What to Expect When Building a Custom Home

Tory personally and periodically inspects the work done on your home throughout construction. Emma visits the job site regularly as well, and Lisa steps on site too. However, we don’t provide — and no quality builder realistically provides — 100% on-site supervision at all times. Any builder who claims otherwise is either not being truthful or charging an extraordinary premium for it.

What you will have is a builder family who is personally invested in the outcome, checks the work regularly, and has built relationships with subcontractors who know their standards.

Building a truly custom home requires a significant investment of your time, not just your money. You’ll be making dozens of meaningful decisions — from cabinetry and countertops to tile patterns and door hardware. Emma tracks every selection and coordinates with our suppliers to get quotes, but the decisions themselves are yours to make.

You’ll visit showrooms directly with our supplier partners to make your choices. We encourage that direct communication — just keep us in the loop on decisions so nothing falls through the cracks between your selections and the estimate.

We build homes at a level of quality well above the typical production builder. That’s not marketing language — it’s why Tory meets every prospective client at his own home, so you can see and touch the standard before committing to anything.

With that said, we are building a home that has never been built before, with real materials, by skilled but human tradespeople. There is no such thing as a perfect home. The National Association of Home Builders publishes the Residential Construction Performance Guidelines — a less subjective standard for quality that we recommend every client review before building with anyone.

We run a transparent process and function well as a team — builder, client, suppliers, and subcontractors. Emma handles the majority of day-to-day communication and tracks your selections and quotes. Tory leads the technical and construction decisions. Lisa supports operations throughout.

You’re welcome to communicate directly with our supplier partners when making selections — we encourage it. What we do ask is that you not direct the on-site activities of subcontractors while they’re working. That’s not about control. It’s about making sure nothing gets missed when one trade’s work affects another’s, and the builder stays in the loop.

We’ll say what most builders won’t: there will be problems. With the level of customization and complexity in our projects, mistakes are an inevitable part of the process. Our goal is to catch them as early as possible and correct them — and most of the time, you’ll never know they happened.

Occasionally you may notice something — a scratch, a misaligned detail, a surface that needs repair. Bring it to our attention immediately. That’s what we’re here for. This is part of building a home that’s never been built before with real materials by real people.

We are a small-volume builder, and every subcontractor and supplier we work with also works for other builders. Schedules conflict. Weather causes delays. There will be days where nothing visible happens on your project because we’re waiting on a subcontractor or on special-order materials to arrive.

We prefer to use the subcontractors we trust — not whoever happens to be available. That preference sometimes means waiting. Emma manages scheduling closely and communicates proactively when timelines shift. You’ll never be left wondering what’s happening or when.

We provide more detailed budgeting information than any other builder you’ll talk to. We encourage as many selections as possible up front. We get real bids from real subcontractors. We evaluate your land early. By the time the estimate is complete, it’s accurate enough to submit to a bank for a construction loan.

Throughout construction, your shared Google Drive folder contains an updated cost-to-complete report so you can see at any point how much money will be required to finish your home. There’s an inherent billing lag in construction, so it’s not always perfectly current — but it’s far more visibility than you’ll get anywhere else.

That said, we can’t predict the future cost of materials like concrete, lumber, or drywall. Markets move. If something shifts significantly mid-build, we’ll tell you immediately and work through it with you — not surprise you at closing.