House plans: why you should leave it to professionals

For some people building a custom home, it's tempting to try and take the DIY approach to part of the process in an effort to save money. When it comes to your house plan, though, it's really best to leave it to the professionals.

There are a lot of "gotchas" in designing a house plan that won't be readily apparent until it's built. A professional home designer has designed hundreds of homes and seen the houses that she has designed actually built. She's learned from that experience over time, and she brings all of that knowledge to work with her when designing your house plan.

Still, over the years I've seen a lot of DIY house plans. Here are just a few of the problems I've seen:

• -A second floor that didn't actually fit under the roof. The stairs had less than four feet of headroom at the top, and the slope of the roof didn't allow for more than a seven-foot ceiling upstairs.
• -A master bathroom toilet that was visible from the entry.
• -The guest bedroom and master bedroom had direct line of sight from one bed to the other if the doors were open. Awkward.
• -A bathroom where you had to step over the toilet to get in the shower.
• -An entryway where the front door hit the stairs.
• -A bedroom with no exterior wall, so no window in the room. That's a huge violation of building codes pretty much everywhere.

If a builder or professional home designer created any of these problems in your home, you would probably be pretty upset about them. But because of their experience in their field, they know how to avoid these problems from the very start of the design process.

When it comes to designing your home, have a professional who has already learned all the hard lessons from past experiences design your home. They can make it fit your needs, wants, and budget. And it could save you tens of thousands of dollars.

For more, download our free guide - 3 Steps to the Perfect Floor Plan: