DTROITHP-1500-1 - 3 Beds - 2 Baths - 1500 living sq. ft Detroit House Plans

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We are blown away with the excellence and thoroughness of the work that has been done...

Dear Friends, We got in early this morning to start sending the plans out for bidding and after reviewing the most recent modifications of certain design, we felt we truly needed to take the time to write you this letter. Your team has been such a pleasure to work with and we are blown away with the excellence and thoroughness of the work that has been done. The specs on how we want our concrete done, the span of lumber charts, the details on the cabinets, etc., is unbelievable. Your plans are the true example of excellence. That is so rarely seen anymore in residential work or even commercial work anymore! Hold your heads up and puff up those chests – share the love and kind words throughout your staff. Thanks again!

Tim and Debbie C.
Developers, Lakeside at Cross Creek, Camdenton, MO...

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I'm always anxious to get back to my beautiful home!

I'm a single woman,retired from the military, and currently am working a second career with the State of Louisiana. I never dreamed I'd build a home of my own. My ex-husband and I divorced 6 years ago, and I bought a nice 3 bedroom home about 17 miles from the golf course that I now live on. Golf is my passion and I played every chance I had. As time went on, I started looking for another place to live closer to work and especially closer to the golf course, and I could never find a house I liked within my budget close to where I wanted to move. After about 1 1/2 years of looking, I decided, why not try to build? There were available lots on the course that I always played golf on. Interest rates were low and I had some equity built up in my home, so I put it up for sale. One day later, I had an offer! I sold it and moved into an apartment. Meanwhile I had looked at literally hundreds of plans. I knew what I wanted, an open floor plan, split-floorplan with the master bedroon on one side and lots of windows in the back to overlook the golf course. The minimum to build out here is 2200 sq ft, so when I saw this plan, I knew it was the one. However, I ordered the plans reversed since the garage protects the back of the house and the patio from wayward golf shots! I found a quality builder and he had me in the house in less than 5 months, even after losing about a month to bad winter weather. I love the large, open kitchen and the windows on the back that overlook the golf course that I built on. I also love the nice sized covered patio. I love it! My house isn't the biggest in the neighborhood, but it holds it's own with any of the others and I get many compliments on it... My job requires me to travel out of state sometimes, but I'm always anxious to get back to my own beautiful home!

Annette K.
Alexandria, Louisiana

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I was able to employ a farmer who employed a deaf mute..

My wife and I purchased a lakefront lot on a wonderfully pristine Texas lake in 2000 with the intention of eventually building a lakefront home with retirement in mind. We were operating on a 20+ year plan. Two years ago my wife's parents approached us with a proposition. My father in law was planning on retiring in 2010 and was looking at their retirement options. While he wasn't in the position to buy a lakefront place that he wanted, he did have enough funds to help finance the construction of a home. We worked out an arrangement in that we would build a house on our lakefront in which they would live out the rest of their independent years. My wife and I would maintain ownership and my inlaws would have a wonderful retirement lifestyle that they wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise. It was a win-win for everyone. We began looking at house plans and were initially looking for a modest, easy to construct home. Since I was acting as the general contractor and doing a great deal of the work myself as well, design simplicity was important. But so was efficient use of space. We sat down together and drew up a list of key "care abouts". Those key care abouts included full masonry exterior, covered porches, separate laundry room, open eating/living space, a separate master suite area from the other bedrooms, spacious garage large enough to hold 2 cars and a golf cart. We also wanted a safe room as tornados are not uncommon in the area. My inlaws began surfing the web looking at various online designs and came across the HPG-1752-1 on one of the stock plan sites. It had most of what we were looking for, but needed a few modifications to suit our particular tastes and needs. I contacted the guys over at House Plan Gallery and discussed our desired changes. I was unbelievably surprised when I found out that not only could we make the requested changes, but that the modification cost was well below what I had expected! After a few email exchanges outlining the changes, delivered the modified draft plans for our review within a few days, and after one more round of tweaks, delivered what I thought would be our final plans at an extremely reasonable price. The first step in our construction process was site work. With plans in hand I met up with my site work subcontractor to lay out the plans on the lot. I already had a good idea where the house would sit and anticipated that we would need pad leveling to compensate for our gentle sloping lot. The plans called for slab on grade construction. Imagine my surprise when shooting the elevations, that the lot dropped nearly seven feet from one corner of the house to the other. The excavation sub estimated that he would need to bring in 60 truck loads of fill as well as cut one corner down 3 feet. I nearly choked on the estimate for fill dirt. Off handedly, I asked how much just to dig a whole. His estimate for a hole was significantly less. So right off the bat we were faced with a major decision. I could spend a large amount of money for dirt and end up with a 1800 sqft home sitting on very expensive dirt, or I could spend less money on a hole and potentially double the square footage of the house. Sure the basement would cost some money (so I thought), but I'd rather spend money on potentially usable space than dirt. So back to the drawing board... I contacted the designer and asked them what it would cost to modify our house plans for a basement foundation. Again the service was excellent, inexpensive, and fast. So now I had new plans with almost double the living area square footage. Our plan of record was to complete the upper level as originally planned, and to finish out the basement at some point in the future. As I mentioned the house is in Texas. Curious thing about Texas is that not a lot of houses are built with basements. Since the frost line is so shallow, slab on grade is perfectly adequate. But after a visit to the foundation engineer, I found out why else we don't build basements in Texas-expansive soils. I had a soil survey done as part of engineering the foundation and turns out my site had just about the worst expansive soil possible. This means tremendous lateral force is placed on basement walls as the soils expand and contract. The end result is a basement structure that my neighbors jokingly referred to as "Fort Hubbard". I have 10' tall, 10" thick poured in place concrete walls with a double layer of steel reinforcement, all sitting on belled, steel reinforced, concrete piers sunk 20' below the basement lower level. All of this sits on a concrete floor slab criss-crossed with 3' concrete beams. Since a tornado shelter was one of our "care abouts", it sits in one of the basement corners(under the garage) and is completely encased by reinforced steel to concrete per FEMA standards. The first quote from my concrete sub was for over $100K just for the basement alone. At this point I am certain I should have paid for the dirt. We started pushing dirt in October 2010, and it took until January 2011 to complete the basement(due to several weather related delays). I eventually worked with my concrete sub to get the price down based on some creative win-win negotiations and aggressive bid shopping. I decided early on in the construction process, given how much dirt work we planned and that I would be acting as the general contractor, to purchase a used skidsteer loader. My wife and father in law thought I was nuts, but I initially justified it in that we could always sell it for basically what we paid. It has proven to be invaluable and it has paid for itself at least twice so far. I have also found an interesting and effective owner builder tool. It's called craigslist.com. I typically post what I need, and am flooded by responses. I interview the more promising, check references, and cut a deal. I have also used it to source building supplies. Of all the subs I have hired so far, the framing sub proved to be the "best". My framer came to me via craigslist. He was relatively young, had two sizeable crews, and was building for several of the major custom home builders in the greater area. He was responsive, polite, and clearly knowledgeable. He was also looking to start building around the lake where my lot was located. We worked out a deal and set a start date. He was typically paid 45-60 days after completion by the major custom home builders, and I agreed to pay cash upon completion. My framer and his crew showed up bright and early on the start date and knocked out the whole house in three days. I couldn't believe it and was more than happy to hand over his payment upon completion. On the third day, he had both his crews show up to insure that he completed on time. I've seen lots of operations in various industries, but I have never seen one as efficient as this framing crew. Half way through the second day I realized that the job site was relatively quiet, except for the almost constant pneumatic nailing. I then noticed that the crew was working in pairs, one guy measured/nailed, the other guy cut and kept material flowing to the one nailing. I then noticed that the crew was all using what looked like sign language to communicate! If you ever seen bond traders flash hand signals in the trading pits to convey purchase prices, this is exactly what this looked like. But this crew had created their own sign language to convey measurements so that they didn't have to shout over the constant nailing. I commented at the end of the day to my framer how impressed I was, and he related this story to me. He had hired a deaf/mute on one of his crews about a year earlier. They had created, through trial and error, a way to provide him instructions on the site using hand signals. He realized that the deaf mute got more done than some of his other seasoned crew members, and that it was because he never had to repeat instructions. So he started making all of his crew use hand signs, and their productivity went up! Needless to say It was very humbling to see that through my home building efforts, I was able to employ a farmer who employed a deaf mute, who in all likelihood would have not had a job. Since I blew my construction budget almost from the beginning, I have had to resort to very creative ways to control costs. Craigslist has proven to very useful for this as well. My best materials deal was for my stone veneer. I found someone on craigslist that had 5 pallets of brand new stone veneer in almost the exact color and style I wanted. Better yet, they wanted 10% of the retail price. The veneer was overruns from a local manufacturer. The only kicker was you had to come pick it up from their home. I loaded up my skidsteer and within 30 minutes I had all five pallets loaded. That one trip netted me almost $4000 in savings and paid for nearly half of the skidsteer. My house is now dried in and most of the rough electrical, plumbing, and mechanical are completed. I still have a lot of work remaining, but it's predominantly subs from this point forward. Things like drywall, insulation, and septic system will go relatively quickly. The basement has inflated the original construction budget by almost 50% and delayed my completion date by almost 6 months. In the end I think it was worth it. All of my family is anxiously awaiting completion so that we can start enjoying the lake. It looks like we will miss this summer, but there is always next and many more after that. We appreciate the guys at this company for helping us to make our dream home a reality, and we'd definately recommend you to all of our friends and family looking for new house plans..

Mathew H.
Coppell, Texas

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We had over $1,400,000 debt, and could have legally taken bankruptcy...

We owned a commercial roofing company and a trucking business that grew too fast. Poor decisions, and other circumstances contributed to the problems. Jerry's Dad, his business partner, got sick and died. After an audit we realized we were losing thousands of dollars a month. We had over $1,400,000 debt, and could have legally taken bankruptcy, but we believed that we should sell everything we could and pay back our debts. We had a nice 1926 AC ranchette home that was free and clear as well as having lots of other assets, such as cars, trucks, horses, cattle, etc. We sold everything but 1 horse, and our furniture, and we moved in with Jerry's mother who helped us with some of the debt. We actually got all the way down to having only $100 and driving a borrowed car, but we had peace! Jerry's mother gave us some land and we bought a mobile home, initially. Jerry worked hard at any job he could find. Donna went back to school, got her real estate license after 30 years as a stay-at-home wife and mother, and went to work. Over the next few years, with God's help and grace, we gradually paid back all the debt, began to save, and dreamed of building a house on our land. In 2009, we began to build and placed a Bible in our slab as a reminder of who helped us get out of our dire circumstances. We moved into our new wonderful, Country Craftsman style house in Feb 2010 and felt so blessed and restored. It is gorgeous! We made just a few modifications to the home including taking the pantry/closet out to make the dining room area larger with a nook for our antique buffet. We also omitted the stairwell (no upstairs) and made a huge pantry. We also put an outdoor fireplace on the patio and have really been enjoying it. Finally, our favorite features of this beautiful home are the Country Craftsman Style, tall ceilings, split bedrooms, big closets, two dining areas, covered patio, and the big front porch. We would definitely recommend this designer for anyone looking for a beautiful design with a floorplan that absolutely minimizes wasted space. Highly recommended!

Jerry and Donna G.
Belton, Texas

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It was so close to what I would have designed myself.

I began looking for house plans in the fall of 2006. My husband and I had just sold our home to move in and take care of my recently widowed Mother. Our youngest son was in college and also still living at home. We sold many of our things and put the rest in storage. We were living in my childhood home. We all knew we needed a layout to accommodate our new family dynamic. We were fortunate that my late father had purchased some land years before and the area was perfect for a new home. We are in a restricted, large acre lot with extra wooded acreage behind the home site. My husband and I were looking for a home that would provide the needed space for my mother, the space for a college student, as well as the place we would enjoy retiring to. I began searching home plans on the Internet. I found many plans but always came back to one of the first plans we found. I was looking for a split design, a large open living space and a bonus room. We found a perfect plan. It reminded me of a traditional home with a slight French style. It was so close to what I would have designed myself. The two bedrooms on one end serve as my mother’s quarters. We did increase the size of her rooms by extending the length of the house by one foot. One room used for a sitting room and the other for her bedroom with a bath in between. This provides her with her own space without making her feel isolated. The large window with the transom on the front gives her a great deal of light and she does not feel she is sitting in a bedroom all day. In the far away future it will serve as two guest rooms and a private bath. The openness of the living room, kitchen, breakfast nook and dining room is perfect for our extended families. Now that my mother is living with me, we are usually the home where many of the family gatherings take place. We can be in the adjoining rooms but all feel we are together. We changed the three large windows in the living room to a sliding glass door opening out to the porch. We also had the porch screened in and an additional cement patio poured out from the house. This gives even more gathering and entertaining space. The master bedroom and bath are perfect for us. Being on the opposite end of the house ensures privacy and the spaciousness gives us the option of a sitting and TV area in our room. We did rearrange the master bath to accommodate a little larger shower and a larger tub but we still have the water closet and double sinks, which we love. The laundry room is huge and we opted to leave out the half bath and put a built in office space where the bath and closet were on the plan. This opens the space even more. One reason we felt comfortable giving up the half bath is because we opted for the full bath in the bonus room over the garage. We finished this room and it was a perfect hideaway and bedroom for our college-aged son. He recently purchased his own home and now our grandchildren are thrilled with our bonus playroom and their own bath. We opted for a slab foundation and vinyl siding. We are very happy with this home. We moved in our home in July of 2007. We look forward to many more years in this wonderful home!

Cheryl G.
Lexington, South Carolina

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Y'all helped make dreams come true!

Y'all helped make dreams come true! Our new home is both beautiful and functional for our family of 6. We had it built on a full (daylight) basement so that 2 bedrooms and a bathroom could be added to the wonderful floor plan. It was EXTREMELY affordable, and our builder loved the way the plans were written out-they were perfect! He said he has never before built a house when he didn't have to modify the plan; that's because the floor plan was perfect! I would be glad to lend a positive word for your company in any way I can. And as we are showing our new home, I am always sure to give your company the credit!

Melissa H.
Atlanta, Georgia

DTROITHP-1500-1 - The Azalea Trail