Designing Our Own Home

So when you want to custom design your own home you have two options- go talk to a builder/architect  and get them to draw something up based a conversation you have with them, or draw up something yourself. We thought for us, the later would be easier.

So where do you start? Especially when there is two people involved who's ideas don't always mesh.
We started by listing what we both really wanted in a house and these made the initial layout.
For example; We wanted a symmetrical house. Access from the garage into the kitchen. Access to the alfresco from both the kitchen and dining room. A double story house (Jake) which I decided to go along with as long as I had a grand staircase in the entry. No hallways (me) and an activity room that links the kids rooms and their bathroom. The en suite joint to the bedroom via a walk through robe.  etc
All of these things left us with only a few options for layout.  Then you start adding on all the rooms you want (endless conversations about whether he really needs his own study, do we need a guest bedroom and if so why cant they both be combined).

After many designs, trial and error and compromise we came up with our design. This would have been impossible without a computer home design software. We used Punch (a little hard to get used to, but it's great when you get to know it). This is better than the free ones you can get online as it does 3D generations of the front and inside, which is in invaluable to see if the design works.

We found the best approach was to draw something up quick together that included the important requirements and then work off of this design in trying to get the little things right. Going off and drawing your own designs continuously gets you no where. We then went through and worked out the proper sizes for each room.

We submitted this design to three builders for rough quotes and they came back at prices between 400-500 depending on spec and builder.
From there we started working out the kinks with the builders and managed to perfect the design further. But the design still remains 95% our own design.