If you ever get the chance to design your dream home, you’re among the few (and the overwhelmed). The things you learn when designing your dream home can only be learned when designing your dream home.

Before we dive in, know that I am speaking from anecdotal experience and our experience may differ completely from the standards, or requirements where you live.

During this process I have become LESS clear on what a “custom” home is. But I do think a fair amount of “custom” homes are more of a “hybrid” – Partial cookie cutter with upgrades. Even ours started with the plan below as inspiration.

You can buy these plans outright from many sites. But we wanted to change a fair amount of the plan (flip it around, add a garage, loft above garage, widen the house, etc). That is what led us to the final approach.

In order to NOT use this exact plan, our builder changed the design well past 30%. What I loved about creeping all the Mascord plans was the 3D walk through feature. That was massive for my as a visual person.

It really was this simple. In a matter months we had our dream home designed:

• Googled “modern farm house designs”
• Looked for one story plans (ideally L shaped)
• Found this baby and fell in love.
• That’s where the free portion stoped L O L
• Met with several builders out at our land with THIS PLAN as a rough draft
• Picked a builder
• Changed the plans to what we REALLY wanted (we will likely never reveal our blue prints as our builder only creates truly custom homes and one of a kind homes). Please see their work at Affinity Homes.

Then of course came all the materials and details. But you can’t build a custom home without a floor plan and style – am I right? Thus, I highly suggest looking at houseplans.co for ready to purchase plans, or for a base to then have a builder/designer expand/edit.

You can absolutely download the floor plans for FREE. If you plan to use the exact plan or don’t change enough I believe you will need to purchase the plan for engineering. But please consult with your local builders, designers and engineers.

Join my mailing list for weekly blog and podcast updates. You may or may not get VIP discounts as well. Just saying. Join the fam!