One of my favorite blogs, ‘Cake Wrecks‘ covers a challenge that anyone building or remodeling a home needs to take into consideration.  There is often a distinct, visible and potentially costly difference between what you think your new house will look like and how it actually turns out.
The reality, when it comes to residential design and construction is quite simple: It is irresponsible to build, remodel or add onto a home if you have no idea what it will look like, and have not carefully considered a full menu …

[UPDATE: I created this site on the Ning network, per the commenter's suggestion - and it can be found here: http://webuilddane.ning.com/ - please be sure to sign in and share what you know about the trials, tribulations, rewards and excitement of building a new home or adding onto an existing home! ]
WeBuildDane.org or the ‘WeBuild Network’ is an idea for a web 2.0, social networking site I’ve been mulling over for some time now, that would function something like craiglist, but be simply dedicated to sharing information about building and …

At the end of every day, I find myself closing dozens of browser windows and tabs with reference sites and great information I plan to eventually revisit, but never do.  Sadly, I’m not very efficient with Bookmarks, so these sites often get lost in the shuffle.
So, I decided to pull all of the best online references related to high performance home construction into a single, easy to find location, and publish it as a blog post so readers can share their own valuable resource-finds to it over time.
Most are related …

This is, by far, the most common concern related to new home and remodel construction.  Unfortunately, determining the cost of construction is incredibly complex, with no clear standards or equations to guide you.  Worse yet, the cost of materials and services is a moving target, fluctuating widely from year to year, and in many cases from one month to the next.  Builder fees are also an unknown variable that vary from one builder to the next – also subject to change based on market demand.  But the good news is, …

In part 1, I talked about some of the market conditions that are making it a great time to remodel or add onto an existing home.  In this post, I will touch on two essential ingredients required to get a good start on your project in order to avoid headaches later in design development and construction.
As-Built Drawings

The first thing you’re going to need is a carefully drafted set of ‘as-built’ drawings that show dimensions and square footage of the existing home.  This is a service we provide as a prerequisite …