[pdnesbitt]

We just completed our “design week”, so I thought I would share our experience in an effort to help others who may be contemplating building a new home in TV.

First of, we are new to TV. We had barely heard of it before October, and had never considered moving here. But, I late October we took advantage of the Lifestyle Visit and immediately decided this was where we wanted to be.

After looking at a lot of homes during our Lifestyle visit and everything we could find online, we decided that the only way to get what we wanted was to build. Even then, we were very specific in what we wanted in a build site and one (and only one) just happened to open up that met the requirements. I have to say the methodology the developer uses to release very limited build sites, for very limited periods of time, is……..interesting. That said, we were able to place a deposit on the site we wanted and then schedule our design week.

Our week was really 10 days, which I though was a ridicules amount of time. I was a builder way back in the day and have a really good idea of how it works. I also had a really good idea of exactly what I wanted in my house, or thought I did. Well before Design Week I had already picked a floor plan, spent days thinking through and sketching how I wanted to stretch the floor plan, change the elevation, design the pool, etc…. I even poured through this forum to learn from others experiences, so I was very confident I was ready for the design activity.

I did set a budget and had allotted funds for the basic build, customizations, the pool and birdcage, and landscaping. Also, I was very prepared to have the builder exclude things that either were unreasonably expensive, or that they would not do the way I wanted.

Right off the bat the “basic” house cost was waayy more than I had anticipated from reading posts in the forum. However, as we worked through the design, we found that the “basic” build is extremely inclusive and the “included” materials, features and finishing are way better than I anticipated.

I had also read that stretches are pretty reasonable and that is true. We stretched the garage (a whole lot) and a couple other rooms to a lesser extent and it was very reasonable. There was some shortage of selections in flooring, tile, appliances, etc… but with just a couple exceptions we found plenty to choose from. And again, in many cases the “included” materials were pretty nice, so even when we selected higher level products the difference in price wasn’t that much.

We also anticipated that the pool and birdcage would be pretty expensive, at least compared to what we had seen in South Carolina, and that to was true, but “expensive” was not unreasonable. In fact, T&D led us through the pool and birdcage design process and we ended up with a beautiful pool, well within our budget.

Throughout the process our design consultant was super knowledgeable, patient and very thorough. She openly shared what changes would cost and was eager to provide ball-park prices on things I was just contemplating. There was none of the “holding-back pricing to the end” that I had read about and no hidden costs. There were a couple items I wanted that the builder wouldn’t include, either because of TV rules, manufacturer restrictions or warranty concerns, but they weren’t that important.

It did take almost the entire 10 days, but I think of all of that time we probably only spent 2 full days and 5 partial days in the design center. In the end, we left with a fully designed house, within our budget, build start and close dates, and a bag full for designs and pictures of what was to come. We are now looking forward to watching the build over the next 5 months.