Ep 047 - Mastering Home Design: Insights from Bill Reid

Welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, where you'll discover strategies to save money, save time, and be better organized in managing your largest financial asset and biggest expense, your home. Your hosts, John Bodrozic and Beth Dodson, who are co-founders of HomeZada, have been supporting homeowners for over 20 years. They are here to share with you their tips and suggestions, as well as interviews with industry experts. With the goal of helping you become a smarter homeowner. Now here's your hosts, John and Beth.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast. I am Beth Dodson here with my co-host, John Bedrosian, and we've got a special guest today, Bill Reid. Let me tell you a little bit more about Bill. He is an accomplished expert in home design and construction. Has spent over 30 years orchestrating successful projects for homeowners, and he co-founded his own construction supply company when he was just 22. He also launched his own firm called Remodel West, a premier full-service design and construction company based in Silicon Valley, California. Over the decades, he has developed a deep understanding of the challenges homeowners endure while tackling a project, offering them the guidance and support they need to succeed. And one of the things And one of the reasons we wanted to have Bill on our podcast today is because Bill just recently wrote a book as well, and it's all about project planning. And to be specific, it's called The Awakened Homeowner: Orchestrate Your New Home, A Guide to Design and Construction Success. Which, if everyone knows everyone about us at HOMZADA, we're all about preparation for anything, whether it's projects.

Yeah.

storms, etc. We want to help everyone prepare. So we thought Bill was the perfect guest to come on to Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast. So to get us started, Bill, I'm going to ask you the first question. Can you, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself that I may not have explained in the bio?

Sure, sure. Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me on. This has been great ever since I wrote the book. I've been kind of on this same mission to get the word out. And so, yeah, you covered a lot. I mean, my business was in the Bay Area, in Northern California, in the South Bay Area. And what I did is I had a design and construction company. So, I handled everything for a client from the day they walked in the door saying, I think I want to build a house, or, I think I want to remodel my kitchen, and everything in between. And I had my own design staff and my own construction staff for, like you said, 30-plus years and had showrooms and all that kind of stuff. And I chose that design-build business model a long time ago because I knew a lot of the important aspects of planning a project, which I think is a big part of what we're going to talk about today. People tend to skip over a big hump there and just pick up the phone. And, and so, yeah, so I, I had, you know, in all the evolution of time and ups and downs, I had, you know, 2 people to 60 people to 3 locations, back down to 20 people and up and down. So I've been kind of around the block from an economic standpoint and also from a design and construction standpoint. So that's how I chose to operate my business. And, I found that keeping your arms around it for the client made that experience the best for the client. And, it worked really well in Silicon Valley. I was right there right next to Apple headquarters and all that kind of stuff. So, these were the type of clientele that needed that. They didn't have time to run around and pick everything out and find the cheapest contractor out there and things like that. So there's a lot more to that background, but that, that gives you a kind of a, hopefully that helps embellish on your introduction.

Thank you. No, that is fantastic. It sounds like to your point, when you brought up the economic cycles that we go through, even in construction and home building and what have you, that plays a role in your own business. Now, one of the things that you talked about was design-build. A lot of people aren't always familiar with that process. They understand that there's a design component and there is a build component. Can you explain a little bit more about how you work with your customers from a design-build perspective so that our audience can understand what that means and that also may tie into your project planning process?

Sure. Great question. Yeah. So the design-build bit. So there's the conventional way, the traditional way, what most people think they need to do is they need to— a lot of people think they need to call, pick up the phone and call a contractor, which is not what you need to do to begin with. And you don't call a designer first either. First, you look inside, and we'll talk about that later. But, but the design-build, uh, business model is, um, where you are— you, you have one throat to choke as a homeowner, right? So, so you have, you have hired somebody to have one pair of eyes on the whole process of the project. And the reason, kind of the big picture of the benefits of that is there's a huge handoff from the design function to the construction function in the traditional method. And a design-build business model kind of puts in this kind of natural accountability for me as the contractor, the home builder. You know, I'm a licensed general contractor, have been for all those years. But as the person at the very, very, that's going to build the project at the very beginning of the stage, when they walked in the door saying, I think I want to remodel my kitchen or build a house, has their eyes all the way through and is engaged in the design process because there's discussions that come about such as, what do you want? How much do you want to spend? Things like that. And who's, who's really watching that, right? Who's going, oh yeah, how many times do you hear, you know, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you want to spend that much. But anyway, let's create this masterpiece in design work, and then we'll worry about that later. Well, you know, that's where a lot of people just get floored. So the design-build business model is a company that has one person that employs their own design staff and their own construction staff, and then sometimes they'll bring in outside consultants such as structural engineers or civil engineers or For bigger projects, but that's the idea. And then there's natural progression of budget checkpoints for a person running a responsible design-build company where I would swoop in and say, sometimes they'd call me the dark cloud, but I would come in and say, oh wow, this is amazing. Look at what my design team has done. Look at the big smile on the customer's face. And then I come in and go, Has anybody talked about the budget? Has anybody even brought it up? Right? And then everybody kind of gives that big blank stare. And that's where I come in and go, okay, since I'm the one eventually is going to have to lower the boom on the price of the project, let's talk about it now. Now, this doesn't happen a lot when you're working with just an independent designer or architect.

Right.

Architects are awesome. I love architects, but they don't necessarily necessarily have their finger on the pulse of the construction, right? Right? I mean, John's laughing, so—

Oh yeah, yeah.

There's more to that laugh, I can see. But, you know, so anyway, it's— I would chart— what I would do is I would have 2 separate agreements with a client. I would have a design agreement and I would have a construction contract. And I That evolved when many clients would say, well, I don't know if I really want to bite off this whole project if I don't know what I'm getting myself into. So I eventually broke it out. And then in the design process, there's stepping stones within a design process that I talk about in the book and the podcast. In fact, right now in the podcast, I'm talking about those design steps, the design process that maybe someday we can talk about. But anyway, So I, so, and then that way the client as a design company per se can initiate, we can initiate each one of the stepping stones so they feel comfortable. And then in between those stepping stones, we go, everybody pauses and says, like I was talking about earlier, it's like, this is awesome. No problem getting design ideas, no problem blowing everybody away, but let's pause. And that's, and what happens, If it's done properly, then it's just a soft transition in the construction contract because there's no surprises. So does that help you guys?

It does, and that helps me explain everything. But I know John had some specific questions around that.

Yeah, thanks for that intro, Bill, because it's totally in alignment. I guess one, one big picture question, which is, um, what do you think a homeowner should do before they place their first phone call? Meaning let's say they, they're in a house, they want to do a massive kitchen remodel connected to a living room, maybe even connected to new patio. They've got these visions. Some will jump on and make a phone call right away to a contractor, but we know that there's fraught with that. Let's give us our audience the guidance over what should a homeowner think about or do prior to even making that first phone call?

Yeah, that's a great question. In my book, and I'm totally dialed into that, because in my book I talk about the very first part of the book is called the Discovery Series, right? This is everything that you kind of do before you pick up the phone. And one of the first things is for, you know, a person or a couple or whoever to go out on their front porch and sit down and talk about their project, talk about their goals, and start to gain focus for themselves before Before they call anybody. It's, it's classic where people just run around in circles in the home that they just bought or they've lived in for 20 years, and it's very possible they've been talking about a project for 10 years, 5 years, right?

Yeah.

They're just going circle around and around. Let's put it over here, let's put it over there. I want upstairs, downstairs, backwards, forward. You know, they just get so lost and so paralyzed that nothing gets done, or worse, they make big mistakes and go down paths with designers and contractors exploring a different ideas. So the idea is to gain focus as much as they can about their overall big picture scope, not where are things going to go, but what do I need? I need, you know, I need more square footage. I need a new primary suite. We're going to have kids. We're going to— grandma's going to want to move. You know, there's different—

Yeah.

Different global things that a homeowner should be thinking about. And all of this effort in the discovery period is working towards building a profile to be able to share with a prospective designer on the project. And we can't gloss over the fact that you start with a designer in a project. You don't start with a contractor. You can initiate a call with a contractor and say, hey, I saw your sign. I'm thinking about a project. Do you have an architect or designer that you would want to recommend to me? The other thing that, that's a big part is, and I think we're in some of your questions, and maybe we'll cross over to some of your questions, but, you know, there's this whole budget thing, right? I mean, this is the biggest, biggest thing, right? That, that everybody uses the word budget, budget, budget. Here's my budget. Here's my budget, right? Well, What, you know, what is that? Is that something that you just pulled out of thin air? Is that, you know, Joe the neighbor on the other side of the fence said, oh yeah, well, I did the same kind of project and I spent $100,000 on that project. So you walk away going, well, okay, I want to spend $100,000. You know, I mean, this is, this is a budget. People, sometimes people misconceive the budget. As the construction cost of the project, right? So what I, what I recommend, that's why I ask people when I first meet with them, have you thought about how much you want to invest in the, in this project, in this home, in this property, right? Forget about what you want, right?

Same.

Because what happens is, is people, and especially when they get into that, that fun You know, honeymoon stage of the design process, right? It's like, oh my God, I love it. Everything, I love everything.

Everything is a possibility.

Yeah, right? I mean, it really is. In single-family residential construction, you can pretty much do anything, right? But, you know, it's the same old story with money, right? So I, I ask people, you know, how much they want to invest in their property, because ultimately, that's where we come back to right now. Not now. This is a very customized business, and we're fortunate to be in it because It's always going to be kind of like that. I don't think AI is going to totally change this custom creation of homes. It's going to help, help a lot, but, you know, that's the big thing because when we get in, and people tend to scratch their head, right? They're like, well, I hadn't thought about it like that, but, you know, I spent, you know, this much on the house. Here's what my mortgage payment is, which is another thing in the discovery you know, part of the book is go out and do a little bit of market study. Anybody can do it. Whatever the— what are the houses going for in my neighborhood? Uh, the ones that are the old ones, the ones that are new ones, or what homes have been built in the, in the, in the, you know, the development that I want to build in? How much are they worth? How much am I going to spend? Um, you know, and there's all kinds of little benefits can come from that research, such as finding contractors, finding designers, you know, that are working in the neighborhood, right?

Yes.

So, you know, investment, you know, kind of like introspection. Then there's the whole investment financial perspective. Then there's the whole market study, if you care. Some people don't care. I mean, I've done many projects where I've done, you know, $1, $2 million projects where the house next door was only worth a million bucks. For $500,000, right?

Yeah.

It's very personalized, right? So as a design-build— operating a design-build business, the idea was to understand the priority of the budget or the investment for a client. And then that also directs the guidance on the design. So if somebody says, well, I only have $100,000 that Grandma gave me, but I want to do upstairs and downstairs and a basement and all that, then we just start guiding them right there.

Right.

Literally within the first half-hour conversation with a prospective client and start helping them mold and guide them in the scope of work to achieve the budget. Or the other side, people will say, well, I don't know. And they kind of look down. They don't want to share. Like you're buying a car, right? I mean, you know, you know, it's like people don't, you know, it's like people don't want to share their— what they want to spend. Well, homeowners need to understand that we're literally designing and delivering that brand new BMW to you and assembling it in your living room, right? Yeah, it's a great image. So, you know, and we can design how many features you want on that vehicle that we're going to assign— that we're going to design, and hopefully we can get it out once it's assembled. But, you know, the idea is that You know, that is just kind of the thought process that people need to be thinking about when it comes to the early stages, right, of the project. So hopefully that helped.

It does. A quick follow-up on the investment sort of concept, which is there's the, what I call, have you seen this, which is the financial investment, i.e., how much can I afford for this project that I want? B, do people start to think about what that investment might mean in terms of the value of their home? And then the third component is what I call a lifestyle investment, which is I want things because of these requirements. Like you said before, I've got kids, I got grandma moving in, or I really like to entertain and my current house is not conducive to entertaining. Do people sort of grasp that level of sort of different kinds of ways of thinking about the word investment.

They actually do, and it's almost like you describe 3 different clients: good, better, best, right? And so, a lot of it just, I mean, yes, the answer to the question is all of that. And then, you know, this application that I'm building that supports the book, it's going to be called BuildQuest. They'll be able to go through and select their quality level that they want based on their lifestyle situation. There's even questions in there about, is this your forever home or are you planning to, you know, maybe move in 5 years? And that helps balance the level of the quality of the, you know, the solutions, like how great, how grandiose do we want to go and the quality of the materials and that kind of stuff to help tailor the solutions to the client. So, the market study, the comparative market analysis, right, is what it's called in the real estate world.

Yeah.

That's a big part of the solution that I have and I'm integrating into this app where you can type in your address and you can get— it will feed you. This is where the AI comes in, right? It's going to feed you existing homes that have not been touched and new homes that have been touched or remodeled. And you can use those both for inspirations and market study to understand, like, how— what's the market value of that home per square foot? Because let's face it, when people do appraisals and CMAs, they actually use that old square footage number based on, you know, comparatives. So, so people can do that if They're kind of, if return on investment is important to people, right? And that's where—

Right.

The people sitting on the front porch and deciding what you want to do early stages, do I care about return on investment? Or once the kids get out of high school, we're out of here, you know, that kind of stuff. So those are the, that's the process here is to look at it, you know, that way. And then there's a lot of clientele that just don't give a damn. They just, you know, this is it. They're living in the moment. I've done a lot of work for a lot of people like that, and it can be really fun, but even those people care about how much it costs, right?

They might tell you their budget's $200,000, but once they get everything they want and they're like, oh, it's $350,000, they're like, I didn't really— I can afford it, but I didn't really want to spend that much money.

Right, right, you know, so it's They say that in the beginning, oh, I just want what I want. Well, guess what? It's $800,000. Yeah, like, well, never mind, I don't want— I want, you know.

I agree.

Another, another thing about planning, early stage planning, especially when you're working with an architect or designer, is, is what I call master planning. And I don't know if we want to talk about that right now, but that's another strategy that a homeowner can take to help manage their planning process.

And what do you mean by master planning, since we've brought it up?

So a lot of people have a lot of ideas. Homeowners have a lot of ideas, right? Especially people who've lived in the home for a long time, um, or just even purchased a home, and they have a lot of ideas. Like I was saying earlier, up, down, out, in, you know, gut the whole place. Um, so after listening to a client for the first 30 minutes, or 10 minutes even, And getting into the investment question, investment goal question, what I usually do is I rec— and again, it's tailored to that specific situation, right? But I would recommend that in the schematic design phase, the first stage of design, let's do a master plan. Let's go ahead and sketch up everything that you want. The addition on the back, the addition on the front, the addition upstairs. Or in one of my latest projects that I was helping design, it was like almost like an estate in Napa. And they wanted a pool and a cabana and they wanted an outdoor detached garage with an office, maybe a basement, maybe not a basement, you know? So, so yeah, I mean, and it's, and these are all the ideas that have been spinning around in people's heads. Right. And once you those out and put them on design work, you can kind of sit back and just go, holy cow, this is what I was thinking. This is a lot, right? But here's one of the biggest benefits is there's a couple big benefits. If a designer and architect understands that you want to spend, you know, $1 million on this project or whatever, I'm just making up all the— I know those are big numbers. Sorry. But, you know, if somebody wants to spend $1 million on this new home, let's say on 2 acres or whatever, and they have all these ideas, if an architect understands early on that you may want to phase a project out, such as let's do the ADU, accessory dwelling unit, later, or let's price it out separately, let's price out the pool and cabana.

Yeah.

Let's, let's designate that as a phase. From a designer's standpoint, they're going to be thinking about logistics, about infrastructure, all these different things. And that will get translated to a general contractor when it comes time to pricing out the project. And the architect on behalf of the client can say to the, to the builders and say, okay, look, look at this project. It's awesome. But when you guys price out the project, I want you to segmented out into these 3 phases for me so that the client can understand where the value is to make an informed decision. And this is a great thing for a builder to know early on, because if you haven't priced the whole thing out at once, yeah, and then you go back to them and say, oh, could you break out the accessory dwelling unit, they're gonna go click. Yeah, you know, they may never call you back.

Um, well, it's no different Believe it or not, then when you sit down with a big group of people at a table and you don't tell the waiter that you need separate checks.

Yeah, exactly. There you go. Same thing. Great analogy.

Do it ahead of time.

Yeah, the waiter's going to know how to do that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, correct. So now part of you, you spoke of this master plan and boy, can we relate. And we're big firm believers that you don't have to do everything all at once. You can do projects year over year, quarter over quarter, whatever. And in fact, we've done that at our own homes, and we've literally done a project each year, and it got exciting.

Yeah.

Whether it's an addition, whether it's adding on to it like a pool or something like that, or whether it's even a design project. So maybe you have an empty room for a period of time, then you decide you want to get a designer in to help you, interior designer to help you Furnish the whole thing. You can do that over time.

Absolutely.

But one of the things that, you know, John and I always joke about with a lot of our customers is, uh, and John brought this question up, which is so funny, do you run into challenges with some of your customers? And let's take a really good example, is a couple of some sort is not aligned as to what they want, and they've got to work out all the details, and then you're kind of maybe playing mediator, I don't know, or—

Psychiatrist.

Those type of scenarios.

Yeah, I would say more often than not. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mean, that is, well, you talked about a few things there was the phasing or the different part. I mean, that happens a lot with projects and not just because you master planned it. It's just that especially if you're really good at what you do, if you're a good designer, a good contractor, They like having you around, right? So you keep having them come back. And okay, so I've done— I have clientele that I've worked for for 20 years.

That's awesome.

Sometimes the same house, sometimes different houses, right? So they moved and they call me back up and say, um, but yeah, dealing with, you know, spouses and partners and, and whatnot, it's definitely, um, a challenge. There's been a few times where I had to kind of get up and leave the conference room Well, I let them, you know, totally figure their own— go back on the front porch and go back and discuss, you know, you guys, you need— we're going to start, you know, so, but, you know, it hasn't been that bad. I mean, I think most of it has to do with style, right? Architect, you know, selections and style. Not necessarily what are we, what are we not doing or doing? It's just more about like, Oh, you really like that?

Preferences.

Okay, I'll give you that one. So we used to have a point system, so each, each partner would get a point, you know, it's like, wait, you got a point, so now you, they get more, they have some, they get something too.

So we are familiar with that point system. I get all of them.

You're keeping score for the partner spouses so that you can reveal the score at the end of every inning. That's so funny.

That's right, that's right.

Well, that's good too, because that can also set expectations a little bit more streamlined. Now, John, you had a question on selections.

Well, before I jump to selections, I know it sounds like, Bill, you've got a whole bunch of details on the design process, but maybe for our podcast, given our sort of format, could you give us sort of a high level over the different components of design that have to come together in kind of a summary format for our audience to understand what, what design actually means.

Great. Um, how long do we have? No, I'm kidding. So design is hugely important, and I think that for homeowners that have never done a project before— and I'm talking about it could be a bathroom Or it could be—

Oh, absolutely.

A state, right? I mean, everything in between. Design is paramount. Quality design is paramount to a successful project. And I emphasize that because I came to realize all these years that people sometimes didn't put any value on design, right? Especially people who have never done projects before. People that have been run through the wringer on projects before now know, right? But So, so number one, design is hugely important, and it depends on the type of project that you're doing. But fundamentally, what happens in design is you as a homeowner want to share as much as possible in the beginning to inspire and guide and, and set yourself up for— set yourself up as a homeowner and set the designer up. for success by helping them gain focus, the designers. And you as a homeowner need to have focus before you can do that. So if you, if you have 3 pictures on Pinterest, you pick up the phone and call an architect and say, hey, I want to build a house and I've got these 3 pictures on Pinterest I love, help me. Not smart, because you're not— you're going to pay that architect and that designer to run around in circles with you And try to figure you out, right?

Right.

So nowadays a homeowner can do a lot of work up front in establishing their project profile, you know, meaning what rooms and shapes and whatever they want and their investment goal, their personal profile, I call it. You build your personal profile. In other words, here's who we are. Here's my family. Here's my career. Here's our lifestyle. Here's our children. And here's our future. And you, you give, you, you provide this package to a design professional and you go out and find a design professional and a design professional, number one, will look at this and go, wow, these people really got their, you know what, together. I want to work with them. Because as you know, even in times like this, which isn't quite, quite as crazy, a lot of phone calls don't get returned.

Yeah.

So both in the construction side and the architecture side, design side. So If a package goes out to a homeowner, I mean, to an architect, and they go, wow, these people know what— I know who these people are already. I know what they want, so on and so forth. So that's that front-end work. But design is broken out into usually 3 different components of a project, and it evolves and gets bigger and bigger as you go.

Exactly.

Schematic design, step 1, is a process where that architect takes in all of that input from the homeowner and their inspirations and ideas and whatnot. And they develop schematic-level, early-stage design work. Here's— and that goes back to sometimes that master planning, but here's everything we think you like and want based on your inspirations. And they'll propose different floor plans, different elevations, 3D renderings. Hopefully, if your architect or designers are not doing 3D renderings, Run. That means you're not gonna, you know, they're totally out of the loop.

They're not current.

Yeah, right. And the big thing about 3D renderings is I found, because we evolved in 30 years, right? There was a time when there was no 3D rendering.

Absolutely.

It was on hand.

Yeah, so now what I found is clientele go, oh, I get it now. I see what you're Before, it was looking at 2D floor plans and somebody going, yeah, the wall's here and the room's going to look like this. But now it's the— so anyway, I got a little on a tangent there, but the schematic design is the free-flowing organic process. And these are terms that I didn't come up with. These are typical terms that architecture firms and designers use.

Yeah.

Schematic design. The objective of schematic design At the end is for everybody to sit back and go, it's pretty close. As far as what I want out of here, out of my Pinterest boards and into design work, that's the objective of schematic design to go. That's pretty close. We can still make some changes, but that's pretty darn close. Not major changes. So we do like the bedroom here. We do like the kitchen in the back of the house. We do, you know, so on and so forth. And that's one of those pause points I was talking about where if you're just working with an architect or designer or you're working with a design-build company, it doesn't matter. You, you as a homeowner should say, you know, okay, this is awesome. I love it. Can we pause and talk about the budget? Can we go back to what I think I wanted to invest in the project?

Yeah.

And then an architect, if you're just going the conventional method, not design-build, can bring in a a builder they know, and a builder can at least go, at very least go, you're not even close.

Right, sure.

Or they could say, you know, because a builder, a good builder contractor's in their head going, oh yeah, I've done a project like this before, very similar. And they can say, that one was about $450,000, you want to invest $400,000? Yeah, you're not too far off. Or There is data, there are data points where a contractor can do a prelim estimate, right? On just, you know, how many linear footage of foundation, how much flooring, how much walls, how much, and they can provide a preliminary budget. Now expect as a homeowner to not get that for free. I think, I think it's fair to say, hey, let me give you, I'll give you 10 hours, Mr. Contractor, to do a prelim for me. And as a homeowner, now you are also engaging with a potential builder for your project early on, right? So you're getting kind of 2, 2 benefits here. So that's schematic design. That's the goal. And then the next step is called design development. So you as a homeowner said, this is pretty damn close. Let's go ahead and go with this feature and that feature. Let's leave that out. Now that you have some prelim budget, That's one of the humps that people sometimes jump over. They skip over the budgeting, whether they don't care or don't know to do that, don't ask the right questions, or the designers aren't asking the right questions. If they skip over that and just say, let's just go for it, great, you can do that, but you're going to get— you may get blown away later, right? I love it. So step 2 is design development, and that is That is where all, I mean, I would say 60%, maybe even 70% of the design work occurs in design development. And that is where all different functions happen. And that could be a longer chat, but it's where the architect says, okay, I'm focusing now. We're going with plan 2.5 with the primary suite from plan 3 and the And the hall bath from plan 1. And I'm— this is usually what happens. And then they're integrating it into the final schematic level plan, and then they start developing that design. And that means a lot of things. That means bringing in an interior designer, which we haven't talked about yet. Interior design is huge, huge for— so you've got an architect's mind, you've got an interior designer mind, and sometimes interior designers come in before that, but Sure. During schematic design, especially in smaller projects. So interior design comes in, starts working with the client, or maybe the architect does that, probably not, but, or they have somebody on staff. Interior design comes in, starts working with a client on the finishes and the materials and the hardware. Architects thinking bigger picture globally, bringing in consultants, structural engineers, civil engineers. Some of those may have come in earlier, But structural engineer, civil engineer, mechanical, electrical, plumbing design, somebody has to do that, whether it's the architect or consultants, right? And yeah, I say somebody has to do it because there's a lot of people that think, nah, figure it out later, you know, or we'll put some can lights around the switch over here. Change order hell, right? When you're in construction. So, so design development. There's a lot that goes on to that. It's also starting to interface with the city or the county government or the building departments to understand if what you think you conceptualize is feasible, which is a whole nother, a whole nother aspect that could be talked about. And that should actually happen early stage in schematic design to make sure that all the parameters are being met for setbacks and floor area ratios.

Yeah.

Size, size of home. And then the third, the third stage is called construction documents. Sometimes people call them construction drawings. But between that second and third phase, at the end of the second phase, design development, you have structural engineering, you have material specs, you have more detail. Now a homeowner's seeing their plans in these big rolls of plans, right?

Yes.

You call up Fred the builder, That you've talked with 3 or 4 or 6 months ago.

All right.

Come back in. I got everything for you now. Let's get at least budget checkpoint 2 out of the way, or can you go ahead and provide me a construction estimate? Depending on the level of the quality of the plans, a builder can then— Fred can come in and say, okay. Yeah, it's $485,000. You know, I mean, he goes away for weeks. It takes a contractor, um, it could be as quick as 40 hours and as much as 400 hours to price out a project depending on the size of the project, if you can imagine. So these guys don't take this lightly, right? When somebody asks to bid a project, um, They don't just hop on and get excited, right? They want to know who the, who the client is, who the architect is. They want to know the quality of the plans, and they'll— they're going to gauge their pricing structure by the quality of the plans and by the homeowner and how decisive everybody is, believe it or not. I mean, that's what happens. The quality of the plans stink, they're not going to get— they're not going to get it. So anyway, that's that budget checkpoint number 2. Right, that I, that I used to do that a lot of people don't do.

Okay.

And this, if you skip budget checkpoint number 1, budget checkpoint number 2 as a homeowner, and the architect or designers don't, don't prompt that, you don't know as a homeowner, you're still hunky-dory, you're loving it, I love this, right? So you get into phase 3, construction documents, most homeowners are offline of that, That's where the architect is assembling, or a kitchen designer, whatever, is assembling all of the plan pages and the specs and aggregating all that into a final set of plans to go to the county, the city, to submit for building permit that goes to the builder that are the official set of plans to build from. And then that's when pricing comes up, right?

Yeah.

So if somebody goes with that set of plans and says, oh, look at that, look at this, it's thick, it's great, I paid $20,000 as a homeowner for this set of plans, or sometimes $200,000 for a whole huge giant project, sometimes more, and they go, this just feels— I feel like I've accomplished something. And then they go to 3 different contract builders and say, look at this, look how great we did. It took us a year to get to this point. Price out this project for me. And here it comes, come back, it comes, the plans are great, let's assume. Numbers start coming back in, and that's when the jaw drops, right? It's like, yeah, it's not $485,000, it's $985,000.

Correct.

What?

Yeah.

How did that happen? Well, it happened because usually what happens is people didn't make the budget or the investment goal or any of that, any of that link on priority, right?

Yeah.

And you get 3 different estimates, sometimes they can range quite a bit, not as, not as often as you think, but that's, that's a classic problem. So guess what? You now have more firewood because those set of plans go into your wood stove Right? And you start over. That is a classic chronic problem. I've had problems with that, even, even the effort that I go through with clientele, right? As much as I try hard to get to that point, you can only go so far as a designer to design towards this mystery investment goal or budget.

Right.

You really don't know as a designer Until you have some kind of tangible data points to get pricing. And if you skip those critical points, you're screwed. So yeah, that's great.

Thanks for sharing that overview.

No, but it helps us understand, like most homeowners, it's a perfect example. They don't understand all the different parties that are necessary when they are trying to perform a project, whether it's a very large-scale project because they want to tear down a house and start from scratch, whether they want to add on Whether they want to modify something internally, they do need engineers. Sometimes they do need inspectors. They do need to get permits. And oftentimes a lot of those scenarios are overlooked because people are so caught up in, oh my gosh, my wish list.

My wish list.

I just want to do this.

I want to break ground.

Correct.

And believe you me, I've been there. Other people have been there. It's oh my gosh, I can't wait to make change. But is to your point, is it going to be worth it? And worth it is dependent. I think value is also dependent on what someone's willing to pay for something. And so worth it is are you really excited to have change and you want to live in this house forever and you don't care what it's going to cost and you want it to be what you want it to be? Or are you going to sell it in a couple of years and be done with it. But to your point, you even brought up different scenarios of customers who are living completely in the now. They don't care what happens moving forward versus customers who are pre-planning for, I do have kids. I'm not going to live here when they leave. They're going to go to college and then they're going to leave the house.

Right.

And then I'm going to move into something different.

Right.

Where I don't have to have a yard I have to take care of or what have you.

Right.

And these are the different scenarios that I think homeowners and customers go through. Because to your point, you even brought this up. The neighbor said, well, I did this, but the neighbor's project may have been completely different than what you're considering. And so it's important to understand your own personal needs and your desires. And to your point, your investment. As well as your budgets as to what you want done to your project and understand all the parties are— there's a lot of parties that could potentially be involved.

Yeah, I mean, that's a great synopsis. I mean, you can start a project sooner, as fast as possible, but it's probably going to take you longer and cost you more than you thought. If you take And that's going to be— that's going to come from change orders. That's going to come from delays in material acquisition and procurement to the site because things take time to get. So it's hard for a homeowner to understand that if you have a $500,000 project or investment goal right in your mind that you want to spend, and if you just say, let's just get the bare— I call it the permit push. Let's just get the bare minimum on the plans. Let's get the permit. Let's get started. Right?

Right.

Contractor says, okay, well, they're not— the plans aren't complete, but let's just give you a rough idea and then we'll, then we'll go from there and get started. Right. So they do that. And that's what a lot of people do. And then they get into construction and say, where's the lighting? You know, where— how come there's no lighting in the living room? Well, what about the driveway? Did you include the driveway? Oh, no, I didn't include the driveway. It wasn't on the plan. Did you You know, I mean, on and on and on. And this is because people are so anxious to break ground. I'm glad you brought that up. And that will take them longer and cost them $700,000. Why wouldn't you spend $20,000, spec everything out, take 3 months, 6 months longer to start your project, understand the costs, make informed decisions, And then build the project and finish earlier than if you were to do it the way I was just talking about. It's a classic. So it's hard for homeowners to understand that, you know, investing money in design and time and specs in order to have a great experience— they see that number, the contractor. I mean, go on some Facebook groups, it's ridiculous. You know, people say I built my home for $150 a square foot, right? Well, here I am, I'm thinking, okay, I'll round it up to $200, right? I mean, you're, you're, you're already dead meat, right? Because it's going to cost you twice that to build a home. So, so this is what I'm trying to do with my mission is to tell people, look, you're going to save money and do your project faster If you actually put that heavy emphasis on the front end of a project. And here's the thing, it's not their fault. It's because they don't know. Homeowners don't know what they don't know.

Yeah, correct.

And they just, they just heavily depend on, uh, designers and contractors, and they just kind of get led along. And why not take a little, you know, most people have been thinking about a project for Months, years.

Yeah.

If you take that time to go, you know, I think I want to remodel, start reading, start, you know, looking online, start saving inspiration, start doing all this stuff while you're thinking so that you can then hire somebody to help you along with that, that you've empowered, you know, with a level, certain level of focus.

Yeah.

And that's, that's the goal, to eliminate all of the horror stories.

No, it's true. And it sounds like that's a great stopping point. John, do you have anything else you want to add or ask?

I guess one specific one we sort of danced around a bit, but it's also a huge impact, I think, which is, do you recommend homeowners think about material selections? Like, let's take the kitchen remodel as an example. Should they be thinking about or telling that in the design phase, What kind of countertops they want, what kind of appliances do they want, do they want the high-end Italian stuff or the basic model kind of stuff. Do you recommend that material selection sort of inspiration down to that level being done by the homeowner?

It depends on the client, depends on the homeowner. Some people are very engaged, right, and want to go to every single granite yard in the valley to be able to pick out their granite. And some clientele aren't like that and they want somebody to help them with that. So my, you know, my suggestion depending on the client, a lot of people in where I was originally for the Silicon Valley area were very, either they were really, really busy and didn't have time or it was 2 extremes.

Yeah.

Or, you know, all my clientele were software engineers, tech CEOs, tech execs, you know, right? They drove me nuts, but it was great and it turned me into a complete detail freak Right? So that's why all the people that work for me, you know, I mean, I'll never forget in 1992 when I first started my business, I remember his name, Alan Georgie. He was an IBM engineer and he walked in with a list of measurements of all the utensils that they use in their kitchen. Every single one.

Love it.

And we made sure—

Some people wouldn't.

that all the little drawer dividers would fit, right? And that's where it began and totally turned me into this freak. But when it comes to details, so my suggestion for a home, generally speaking, is to focus on the inspiration. I love this kitchen. I don't know why I like it. I love it.

Yeah.

I love the look. I love the feel. If I'm— if I want to drill down, I can. Or if that— I'm that type of person, or just focus on the big picture. I love the look of this house. I don't know why. I just love it. Maybe it's the windows. Maybe it's the front door. I, you know, I love the tile in this bathroom. Focus on the high-level inspiration so that when you get to meeting your designer, it could be a kitchen and bath designer. It could be an architect. And say, here's my inspirations. Can you propose to me—

Yeah.

You know, the count— 3 different countertop selections and different, you know, mood boards, ensembles to help me achieve this. Um, so that, you know, it just— it definitely ranges depending on the client. The client.

Yeah, awesome.

And that type of scenario is— sorry— is really good for people who are super busy.

Yeah, it is.

It is.

But I have to tell you one thing. I've thought about this. The more engaged A homeowner is on their project, the more successful the project is.

That's great to know.

And that means attending the design meetings. That means drilling down a little bit more. That means providing timely feedback and all these kind of things. I've, I've learned that they— those projects, the projects themselves run smoother, but the client's happier, right? Because what happens inevitably, inevitably what happens is if people are not engaged, people are making decisions for them. And they don't even know it.

Yeah, that's correct.

So what baseboard do you want? And they never replied. So we put a, put a 3-inch baseboard. Well, they wanted a 6-inch baseboard. Change order, right? Yeah.

And that's a big difference.

It is. It is. So yeah.

Yeah, that's a good thing. Anything else, John?

No, I'm good. I want to thank Bill for providing us his insight. It's been great.

Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity.

Yeah, thank you so much. It's been fabulous. And so we've talked a lot about project planning and how some of the steps that people need to take, and specifically, the more you're involved, to Bill's point, the happier you will be and the smoother the project will run. So for now, thank you so much for joining us for Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast. And please, if you find this information interesting, share it. with anyone who needs it. And by all means, come back and see us again for another episode of Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast. Have a great day.

Thank you for listening to the Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast. Visit beasmarterhomeowner.com to sign up for our newsletter and find out more about software to help you save time, save money, and manage your home.