Frequently Asked Questions

Your dream home starts with a great plan! We offer a wide variety of stock plans, can customize any of those stock plans to meet your personal needs, and can start with your dream and vision to create a custom plan to suit your needs.

We provide you with everything you need to get started to present your plans to lenders, builders, general contractors, and building suppliers. All plans come with:

• PDF+ 5 Printed copies of your detailed Blueprints: 1-36x48 on Tyvek 2-30x42 on #24 paper 2-24x36 on #24 paper.
• Elevations required by most lenders 
• Simplified plumbing plan dimensions to show where drain lines should be stubbed up.
• Simplified renderings of the exterior of the home.
• Electronic/PDF versions of all documents.

Our plans are designed to give our clients all of the information they need, while eliminating things that are not necessary. Things such as  3D renderings with paint colors and furniture may be nice to see, but your lender and contractors do not need them. When you start with a pre-engineered building contractors don't need roof plans (it is already done by the manufacturer). We've built barndominiums and understand what a contractor and lender need to see, as well as what they don't need. This streamlines our process and we pass those savings onto our clients. 

You have probably heard the term plenty of times, but what exactly does it mean? In the simplest of terms it is a custom home that is built with non-traditional construction methods. A barndominium can also be built with traditional construction practices, but the vast majority start with a pre-engineered outer shell with a roof system supported by engineered trusses that can span the entire width of the building without the need for any interior load bearing walls. This construction method allows for an interior floor plan with no restrictions, a simpler more streamlined construction process, and in many cases a cost savings in both material and labor. This construction method has been used for years in commercial and agricultural buildings, such as airplane hangars, manufacturing facilities, retail stores, and... barns! In recent years this construction method has become very popular in custom home construction prompting the term "barndominium". 

Different areas of the country have different requirements, and some counties or cities may require this while many others will not. The vast majority of our clients purchase the exterior "shell" of the building from a single supplier that can provide the entire exterior of the home as a package deal. Reputable manufacturers employ a structural engineer to ensure that the roof and walls both meet code requirements as well as can meet the load requirements for a residential building. They should be able to provide you with stamped plans of the building from a structural  engineer. If you are planning to use traditional building methods it may be necessary to have our plans sent to a structural engineer so that they can calculate beam sizes on large open spaces and roof design.  

From a paperwork and qualification standpoint the process is no different than any other construction loan. You will need to provide the lender with what you plan to build (our plans), an estimated cost to build the home that a reputable builder should be able to provide you based on the plans you get from us, and the other typical requirements lenders need to qualify you for the loan. The construction method being used to build these homes is sometimes where certain lenders get caught up, but don't be discouraged! There are plenty of lenders throughout the country that have loans available for barndominiums. We are happy to refer you in the right direction if you need help. 

This is one of those "Ask 100 people, get 100 different answers" questions. There are so many factors in play that there truly isn't a simple answer. The cost of building ANY home can vary greatly depending on a number of factors such as, the area of the country you are building in, the finishes you use in the home, the contractors being used, and the list can go on and on. The truth is that the method of construction for a barndominium is based on principles that are designed to save money and labor. Most barndominiums are simple exterior structures such as squares or rectangles with single roof lines. Fewer roof lines and fewer exterior corners = money saved. A pre-engineered exterior shell, in theory, should save money in labor as well, as the majority of the building comes ready to assemble which goes up quicker and should cost less from a labor standpoint. When you don't have to worry about load bearing walls the interior of the home becomes much more DIY friendly presenting more opportunities to save money. With that said, the due diligence to find these cost savings is typically going to be on the consumer. Many contractors will still quote the build of a barndominium in the same way and price/sqft. that they would a  traditional construction home. So can a barndominium save you money? Yes it can. Is it as simple as saying they are cheaper to build? No it isn't. Our best advice to clients is to look at the average price per square foot that new homes are selling for in their area. Use that as a baseline to estimate your overall cost. As you get further into planning your build you can begin looking for ways to save money and bring overall costs down. 

Yes we can make changes but there will be additional fees to account for both semi-custom work and additional printing fees. Give us a call to discuss the changes and for pricing.