Custom means “made-to-order.”
Some people think a custom home has to be expensive. Not necessarily! Any kind of home can be custom built, from a mansion full of expensive fixtures and materials to a tiny economical cottage. What they have in common is that the features are specified by the homeowners, rather than by the
builder.
When building a custom home, options are evaluated only on the basis of what is important to the homeowners. Any home may be kept from becoming more expensive than necessary, by eliminating wasted space, unnecessary maintenance, and unwanted features.
There are, of course, degrees of custom. It might be just choosing flooring, cabinets, or where to place extra mirrors. It might be making minor alterations to a existing plan to better fit personal needs.
A fully custom home is designed and built entirely to your specifications. It blends your dreams and heart's desires with the property of your choice and is tailored to fit your budget.
At Thomas Gloe Builders, we collect all the input you can give us and then we all work together, forming an owner-designer-builder team to create your home, with the style and function you've envisioned, no matter how evasive that concept has been!
No. On a square foot basis, adding on usually costs considerably more.
There are several reasons for this.
This question is one of the most frequent requests we receive. Unfortunately, it is also one of the few questions that we simply cannot answer very specifically. Can you tell me how much it costs to take a vacation or send my kids to college? How much should I expect to spend on a new car?
All of the above questions contain so many variables that it is impossible for anyone to answer them accurately without first asking several additional questions and gathering much more information. Labor and material costs can vary substantially based upon the time of the year, complexity or uniqueness of the project, jobsite conditions, local building codes, construction moratoriums, zoning laws, covenants and restrictions, availability of supplies and workers, weather conditions, natural disasters, public or private water and sewer, and several hundred other factors.
Only if you like your home and want to keep it. A license does more than just ensure that the person you're dealing with isn't a fly by night operator, it gives you important legal protections that truly could mean the difference between keeping and losing your home. Here are just a few of the potential problems:
Unlicensed individuals are considered your employees. That means you are required to provide them with workman's compensation insurance. If you do not provide this insurance not only are you in violation of the law, you could be held responsible for paying them for the rest of their life should they get hurt.
Unlicensed individuals have no liability insurance. That means no protection of your investment from faulty materials or workmanship. Theft from the job site isn't covered and a worker's carelessness that leads to injury or property damage could leave you holding a very large bill.
The bottom line is that there are lots of reasons not to hire an unlicensed contractor but only one reason to...price. We think the safety and well being of our families are worth a little extra. How about your family?