by Jessica Tolliver
After leafing through mountains of magazines, you've found the home plan that best meets your family's needs. You've even got it in hand. Great! But are you ready to break ground tomorrow?
Perhaps not. The plans for your home might benefit from a few adjustments. You could rearrange the kitchen to accommodate a penchant for baking, or add a door between the master suite and an adjacent bedroom that will eventually serve as a nursery. Perhaps you need to make slight changes to get the plans up to local code.
Hiring a designer to personalize pre-designed plans combines affordability with specialization, ensuring an absolutely perfect new home.
Pre-designed home plans provide an affordable alternative to custom-drawn plans, which can cost up to 15 percent of construction.
| "Like snowflakes, no two |
Available in magazines, books, on CD-ROM and directly from designers, pre-drawn plans free up dollars for perks, like top-of-the-line windows, custom landscaping or professional-caliber kitchen appliances.
For a fee of $245 to $850, plan services sell construction blueprints drawn by some of the best designers working today. These plans include the most popular features found in new homes.
Pre-drawn plans can lack a personal touch, though. Are the rooms you use the most also the biggest? Are the windows arranged to take advantage of your favorite view? Will the design fit an oddly shaped lot?
More technically, will the home plan meet local code requirements? While stock home plans meet national building codes, they often need to be adjusted to meet regional codes, like wind loads, snow loads or seismic conditions.
Modifications enable a design to meet these needs, while also turning that pre-drawn plan into the home of your dreams.
Upwards of 75 percent of stock-plan buyers modify their plans in some way, estimates Mark Englund, managing partner of St. Paul-based LifeStyle HomeDesign Services, a national modification company.
"Mail-order plan services are intended as a very cost-effective way for consumers to find their dream homes," Englund explains. "But like snowflakes, no two dream homes are exactly alike."
That's where modification services come in. Local design firms and companies that only modify existing plans customize stock blueprints for between $20 and $120 an hour. An average modification costs around $800, according to Englund. Add that cost to that of the original blueprints and, in the end, a modified stock plan still costs considerably less than a custom-drawn plan. 
"If consumers have the resources to create one-of-a-kind designs, they usually do," Englund continues. "Our clients need a more cost-effective way to acquire designs for their dream homes."
Those who want to modify plans should buy, instead of bluelines, reproducible prints, which can be erased and redrawn. Because the copyright has been lifted, reproducibles cost more than bluelines.
According to Englund, modifications fall into one of three categories - regionalization, personalization or customization.
Regionalization brings a plan up to local code. For example, the roof of a home designed in Florida might need to be made steeper if it's to be built in a state that receives significant snowfall. A home built in California, but designed in Georgia, probably needs to be modified to withstand earthquakes. In Washington state, roofs need to be tied down because of strong winds; a plan designed by a Virginia architect probably won't take this need into account.
Common personalization requests at LifeStyle include adding or subtracting the square footage of a room, or rearranging room layouts.
At LifeStyle, they often rearrange a bedroom's layout to accommodate its new role as a study or a home office. Some people want to open the master bedroom to an adjacent, unused bedroom for service as a reading nook.
"What we see," Englund notes,"is the push and pull, the adding and deleting of square footage."
A customer can also customize a home design by adding fun details - a home theater, built-in cabinets on either side of the fireplace, or decorative columns between two rooms.
| Representatives at the numbers listed below can help you find a reputable designer or architect to modify home plans: American Institute of Architects American Institute of Building Design LifeStyle HomeDesign Services |
To find a reputable designer to modify plans, check out the yellow pages and talk with friends and colleagues who have built homes recently. For references, call the American Institute of Architects, the American Institute of Building Design or the local chapter of the Home Builders' Association.
Many companies modify plans, from one-person shops to national set-ups that only alter pre-designed plans. Depending on the company, and the nature of the job, the turnaround time also ranges greatly - from days to months.
A few simple modifications can make the difference between a house and a dream home. ". . .Stock plans are designed to the mainstream, not to the needs of a particular family," Englund concludes. "Modifying plans makes up for that."
Content provided by HomeStyles.com
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