Customizing an Adair Home

A house becomes a home as you put your personal touches on it. This starts with getting your personal belongings moved in. Once your things are inside the house you start to unpack the boxes and find places for everything. Where do the dishes go? Who gets what side of the closet? Once you have your things unpacked you start putting up décor – your favorite painting, family pictures, shelves, plants….

We’ve been slowly unpacking boxes one at a time and this past weekend we were finally able to get some decor items installed. If you’re building with Adair Homes there are a limited number of options of things you can customize. Some things are easier to change out than others and if you’re great at getting DIY projects done, then you can leave more to-do items for after you move in.

If you’re thinking about building with Adair Homes and want to know what is included you should talk to a home ownership counselor and ask for the “standards list”. If you choose to do no upgrade, the “standards list” will give you an idea of what finishes you’ll get. If you’re wondering about specifics, like what the vanity light looks like, you can go to a show room and see.

For the majority of the upgrades, you can probably do them for less if you do it yourself. One advantage of working with a custom builder is that if you find the right one you might be able to do the upgrades at the time of building, instead of waiting for your certificate of occupancy. The disadvantage to this is that it might take longer to get your house built.

One area that is limited in choices is the lighting fixtures and mirrors. We decided to keep everything standard and upgrade these items ourselves. There are a couple of options for lighting fixtures but in the end we knew we were going to want to change them out.

When the rough electrical was going in I spoke with the electrician and he said that if we had the fixtures ready to go they would be able to install the replacements when they came back to do the finish electrical. When the time came we hadn’t purchased the new lights yet, so we ended up just waiting and replacing the lights after moving in.

We also wanted to put in more decorative mirrors, so when the finish carpenter was going to put the mirrors in I just asked him to leave them off. The mirrors were not required to pass inspection, so that worked out fine. The extra mirrors were left in our garage and we installed our mirrors after moving in.

The little details can really change the look of a room, and they are a small expense compared to the price of building a new home. Making these small changes can make a production house look like a custom home.