June 2021 - David Small Designs

Choosing the right architectural designer

Selecting the architectural design team to help set the right vision and compose dynamic drawings for your home is absolutely essential. As with those aforementioned custom home budgets, no two designers are the same. Fee structures will vary, as will quality, but the most important consideration is working with a firm that understands your objectives and is prepared to work to meet your specific needs.

An example of a typical floor plan – View More

Peruse various designers’ websites and social media feeds, visit the homes they’ve designed (assuming they’ve worked in your city before) and meet with them (at least virtually) to ensure their aesthetic sensibilities align with yours. At that point you can determine whether theirs is the kind of firm that understands and suggests pricing checkpoints with builders during the design exercise.

Choosing the best home builder for your needs

Most architectural design firms will have a short list of builders to which they refer projects. This is normal. You may have your own list of names from which to choose (either through family/friend referrals or your own research) as you embark on the custom home-building process. The choice of builder will ultimately dictate your eventual construction budget.

Most will price based on a range of factors including the proposed square footage of the home, the quality of materials to be used, the complexity of the home—which will ultimately dictate the pricing and fee structure—and the time and labour they’ll assign to the project. Some will mark up material and finishing costs to some degree, while others will opt to add a project-management fee instead. Some will take a hybrid fee structure approach.

Once your vision is on paper in the form of conceptual drawings, you can then review and have preliminary pricing conversations with multiple builders. Even if there is a preference for one home builder from the start of the process, we always recommend obtaining multiple quotes and then making a balanced comparison based on your home wish list.

Build in flexibility

Your builder should provide an estimate that itemizes the full project scope, a work schedule with details (and any specific nuances) of their fee structure and a sense of items that will be outside the original project scope.

Being comfortable with your construction budget is a vital part of making the custom home experience a positive one. Still, it’s advisable to build a certain degree of flexibility into your budget. Most home owners, at some point in a project, will make design or material changes that impact their budget. Having a financial cushion built into your construction budget—as much as 10 to 20 per cent of the total value of the project—will help to alleviate the stress of constant spreadsheet scrutinizing as you try to keep spending in check.

Your home, your budget

Ultimately, construction pricing is a function of the quality and complexity of the home you plan to build. But as the home owner, you should be in full control of that budget at all times.

By choosing the right architectural designer and builder—and ensuring that their approach aligns with your vision and project-management preferences—you can make budgetary decisions that deliver a stunning end product.

The David Small Design Team

If the architectural design of a custom home is a reflection of the owner’s personal tastes and aspirations, then the home’s outdoor living spaces are a nod to their love of nature, need for relaxation and sheer enjoyment of the many features of their surroundings. Because for many Canadian and American home owners—whether in northerly regions where the summers seem all too short, or in warmer climes where a year-round connection to nature is easier to maintain—their outdoor living spaces are just as important as the ones inside.

David Small Design’ Natural Modern school directly acknowledges that connection. Our architectural design language ties a home’s interior and exterior spaces in exciting ways. Through extensive use of glass, natural materials such as stone and wood—along with intricate planning that accentuates a property’s topographical details—it creates a dynamic flow and energy that enhances a dwelling’s potential.

It’s an engaging way to turn sightlines, natural light and sweeping views into striking design features.

It also creates intriguing areas for owners and their families to live life and enjoy precious time together with loved ones and friends. There’s a reason why Natural Modern is often described as ‘lifestyle-friendly modern’ by architecture critics and our clients alike. It adds new layers of warm and inviting functionality.

But transforming an exterior space into an inviting oasis takes careful attention to detail and planning. It’s a process of considering how your family interacts, how you wish to engage with the outdoors and how that interplay can enhance the enjoyment of your home as a whole.

Thinking outside during the design phase

Many home owners focus the bulk of their attention on the exterior façade and interior spatial requirements of their home during the architectural design stage—and for obvious reasons. But from the earliest phases of the process, we recommend also envisioning how your future outdoor living spaces should be designed to suit your needs.

Doing so not only helps integrate outdoor and indoor living environments in a seamless way, but will also align your custom home wish list and budgetary realities. Creating an outdoor living room (or several enticing spaces purpose-built to maximize the enjoyment of your surroundings) can quickly inflate a construction budget—especially if major landscaping work is involved.

Perhaps your plan is to create a fully-equipped outdoor kitchen for summer barbecuing or even year-round cooking. Maybe you aim to integrate a pool with a surrounding deck or other elements such as a water feature. A fire pit area could be the perfect setting to take in the stars, particularly on cooler nights. A bar-lounge nook would allow you to watch sports or other events in the open air. Working with your interior design team, you may even choose outdoor lounge or dining furniture of a similar aesthetic to the furniture inside your house. The goal being to create a sense of unity and coherence between indoor and outdoor spaces.

Remember that additions such as these will have a significant impact on your final construction budget. Discussing them in the early stages of the design process not only affords your architectural designer the opportunity to ensure that angles, sightlines and even room positioning are ideally situated to capitalize on exterior elements, but can also allow for the kind of proactive planning that avoids costly re-work or expensive late-stage project additions.

Using a property to your advantage

Whether built on a slope, a lakeside or in a busy urban neighbourhood, it always makes sense to leverage a property’s natural features to create a truly unique outdoor space. For example, a hillside property could allow for a terrace system with multiple seating areas—one for dining, another for lounging and one to enjoy a soothing hot tub soak, for example. A large balcony could afford sweeping views of an expansive valley or nearby mountains.

Our Fairy Lake cottage project is a fine example of our Natural Modern aesthetic at work, while showcasing our use of a property’s natural features to enhance its form and function.

In that case, we took full advantage of the property’s natural slope to include features that framed extraordinary waterfront views, while creating multiple outdoor living spaces and establishing a clear connection to the dockside environment below. As we note in our Portfolio case study:

“This cottage shows how traditional massing can be combined with modern finishes to create a welcoming getaway. A classic gable roof design was elevated by exposed steel beams, floor-to-ceiling windows and modern glass railings. The Muskoka room—the three season covered living space—features a roll-down phantom screen and wood-burning fireplace.”

Even the home’s upper floor bathtub placement was carefully situated to offer serene waterfront views and create opportunities to relax and unwind. Pine-ceilinged, covered porches extended the indoor spaces to produce an elegant continuity of the natural material palette.

At the forefront

We often remind clients that outdoor spaces should never be an afterthought in the custom home design process.

These spaces could well be the ones where you and your family spend the bulk of your time when the weather permits—and sometimes even when the temperatures make a cozy blanket or a roaring outdoor fire a necessity. Take the time to imagine how you want to spend your outdoor time, then work with your architectural designer to bring that distinct vision to life.