People are typically confused about who exactly they need to hire to draft their custom home floor plans. Should they Google for a local residential architect or plan drafting company or a home designer? I know because nearly half of my business comes from Google searches and so I am aware of the words and phrases typed into the search bar to find someone, like myself, who offers residential architect services. You need a residential architect only if you own lots of very expensive cars and boats and need a home to match. It takes an architect many years of graduate school, costing thousands upon thousands, and so they need to command a fee that repays and justifies their great effort and expenditure. While architects reign supreme in all other areas of construction, the residential architect is a rare bird, at least in eastern Washinton state. I have an architect friend who returned to Spokane after several successful years specializing in residential kitchen design in the San Francisco. Unable to make the living he required no matter how willing he was to do all forms of residential architecture, my friend returned to California in a few years. In no time he was back to his former tax bracket designing only kitchens in the bay area where there are many, many more rich and famous people. It is not that the residential architect is not worth their fees for custom home floor plans, it is that they are overqualified and must draft blueprints far more detailed and involved than is required to build the vast majority of new homes in eastern Washington state. I have another residential architect friend who spent the time and money to earn his master's degree in architecture but declined to take the test required to obtain his license. [...]

Until only recently, I would not have claimed to be the best choice for someone in our area to select as their custom house plan draftsman. But now experience and the results of that experience have slowly given me the confidence to truly believe that. It is something that has been very exciting to have dawn on me, especially considering my humble self-taught, hand-drawn beginnings. Until just this year, I have been a house carpenter/builder who drafted plans for himself and others. Just a simple carpenter with the good fortune to  occasionally  build a house plan of my own  My dad was a residential foundation subcontractor who put me to work the spring break of my 6th grade. My mother started building houses when I was 14, the age at which I became a laborer for that house contractor.  Mom is still building in her early 80's, and I am still  a laborer in my late 50's.   The difference is that now I am the laborer on projects that I  drafted the house plan for and am the general contractor . Work that was once the kind of drudgery that spawned a thousand teenage daydreams is now good exercise and peaceful, simple but still meaningful work. For years now, I have only worked on projects I have drawn. The really cool thing is that I have not felt like I was going to work for years. Being the framer and form setter and sider and excavator and finish carpenter and painter and various other tradesmen on my houses and additions that I design has changed my perspective. That is something only a few people can tell you and that is why I am proud and happy and grateful to be a house carpenter at the age of 58. And [...]

There is a simple reason you don't see any attached  ADU floor plan designs incorporated in new construction. Mainly it is too radical and therefore risky . When building a house on speculation, builders are not interested house designs that are too original original and so not been tested. Sticking to the tried and proven sellers, they build only what has sold before. It is a quasi-safe, beaten path that I have never been able to force my self to go down as a builder. Maybe if I wanted to only be a builder and do nothing but build houses, I would not have a choice but to build for the center of the market. Earlier in my career I was a carpenter first, home designer second and builder last.  Good fortune has allowed me to become mostly a draftperson/ designer who sometimes gets to go and work with my hands on a new design that I occasionally have the good fortune to build for a customer. So when we recently decided we were able and wanting to build a new home on speculation, I once again was unable not bring myself to build what had the best chance of selling.  I find that doing what everyone else is doing to be boring, both the process and the product. I wanted to build something no one is building, something no one has ever seen and so I began work on designing a house that incorporated ADU floor plan designs until I came up with what I thought would sell. Apparently it was radical. The Spokane Valley Planning department said they had never issued a building permit for  a new houses with any ADU floor plan designs. Most people have never seen an ADU let alone know what one is. [...]

I always love to see a modern home design that I have drawn blueprints for after they have been completed and are being used for what they were intended to be used for and so recently Elaine and I decided to go on a drive and visit a  projects in Central Washington. This modern home design is located in Desert Aire, an interesting community on the Columbia River about 22 miles south of the Vantage bridge. A thousand-acre development originally developed for the well-off to build vacation and seasonal homes and enjoy the golf course and marina. A billboard calls it "The Palm Springs of Washington" and indeed it gets only 7 inches of rain compared to Spokane's 16.5 inches. I had never been there before our recent trip and had never heard of it before last winter when I got an email from Karen Chiaramonte, of Kirkland, who had been designing a new house on the same software program, Sketchup, that I use and love. I was extremely impressed at both how well she had learned Sketch Up and how far along she had gotten with the design for the home that she and her partner, Cecil Rodreguez wanted to begin building in the early Spring and then live in with her parents. For the most part Karen had the layout nailed and I design the roof and helped with some ideas and practical adjustments to make sure that the home that she had envisioned came to life in the best possible form. Once the model was hammered out, I drafted a full set of plans which they gave to their builder who got permits and went to work building this great home. Their modern home design in Central Washington was a standout in [...]

Give me a description of what you want to accomplish, if you can send some sketches or pictures of something that you want to end up with that will help. Scan any sketches you have made and create jpegs files or pdfs or if you have done your prelim plans in a home planning software produce a jpeg  of your rendition and send that by email and I will use them as the starting point for your permit set. If you can't produce sketches or preliminary plans of any type that is fine too. Just call or email and we can get a dialogue going either through a survey of questions I can email you or just through a casual interview process over the phone or at my office. Call me first to talk about your project and set up a meeting or just email me. I will give you an estimate and we can get going. The first example below is an actual email I received with a jpeg attachment and the second example is from a customer who first called and made an appointment and brought a picture a plan he came up with using an inexpensive house plan software program. Hello Craig, Per our telephone conversation of last week, I am sending you a couple of attachments for your review in preparation for house plans I am hoping you will be able to work with us on.  The scanned copies are of sketches my wife and I came up with that I hope you can excuse the crudeness of.  One of the sketches will give you an idea of the lot layout we have while the other includes some of the ideas and basics of the [...]

Recently I got a phone call from a guy planning to build a house in Electric City. He told me that he would be in town the following Friday and wanted to meet. He also told me that he was going to meet with two local drafting businesses who also produce Spokane house plans that day as well. When he showed up he informed me that he had been to one before me and had a meeting scheduled following ours with a third draftsman. We talked for a while and he showed me all that he had prepared which was unusually extensive and accurately drawn out on a software program he mastered to create his design. This was the second home he had built and so he knew what he was doing and I told him his efforts would save me a whole lot of time and I gave him what I thought was a fair price. He quickly told me I was hired and that he would cancel his next appointment. When he picked up his plans the following Thursday, I had to ask what the first drafting company had quoted him. I was shocked when he said they wanted $3,300. No wonder he hired me on the spot. I made my $50 an hour and he saved $1,800!  (click to enlarge) This is what Gary had worked up. He mastered a free house design software program for the floorplan and hand drew the exterior elevations like the one above for all four sides. His drawings were accurate and so I was able to resize them in my sketchup progam so the were actually to real scale. It made it very easy for me to his job quickly. The video is quite long but you can get most of [...]

Are Custom Home Plans a Better Choice than Wholesale House Plans? The short answer to the question about custom home plans versus wholesale plans is that custom home plans are the better choice when you want to have a new home built. The home we live in is not like the clothes we wear in the sense that I can wear the same Levi pants or Pendleton shirt as a million other guys because we all have two arms and two legs and so on. We can’t all live in the same house design because our home is the most personal and complex possession we own. Perhaps even more than our own children, our home is the ultimate reflection of who we are. If you are hard working and responsible, your house reflects it by looking tidy and well maintained. If you are creative and have good taste, your home and it’s décor is an expression of that. If you are lazy, or too busy, or perhaps too old, then it will eventually show up in and around your house. By the same token, your new home and its design will tell all who visit much about your tastes, your priorities and your sensibilities. Beyond being a reflection of who we are, our home is an adaptation of how we live our lives. Some people love to cook and need a great kitchen layout. Some of us love to entertain and need the open great room with lots of seating. The size of the family as well as the ages of its members are also factors. Is the family indoor-orientated or outdoor-orientated? There are dozens of variables that go into what makes the perfect home for its occupants. The reason custom home plans are best is because a custom [...]