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I'll bet you have been to a party at a the house of a friend, neighbor or relative and noticed one or more builder blunders. Perhaps it was when you drove into the driveway and opened your car door only to find you were stepping in wet grass. Maybe you were in the first floor bathroom and wondered why you had to reach way behind you to get toilet paper. There are hundreds of places a builder or a subcontractor can make a mistake, but let them happen on other new homes not yours.
Let's start with a few common exterior mistakes that can often be easily avoided. If you are going to have air conditioning in your home, think about where the outdoor compressors will be. Try to locate them on the east or north side of your home for maximum efficiency, but avoid placing them near bedrooms or other rooms where you will spend lots of time. New air conditioning units are being made so they produce minimal noise, but they are by no means silent.
Driveways must be wide enough to allow you to easily exit and enter a car and still be on the driveway. A single lane drive should be no less than 12 feet wide and a double-wide driveway should really be 22 feet wide. These widths will handle beefy SUVs with ease and minimize door dings if two cars are parked adjacent to one another.
If you don't want your guests to cower in the rain waiting for you to answer the front door, be sure a front porch or covered entrance is included. Clever architects can provide this protection no matter what the architectural style of your new home will be.
Do a quick walk through inspection of your existing home. Make a list of things that bother you in each room. My guess is that you might wonder if the plumber who worked on your home was only 5 foot 2 inches tall. All too often, shower heads are installed too low and people squat and bend over when a relaxing shower was on the agenda. Toilet paper holders can be placed just about anywhere in easy reach so long as solid blocking is placed in the framing before drywall is installed.
Don't forget to pay attention to simple things such as electrical outlets. Do you wish you had more in given rooms? Would you like to have outlets directly behind end tables that are placed next to beds and couches? You bet it is possible. What about a nice outlet or two right on top of a fireplace mantle? It can and should be done. You might also want a floor outlet or two in home offices that will have a desk out in the room instead of against a wall. Imagine how you might like a strategically placed floor outlet to power a coffee table that is lighted.
Traffic patterns in rooms and the house as a whole need to be studied. Pathways within rooms can gobble up valuable floor space. You can sketch these connecting walkways on your plans and see how well scale cutouts of your furniture will fit without extending into the traffic pattern.
Your builder may have great intentions and build your home to code, but the floor systems may be spongy or bouncy after you move in. This boo-boo can be avoided if you specify stiff floors that meet the 1/480 deflection design standard instead of the minimum standard of 1/360 in most building codes.
Think about hallway and stairway widths. Once again the building code minimum width of 36 inches is often chosen by builders. Avoid this at just about any cost and try to make sure staircases are 42 inches or more in width. You will never regret having a 48 inch or wider hallway.
Often, the biggest builder blunder is overhead and out of sight. All too often regular common trusses are used over living spaces and garages. In certain places your builder may be able to install cool attic trusses or lower-headroom storage trusses that allow you to either create a full-sized room in the future or safely store some possessions on trusses that have been rated for this purpose. Last but not least, ask your builder to install a real staircase to these bonus spaces, not one of those light-duty folding staircases.
