Our First Contract - Architect Drawings
January 2008 - Tim Nelson offers to draft our home design in two stages. We sign a contract with Tim to create Design Drawiings to be followed by Construction Drawings after site engineering review.
An $850 retainer gets the work started. The Design Drawings will be turned over upon approval by Pat and myself (with consults from Vic Fiala) for an additional $1275. After a site engineering study is done the architect will begin the construction drawings using that information.
The construction drawings will be considered completed when accepted by both Pat and myself, and the Village Engineer. These drawings will cost an additional $1275 (revisions included).
The idea during the design phase is to make sure everyone knows what the house will look like. The outside views show window styles and placement, roof-pitches, facades and siding style, porches, and supporting columns, etc.
Floor plans for the inside area show all rooms and spaces. This includes door openings, types of doors and their handedness, bathroom fixture sizing / placement, kitchen counter layout, furnace and water-heater positioning, all electrical outlets, switches, lights, ceiling vaulting heights and angles -- well you get the idea. Everything that takes up space is positioned and annotated in the drawings.
Note that one reason the architect services are not more expensive is because of the detailed scale drawings we provided. This allowed Tim to spend a minimum amount of time during the Design Phase. Another factor is the size of our project -- a 2100 square foot home with a simple three-volume design just isn't as hard to engineer as a 3500 square foot structure with odd roof lines and curved surfaces.