Thursday, April 23, 2015

Who Moved My Cheese!

What are your expectations? 

Before you decide to build a new home or remodel it's important to check in with yourself and ask, what are my expectations? Are they reasonable?

Like you I'm a consumer too. I travel, eat at great restaurants and occasionally indulge in the finer things in life. On the other hand, I'm not going to McDonald's and expecting the Seasons 52 experience. Even if I visit a "Top Shelf" restaurant, paying big bucks, I know before I go that the experience is not going to be perfect.

It's really amazing, when you buy a new car for $50,000 and you pick it up at the dealership, it's almost perfect! One would think if you are paying $1,000,000 for a new, custom built home, that home, would be close to perfect too! Unfortunately, if that's your expectation your are most likely going to be disappointed.

A new car is just one of a thousand just like it. They created a prototype refined it multiple times and then put it into production, refining as they receive feedback from the market place. It's being manufactured by people and robots that do the same exact thing every day in a climate controlled environment.

A new, custom built home "IS A PROTOTYPE". It's never been built before. Even if you are building a plan that is a duplicate of another home you have viewed before, it's really not the same. The lot is different and so are the components. Pieces and parts from all over the world are being assembled on site, rain or shine. Changes to the prototype are being adjusted on a daily basis to meet site conditions. A workman constructing your home was building something entirely different last week.

Even though we use a laser level, the concrete slab in not perfectly level, the lumber isn't perfectly straight and no matter how hard we try the finished house is not going to be perfect. That doesn't mean we quite trying to build the perfect house, it just means that if you are expecting your brand new  $1,000,000 custom built home to be perfect, you're going to be disappointed.

I've been building homes for over 30 years and have yet to build a perfect home. Frankly, that's difficult to type as some people have called me a perfectionist.  I use to be an accountant where all the columns we straight and all the accounts had to balance.

Building a custom home is one of the largest, on site, hand crafted products. Frankly, it's not going to be perfect. 

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