Two-Story.

The trades who do this work have been with me for years. I don’t put a job out to the lowest bidder and hope. The cheapest framer is expensive twice.

Mechanical, electrical and plumbing get coordinated before anyone cuts anything. Where the ducts run, whether the trusses can carry them, where the panel sits and how far the longest plumbing run has to travel. Done early, on paper, it costs a few meetings. Done in the field by whoever shows up first, it produces drilled structural members, soffits nobody planned for, and rooms that are colder than the rest of the house for reasons no one can trace.

I keep the number of concurrent builds low on purpose. Being on the job is the entire value of hiring a builder rather than a broker.

Change orders aren’t inherently bad. They are how a house adapts to what you learn while standing in it. What is bad is a change order you find out about after the work is done, or one priced as a favor and settled at the end. Mine are written before the work happens, with the cost and the schedule impact stated, and you sign them or you don’t. That’s it. It keeps the conversation about the house rather than about the invoice.

You'll get the bad news early, when it's still cheap to deal with.

I have watched the alternative, and I’m not interested in it.

You’ll see the house at every stage, and I want you on site during framing especially. That’s the window where changes are still cheap and still possible.

Site work is the single most underestimated line in a custom build. Clearing, cut and fill, the driveway, drainage structures, the septic field if you’re on one, and the utility runs from wherever the service actually is to wherever your house will be. On an easy lot it’s modest. On a hard one it can rival the cost of framing the entire house. I put real numbers on it before you’re committed, because discovering it later is the most common way a budget comes apart in the first ninety days.

Energy performance is mostly decided in the walls, not the equipment. Insulation that’s actually installed to its rated value rather than stuffed around wiring, an air barrier that’s continuous instead of theoretical, windows specified for the elevation they sit on, and ductwork inside conditioned space where it belongs. I run thermal scans on my jobs because a camera finds a gap that a walk-through never will. A house built tight and ventilated correctly is quieter, more comfortable in August, and cheaper to run for as long as it stands.

Slope is the difference between a slab and a much larger number. A lot that falls three feet across the building pad can mean retaining, extra fill, a stepped foundation or a walk-out basement that turns out to be the best room in the house. Which of those you get is a design decision, and it is cheaper to make it before the plans are done.