The Conrado Custom Home Process

by Colleen Ferguson | February 1, 2022

Building a custom home doesn’t start with the arrival of the first concrete truck to begin laying the foundation. It doesn’t start by perusing through previous builds of a custom home builder to see which “style” you like best. It doesn’t even start with looking over drawings and plans that a professional architect drew up in the office. For Conrado Home Builders, the process of bringing to life a custom home begins by taking the time to sit down with our clients and truly hear the vision they have for the home they have dreamt about for years. We want to hear every detail about that luxurious Mediterranean villa hotel you stayed in on vacation in Italy, or that unique AirBnb that you found during a business trip to New York. We want to find ways to help you incorporate those little nostalgic elements that will remind you of your grandparents’ house you visited over the holidays, or perhaps bring back to life features of your childhood home that shine bright in your mind.

We truly believe that what sets us apart from other custom home builders is our ability to sincerely listen to our clients, and our determination to help design and bring to life a home that is unique to you. We know that the process of building or remodeling your custom estate is most likely going to be a large financial investment, and we want to ensure that its structure and details are exactly as you had imagined it.

That having been said, we also believe that our over thirty years of experience in building custom homes can be extremely useful in helping our clients navigate the process of designing and building their custom home. Our building teams can recommend the highest quality building techniques and products, the best ways to reduce your home´s environmental footprint without sacrificing comfort or convenience, and unique touches that allow a home to truly become uniquely your own.

Unfolding the Dream

Trying to handle a custom home build by yourself is a full-time job in and of itself. Besides making decisions on every minute detail that goes into the building the home of your dreams, managing the build requires expert managerial skills, a network of connections within the building industry, and an expertise in everything from lighting control systems to the best certified lumber for your home´s hardwood flooring. The complexity of all the details that go into a build often lead many people to throw in the towel and opt for an existing home that someone else designed.

When you hire Conrado Home Builders, however, you will get an expert team that will accompany you along every step of the journey. We have developed a process that will help our clients begin to take into consideration those thousands of little things that go into the construction of a home that is uniquely your own.

Conrado Home Builders Pre-Construction Process

Preconstruction is All About You

Before we ever begin to show you different styles and homes we have built, we first want to hear your ideas, and develop an idea of the exact type of home you want to create. Once we are on the same page with our clients, we then go through a meticulous “pre-construction phase” where we carefully examine everything from assembling your team to working with the design team on different elements of your custom home.

Some questions we may ask our clients during this phase include:

What type of renewable energy might best fit your custom home given the home´s orientation, the way it interacts with the natural elements, and your expected energy needs?
How might we best be able to design a hot water system that allows you to enjoy instant hot water throughout the home while simultaneously drastically reducing water use and the energy expenditures that come with hot water heating?
How might we best integrate technology, automation, and smart features to your home to give you control of your home from your fingertips?
What are some of your budget limitations, and how can we work within those limits to create the most durable, comfortable, and beautiful home possible?
What is your timeframe for the build, and are there deadlines for when you want to be completely moved into your finished custom home?

Feasibility Phase

First, we move into the particular details of designing every nook and cranny of your home. During this exhaustive pre-construction phase, we push the design team to go through each square foot of your planned home to ensure that they have the home that completely meets your needs.

During this pre-construction consultation, we will go through the checklist to discuss options pertaining to:

The optimum size of your home,
The best orientation to maximize passive solar heat gain, and the most important views,
The most efficient way to heat, cool, and power your home,
The renewable energy options to reduce your home’s carbon footprint,
The best foundation and framing materials that will last for a lifetime,
Ways to reduce and reuse water without sacrificing comfort, quality, and luxury,
The highest quality interior and exterior materials available for your build that will ensure that your home continues to look and operate like new, even after decades of “use.”

Throughout this design phase, your design and building team will present you with dozens of ideas, options, and possibilities for making your home uniquely your own.

Conrado Home Builders Assembling The Crew

Assemble Your Team

Depending on the specifics of your custom home build, your team may include an architect, a landscape architect, an interior designer, civil and structural engineers, soils engineer, lighting and mechanical engineers, the build team, and maybe more. Simply put, we want to ensure that you have the most qualified professionals that will dedicate the extra time and effort to make sure that every detail of your custom, dream home is brought to life just as you imagined it.

After we have gone through some of the basic questions regarding the budget for your custom home build, your time frame, and the basic elements you want to include in your home, we then help assemble a team that will accompany you throughout the rest of the design and build phase. We believe wholeheartedly that every custom home deserves a customized design and build team. Instead of simply hiring a licensed plumber who is local, we gladly take the extra effort to find professionals with specific experience in the type of custom home that you deserve. We thoroughly vet all of our subcontractors to ensure that they share our values of dedication to the highest possible quality, longevity of the home, and our commitment to treating every client like family.

Lastly, The Construction Phase

Once we are completely sure that we are on the same page with the client, and once we have gone through the meticulous pre-construction phase that essentially ensures that the home has already been built in our minds, we are finally ready to move into the construction phase. Because the building team has already engaged in hours of consultation with the client and collaboration amongst the different elements of the team, we know what we are going to build. However, if something unexpected does occur, you can rest assured that the different members of your building team will be there to get the problem resolved as quickly and effortlessly as possible.

Instead of having to take time off of work to find new plumbing fixtures due to unexpected supply chain issues, when you work with Conrado Home Builders, you can rest assured that unforeseen issues will promptly and professionally be taken care of in the timeliest way possible.