUZZ. You can create your Pinterest boards on Pinterest and you can share from either platform you can share.

So for example, on HOUZZ, if you found a contractor or you found an architect you liked on HOUZZ. You can share your idea book directly to them. So I think that's a really cool feature. Another source. There's a lot of websites out there that sell home plans, like pre-packaged home plans.

I'm not necessarily a big fan of 'em, cause they do feel like home packaged plans. But. There's a lot out there, and one of the things that you can [00:14:00] really learn is what architectural styles are appealing to you. So in the home plan websites, you're gonna see them organized by all different angles, architectural style, the size of the home, and so on.

If you're building a new home. Or even if you're doing a major renovation where you're planning to update the facade of the house, I'd recommend you dig into a few home plans websites and you can look 'em up online, just say, home plans for sale or something, and there's just a million of 'em.

There's even some with AI tools in there that are really helpful. You're gonna get a lot of inspiration. Now another one is your neighborhood inspiration. So I know in, in dealing with hundreds or thousands of homeowners over the years, many, I would say a large percentage of people have walked their neighborhood or their area and see homes being built or remodeled and liked them and said, oh, I really like what they're doing there.

[00:15:00] And what you can do with this one is you can write down the address. You can go to like zillow.com or realtor.com or homes.com, one of those, look it up and provide that link to your architect. Now, it may not be relevant if the picture's on Zillow or realtor may be old pictures.

So it's not a bad idea to take a picture. Of the outside of a home that you see in your neighborhood that you like. Now there's some side benefits to taking this approach too, that's gonna help us way down later in the process. And that is if you see a home that you like, maybe it's even under construction and it's maybe towards the tail end of construction, you can find out who the contractor is.

You can find out who the architect is. You can do all sorts of things If a project is under construction and if you have the courage, you can knock on the door and talk with the [00:16:00] owner and ask them how their project went and so on. So that's a, that's kinda like an added gain here, but we're not really ready to do that.

But. It can't hurt to start building up these lists of names that are working in your neighborhood, that are doing projects that you like. So I call it the neighborhood inspiration. And that's a really good way to to get inspiration for your project while simultaneously beginning the hunt for architects and contractors.

There's another angle too, and that's using some of the AI tools. I know we hear this word, all the ai ai, but one thing I've discovered is if I saw an image of something I like, let's say I, I have a house that I copied and pasted off a website. Or I took a picture of a home in the neighborhood and I upload that into Google images.

So if you just go to, you just search for Google images it looks just like Google. But what you do is you drop [00:17:00] a picture and you say, find images that are the same or similar, and then it's gonna give you, deliver to you. Pictures of homes that are similar to it, it's actually pretty amazing.

And then what you can do is you can save those images to your bookmarks or copy 'em out of the website and drop 'em into a folder on your computer and save them. This is a way to cut through all of the, just millions of things out there. And get to the style that you like, and then look at comparable homes to gain more inspiration and share your style with your architect.

I also ran into another search engine, it's called Perplexity. What's great about perplexity is you can continuous search. So you could type in. Modern contemporary home with [00:18:00] basement, or you could type in traditional farmhouse barndominium, or you could just, you could type whatever you want.

Show me pictures of traditional French country homes and it'll show you those. It'll also tell you what. A French country home is it'll show you pictures and it'll have links to particular websites that are out in the world that you could look at. Then you could continue the search and expand on it.

Show me French country homes in my zip code. 9 1 2, 3, 4, and it will search for that particular style of home in your zip code. And you can go further and further. So rather than just one search result, it's a string of searches and results that can refine and refine your goal. You can even say present to me a list of architects.

[00:19:00] Specialize in French country architecture in my zip code now. Now you're really getting into details. I don't know what the results of that will be, but again, you get the point is perplexity, and there's other ones out there too that can help you really keep drilling and drilling down. So within five minutes, you can have.

Images and websites of the style that you like. You can have a list of maybe some of the homes in your neighborhood. You could have a list of architects, maybe even a list of contractors in your area. Again, we're still on the inspiration mode, but to maximize the efficiency of the time you're spending, think about this.

They call it conversational searching. So give that a shot. Couple kind of principles about this. Don't worry if you can't explain why you like a picture. It's another hangup people get. It's, just get over it and save it basically. And you can, [00:20:00] you'll be able to go back to it and edit it and delete it or whatever you wanna do, but just keep going and just keep scrolling and if you like it, save it.

And then when you get up to, two or 300 pictures, quit. Hopefully you don't have to do that many. But so that's the idea is to, don't worry. About why you like something. You're gonna find out is you've developed a pattern and your architects will see that.

The second you show 'em your portfolio, your inspiration portfolio, they're gonna immediately get a sense and see a pattern in the style and the look and feel the, it almost always happens. Now, once in a while, if you get two spouses that completely disagree. On the architectural style or the interior style, then you usually see a more of a mishmash and some blending of ideas.

And that's usually what happens with an architect. They take that information and they start to blend that. So it's a finished design [00:21:00] interior exterior that both parties like. So that is, a snapshot of what you can do to start gathering your inspirations. So in review,

inspirations are just images and homes and interiors that spark you. Something's talking to you that says, I really like it. Dive into just a handful of applications so that you don't get too overwhelmed. Pinterest. Build your boards HOUZZ build your idea books, home plan websites, if you're building a new home.

Neighborhood inspiration, that's one of my favorites. And then some of those AI tools out there. There's even some AI tools out there where you can upload a picture of your living room and then tell it to make it more modern. If you want to get into that, all the more power to you. But this podcast and niche is really for people that don't have unlimited time necessarily to do this.

Although if you do have unlimited time, that's even better. The [00:22:00] idea here is to give you the basic tools so that you can hand off a valuable package to your architect. So that's that segment there. I. What we're gonna move into now is when you go to actually share this information with your architects and your designers, and your contractors one of the things you're gonna want to do is you can have your Pinterest link, you can have your HOUZZ link, you can have links the plans that you like.

And you can be saving bookmarks from, perplexity or Google . So you can actually just assemble all of these links into a document. This idea here is to have a simple resource for people to look at. If you're gonna do this on your own, this is probably the best way to do it. In the app I'm developing called Build Quest, there'll be basically a tool, and it's gonna be called Vision Spec, [00:23:00] where you'll be able to do all of the activities in Pinterest and HOUZZ and AI generated resources and results within one system.

So you'll be able to create what I call vision spec, vision being the inspirations. Spec eventually being the thing that we'll be able to use, the tool we'll be able to use to build a set of specifications for your project. But that's down the road. So when you go to share these ideas, remember we don't want to over direct the design, shall we say.

We don't want to handcuff our designers and say, this is exactly what I want. I don't want to consider anything else. You're feeding the designers, you're giving them something to latch onto, to sink their teeth into, and then come back to you with their own interpretation of your style, your vision.

Your personal [00:24:00] profile, the property, and now they've got some visibility to your design desires. One of the mistakes homeowners make is they put too much emphasis on the style and even the colors and everything that they want to a point that I call it handcuffing a designer. What the result of this is, they regurgitate what you've provided them, and you don't want that.

You don't wanna direct the design too much, even though it's very tempting. You want to do the mic drop, just give 'em the information, walk away and let them come back to you. I guarantee you, if you've hunted down a qualified architect, you're going to. Be surprised at what they come up with and probably very happy.

So let it be and let them do their job. So that's the tips there. So we're gonna put it all into a shareable package for [00:25:00] them so they get a sense again of everything that you're about. It could be literally an email with links. If you want to get creative, create a little Google Doc or a Word doc or something and assemble your links together there and that's all you need to do.

In closing, as I get towards the end of this episode, we've now. Couple, and I know I keep repeating myself, but it's really important that we've coupling personal profile, property profile, and now your dreams and your visions and your ideas into this package. We're not quite done with this package yet, but we're now ready to show we're not quite ready, but we're now prepared to show an architect or designer what you're all about.

Your homework right now is write a one paragraph design statement, get creative, have fun with it. Can't take that much time, it could be specific to your property or your lot that you're purchasing or [00:26:00] your experience but most importantly, it's about. You dreaming, you sharing your dream.

Everybody uses the word I'm dream home. My dream home. Even I used it in the title of the book, but share your dream. A lot of times you wake up from a dream and you forgot what it was. This one's not. This one's pretty stuck in your brain, I'm sure. So write a story about your dream home. I wish I could have a wood shop.

My dream is to have a wood shop in the basement, a nine car garage, and a 1600 square foot craft room to create all of my things that I create. Just get into as much detail as you possibly can. And they're gonna pluck out. Your architects are gonna pluck out all of the things that you say in that dream house, and they're gonna convert it into the programming of the project.

So we know we need a shop, we need a craft room, we need, an in-law quarters we [00:27:00] need a nine car garage, things like that. Start your inspiration boards online. It's really the best way nowadays. I think I've heard of somebody once in a while still ripping out magazine pages, but that's so old school.

Create your in inspiration boards online. Don't get too nuts on that inspiration. Sparks save the sparks. We'll get into the details later. Find some plans online that maybe you like. Floor plans. You can look at the floor plans. And visit your neighborhood. Go around your neighborhood we're gonna tap into that neighborhood search thing later and how that's gonna be really valuable.

Remember, you don't have to figure it all out now. The idea is to really just gather the information and what I think you're gonna find that happens. Is there gonna be certain amount of relief? Because now you're starting to learn the style that you like, and after looking at many homes and looking at floor plans and looking at your neighbor's [00:28:00] houses, you're gonna start to get a sense of how big of your home you want it to be, how many bedrooms and the configurations of the rooms, and so on.

Thanks for joining me today on The Awakened Homeowner. Remember, the more clearly you can communicate your dreams, the closer you are to living in a home that feels just right. If you found today's episode helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. And if you're ready for a full step-by-step guide to navigating your entire home building or remodeling journey.

Don't be shy and pick up my new book, the Awakened Homeowner. It really is packed with a ton of knowledge all the way through a project you'll be able to just hold onto this book and learn a lot from it as you start going through it. And that's what we are up to today. So thanks again.

My name's Bill Reid and this is the Awaken Homeowner Show.