The first opportunity for things to go really awry with a house build (assuming your site has been chosen) is at the drafting stage.
If you can, use an architect, or buy a plan that suits you. But if like us, you are willing to face the challenges of communicating the hand drawn boxes of rooms accurately into the language of drafting, either because of ignorance (as we did the first time), or experience (as we thought the second time) it is worth ensuring you remember certain important considerations...
Windows and doors -
Check that your image and the draughtsperson's correlate. If the room is upstairs and you want big windows, will the roofline allow it? In our first house we were shocked to find that the windows from our bedroom started about 40cm higher up the wall than we had envisaged because the roof of the lower storey required it. Now our place to sit and look out over the garden, required us to stand!
The laundry in our first house also presented problems. This time for the builder: when the windows went in, we discovered that they started too low down the wall to allow installation of the washing machine and tub under them (as planned), so these had to be placed across the room against a solid wall instead.
Windows in our "conservatory" had (in our minds) been full height, in actuality about 20cm at the top was wall.
Doors from the lounge to the "conservatory" that we had envisaged as the same height as external doors were in fact lower. These were bifolds and were so enormous that we took them out within a short time of moving in and sold them for next to nothing.
Ignorance is definitely not bliss when planning your home, more on this next time!
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