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What Does the Custom Home Design Process Actually Look Like?

It Starts With a Conversation, Not a Blueprint

Most people assume the custom home process begins with drawings. It doesn't. It begins with a conversation — and the best ones start long before any lines are drawn.

At Ver Woert Construction, the first meeting isn't about square footage or floor plans. It's about how you live. How your family moves through a home. What you love about where you are now and what you want to change. Whether you cook for crowds or need a quiet home office. Whether the view of the lake matters more than the size of the garage.

This conversation shapes everything that follows. Here's what the full process looks like, from first meeting to breaking ground.

Phase 1: Discovery

The discovery phase typically spans 2–4 weeks and covers:

  • Lifestyle interview: We spend time understanding how you live — your daily routines, entertaining habits, how kids and pets use the space, how the home should feel in different seasons.
  • Budget framing: We establish a realistic budget range based on your goals and the type of home you're envisioning. In a design-build model, this happens before any design work begins, so the creative process is grounded in financial reality from day one.
  • Site evaluation: If you have a lot, we walk it together. We study the topography, orientation, views, setbacks, soil conditions, and utility access. The site isn't just where the home goes — it's a design partner.
  • Inspiration gathering: Photos, magazine clippings, Pinterest boards, homes you've visited that made an impression — all of it helps us understand your aesthetic language.

Phase 2: Conceptual Design

This is where pencil meets paper — literally. Our design process often starts with hand-drawn sketches before moving to digital tools. There's something about pencil lines that encourages exploration and keeps ideas fluid.

During this phase (typically 3–6 weeks):

  • Floor plan concepts: We develop 1–2 floor plan options that respond to your needs, the site, and the budget. These are schematic — showing room relationships, flow, and scale without getting into construction detail.
  • Massing and elevation studies: Exterior form begins to take shape. How the home sits on the site, its roofline, its proportions, its relationship to the street or the water.
  • Preliminary cost check: Each concept gets a rough cost estimate from our building team. If a design is trending over budget, we adjust now — not after months of detailed documentation.

You'll review these concepts with us in person, and we'll refine together. Most clients go through 2–3 rounds of revision before the concept feels right.

Phase 3: Design Development

Once the concept is approved, we develop it into a detailed design. This phase (4–8 weeks) includes:

  • Detailed floor plans: Every room dimensioned, every door and window placed, built-ins and cabinetry locations defined.
  • Exterior elevations: All four sides of the home drawn with material callouts — siding types, stone or brick patterns, window styles, trim profiles.
  • 3D renderings: Digital models that let you "walk through" the home before it's built. These are invaluable for understanding spatial relationships and catching issues that aren't obvious in flat drawings.
  • Material and finish selections begin: We start building your finish palette — exterior materials, flooring, tile, countertops, cabinet styles. Early decisions here keep the project on schedule.

Phase 4: Pricing and Establishing Standards

This phase (4–6 weeks) is where the design gets priced and preliminary standards are established across the board:

  • Structural plans: Foundation, framing, beam schedules, and connection details.
  • Mechanical plans: HVAC layout, plumbing runs, electrical panel placement, and lighting plans.
  • Establishing standards: This is where we work with the homeowner to set preliminary finish standards throughout the home — the baseline for cabinetry, flooring, tile, fixtures, hardware, and millwork. These conversations happen collaboratively, and the standards become the foundation that the pricing is built on.

Once this phase is complete, the plans go out to bid. Subcontractors and suppliers price the project based on the drawings and the established standards, giving us a detailed and accurate construction cost.

Phase 5: Presenting and Decision Making

This is the phase no one talks about, but it's one of the most important. After we present the pricing, the homeowners need time to absorb it and make big decisions about what they are and aren't going to do.

Everyone says no to things. That's normal and expected — it's part of building within a budget. But those decisions aren't always easy to make. There are real trade-offs that deserve thoughtful consideration.

We walk through every line item together, explain what drives each cost, and help identify where compromises make sense and where they don't. The goal is a final scope and budget that the homeowner feels genuinely good about before a single shovel hits the ground.

Phase 6: Pre-Construction

Once decisions are made and the contract is finalized, permits are submitted (2–8 weeks depending on the jurisdiction) and the building team begins:

  • Finalizing the construction schedule
  • Securing subcontractor commitments
  • Ordering long-lead materials
  • Preparing the site for groundbreaking

What Makes This Work

The design process succeeds when three things are true: the client's goals are clearly understood, the budget is respected throughout, and the design and construction teams are aligned. In a design-build model, that alignment is built into the structure of the relationship — the people designing your home are the same people who will build it.

If you're ready to start the conversation — even if you're months away from building — we'd love to hear what you're envisioning.