How to build a house (part 1)

Everyone is dreaming of the perfect home for themselves and their families. Either it will be a house, an apartment, or maybe even a carriage for travelers. Regardless of the type it is still should be your comfortable, warm, inviting home that you’ll be thrilled to come back to every day. There are plenty of options out there on the market, but we believe that your ideal home should be tailored just for you to cater to all of the special needs and demands. To avoid a tiring reconstruction process we suggest you consider the option of building your own home. It can be pretty challenging but the outcome will surpass all of your expectations, and your hard work will be as rewarding as the beautiful home you will be living in.

So what are the main stages of the house construction process?

Location

First and foremost is finding a location. Select a desirable place for your house. There are a lot of points to keep in mind when choosing perfect surroundings for your future home:

• Landscape and Climate. Consider the future exterior of your home, whether it will be a forest or a field, located next to the river or mountains, all of these will determine the climate and maintenance conditions for the house. For instance, you should keep in mind the possibilities of the landslide in the rocky landscape or the problems with floods next to the water. 

• Soil condition.  Recalling Roman architect Vitruvius' fundamental principles of architecture - firmitas (durability) is one of the main features of the building, therefore its foundation should stay robustly in the solid ground. If the soil of the plot is sandy, muddy, consists of clay, sludge or other unstable earth the owner should contemplate specialised foundation in advance.

• Infrastructure and utilities. To have access to all of the utilities such as electricity, water, internet or phone connection is crucial for a comfortable lifestyle. Also equally important is close location to schools, transit, shops, and other basic commodities.

The second part is an architectural project. You can’t create any construction without this step. It can be a professional project or even a sketch that you will forward to the engineers, but you need to visualize the future appearance of the construction and place it on paper otherwise you will fail in the first stages.

Take into account that before building, you’ll need to submit your project to the attorney's commission for approval, and without necessary skills and knowledge it will be a very time consuming and costly objective to accomplish without a vocational help. Furthermore, future construction may require additional contract administration and/or changes into the project as the work progresses. So to save your energy and nerves we advise you to work alongside an experienced architect to turn your dream home into a reality.

Design

This is the most exciting part of house creation. To design a house you firstly should imagine your future life there. Think about how many people would live there, what their arrangements and need are, this information you’ll need to determine your future floor plan - number of bedrooms, utility rooms, entertainment, and workspaces, etc. To start the drawing of your floor plan you can research some of the existing ones online, may take inspiration for the interiors and indoor spaces, try to sketch out the premises of your future home. You can add the furniture or facilities for your convenience and to easily recognize the rooms and their function.

After that, you can place and adjust the plan to the plot and start to think through all of the surrounding areas like patio, garage, terraces, pool areas, etc. So to sum up the pre-design stage you need to make a list regarding all of the potential premises and to do that you should:

• Determine the number of bedrooms by considering how many people will live or stay in the house, guest bedrooms, kids’ rooms, etc.
• Figure out the bathroom amount, you need to think through the correlation between money and comfort of staying in the house. Of course, even multiple people can use it in the bathroom, but the convenience of it is highly questionable. 
• Decide regarding your special needs, do you need a gym in your house, or maybe an office, playroom for your kids, or for adults. Figure out what space you can’t live without and put it on the list.
• Start to create the master plan (your house on the plot with all of the outdoor spaces).

When you roughly sketched out your plan start adding the important functional details that will determine the overall design of the house both interior and exterior. Show the sketches to your architect, he or she will check the location of the rooms in terms of the networks and utility location as well as insolation and many other conditions for the energy-efficient, ergonomic, economically responsible construction. You’ll need to establish:

 

• Functional spaces. Never forget about all of the storage spaces, utility rooms, laundry, and wardrobes, these are the key premises for a comfortable life, and they also can fill the non insolated spaces of the house. 

• Communication and networks.  For the most part, all of the ventilation ducts and AC systems should be gathered in one place for the maximum energy efficiency, for example, you can make your bathrooms in the opposite parts of the house or align them one under another on the different floors or close by on one floor to avoid costly work and material expense to build all of this air ducts, and don’t forget about your roof that will be covered in them, it’s not a good look and always shows off the inexperience of the designer. 

• Windows and insolation. Windows are the eyes of the house, they play a major role in your facade appearance as well as in the future spending on air conditioning or heating. Therefore you’ll need to keep in mind the facing of the rooms to catch or reduce the sunlight in addition to make the proportional and efficient windows. 

Everything that you’ve accomplished on the pre-design stage, the architect will embody into the drafts and visualizations, and then you can submit your project to the attorney's commission for approval.