Our Complete Custom Home Design Building Process

THE KEY TO AN ENJOYABLE BUILDING PROJECT IS TO FOLLOW PROPERLY ORDERED PLANNING, FOUND IN OUR COMPLETE BUILDING PROCESS. THIS SEQUENCE OF DECISIONS, BASED ON THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HOME BUILDERS’ PREFERRED GUIDELINES AND AUGMENTED BY IMAGE HOMES’ THREE DECADES OF CUSTOM HOMEBUILDING EXPERIENCE, GREATLY FACILITATES THE CONSTRUCTION PROCESS, AND ENHANCES THE EASE AND ENJOYMENT OF YOUR BUILDING EXPERIENCE.

Tell us about your dream

Initial Planning

Before you embark on the journey of designing your custom home, it is crucial to determine your budgetary constraints. By engaging in thorough planning, we at Image Homes Corporation can assist you in designing a custom home that not only meets your functional needs but also stays within your desired budget.

Throughout the entire custom home building process, we will consistently evaluate the balance between your desired design ideas and your financial goal, ensuring that you stay on track. Collaboratively planning the room sizes, layout, and style will enable us to provide specific advice and expertise, helping you maximize the value, utilization, and future resale value of your home.

Furthermore, meticulous planning will help alleviate local bureaucratic challenges and streamline various aspects of building a custom home, including permitting and site development. By facilitating efficient communication and coordination among all team members involved in your custom home project, planning ultimately saves you money by avoiding costly change orders. In summary, thoughtful and comprehensive planning is the key to bringing your dream home to life while maintaining financial prudence.

Site Evaluation

Building your custom home requires careful consideration and planning, especially when it comes to site placement. At Image Homes Corporation, we understand the significance of site planning and its crucial role in creating your dream home. With our extensive experience building on challenging sites, especially mountainous areas, we are well-equipped to explore various options for the ideal placement of your home while preserving the natural features of the property. Even though the terrain may appear flat, it is essential to take into account its unique characteristics by actual analysis.
Our approach to custom design is organic, meaning that design and site planning go hand in hand. We recognize that one cannot be achieved without the other. By considering factors such as maximizing view corridors, solar orientation, and working with natural features like trees and rock outcroppings among other key elements, we ensure that your home harmoniously integrates with its setting and environment.
Moreover, our focus extends beyond design and aesthetics. We take into account practical aspects such as minimizing steep drives, costly retaining walls, and lengthy utility runs, while complying with local and county regulations. Understanding lot requirements and restrictions, including setbacks, easements, utility locations, access points, local building codes, and DRC requirements, is crucial in the planning process.

Home Design

In the Conceptual Design phase, we will collaborate closely with you to create 1/8" scale sketches that meet your spatial and architectural requirements. Through a step-by-step interview, we'll define room functions, sizes, and relationships, while developing a conceptual budget for your custom home. Building upon this, the Preliminary Design phase brings your custom home design into closer focus, as we present various design ideas until we find a solution that aligns with your needs and budgetary goals. Once the Preliminary Design is approved, the land planner and architect will produce the final construction documents, incorporating sections, structural drawings, lighting layouts, and elevations. During this Final Design phase, we'll gather bids and material quotes from subcontractors and suppliers, providing complete transparency in the construction costs. With the completion of the Final Design phase, construction can begin on your custom dream home!

Communication

We believe communication is essential and we are very excited to introduce you to our communication portal. You will have access to a website dedicated exclusively to your project, where every email, estimate, idea, photograph and specification is available in one place, 24/7, wherever you are, whenever it is convenient for you. You will also get automatic reminders about what’s coming up next. 

We start using this system early in the design and budgeting process. As you make your selections or consider possible options, you will know immediately how those choices affect the budget you have approved.

You will be able to track the progress of your home’s construction in real time and see online photos of your home as it takes shape. The freedom this tool gives us has made it possible for us to work with many out of state/international clients.

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Image Homes, as do a lot of builders, say that their homes are built with conserving energy as a top priority. Image Homes delivers!  I was skeptical at first when they said our gas bills would be low – please look at the attached copies of our bills – unbelievable…if I were to purchase another home today, it would definitely be an Image home. Great product and great people to work with.

— Conrad and Sheryl Swedenborg

Frequently Asked Questions

  • We spend a lot of time together determining the design and finishes of your home during the critical planning stage. The design of your home, the layout of the rooms, and the materials and methods to be used, are thoroughly discussed, and analyzed considering your stated goals, both architectural and budgetary.

    We organize all your ideas and selections on a private website devoted exclusively to your project, accessible 24/7. Emails between you and us, our joint discussions side by side those from suppliers and subcontractors, photographs, colors are all documented there in one place and sorted by category. We make it our goal to provide you with enough information online and during showroom visits to make most of your decisions prior to construction. Planning as much as possible at the front end takes out the stress and puts the fun in.

    Everyone knows planning is important but consider these reasons also:

    Planning your room sizes, layout, and style with us to guide you and lend our experience helps you maximize the value, use, and resale value of your home.

    Planning allows us to help you to design within your budget and functional needs.

    Planning will reduce or eliminate local bureaucratic issues of homebuilding in your area, such as permitting and site development.

    Planning allows all team members to do their jobs efficiently, and saves you money by avoiding costly change orders.

    The key to building is to follow a properly ordered schedule. Our schedule and sequence of decisions, based on the National Association of Homebuilders preferred guidelines, greatly facilitates the construction process, saves you money, and enhances the ease and enjoyment of your home building experience.

  • This depends on the scope of the project, but anywhere from 12 to 18 months is the average.

  • Prior to starting design, we develop a conceptual estimate to guide the budgeting process of your home first, including the development of your lot even before you sign a contract on the land you are looking to buy.

    Often the cost of a lot is only part of the story. The development of your lot in order to comply with a particular county’s codes and regulations can have a large impact on the total cost. We can approximate that while you are considering the purchase of the land you have chosen. Knowing this information can give you, as the buyer, leverage when negotiating the price.

    Our budgets are accurate. Everything is in writing and all in one place, there are no surprises. We have an open book policy. Prior to construction, we spend a lot of time digging into the details of what you want. As an example, an allowance for flooring chosen but not finalized is based on the level of finish you have asked for, not a generic ‘guesstimate’.

    We build to your budget. This is essential for the success of our working relationship.

  • We have chosen building partners based on their track record with our quality control checklist and on the glowing compliments of our clients. We have worked with many of them for more than 20 years. Their reliability, financial security, and honesty are very important to us.

  • We use time-tested building components with an eye for quality and beauty. After over 35 years vetting suppliers, we can do so without needless/wasteful expense for the greatest value. Where possible and as you dictate, we offer to source materials that meet our ‘green’ standards – locally available, resource efficient, practical, cost effective and beautiful. Some ‘green’ products and systems are not ‘green’ and we have the experience to tell the difference.

  • We offer several contract options, and will discuss in depth the benefits of each, in view of your situation.

    You see every invoice. What you will not see are any universal markups – every invoice is precisely what we pay our suppliers and subcontractors.

  • We build to your budgetary requirements, with detailed monthly draws and cost-to-date reports to track expenses as well as estimates to complete. You see and approve every invoice. What you won’t see are universal mark-ups on materials or labor.

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