Modifications
Once you’ve found a home plan that meets your family’s biggest needs, modifying it to fit your biggest wants is easier than you might think.
Homeowners Scott and Vanessa Sanders loved the interior layout of the Frank Betz plan Greywell, but wanted a more rustic feel for the exterior. They were able to have the best of both worlds by adding extra stone to the façade and replacing the board-and-batten siding specified on the plan with Cedar shakes. This sort of modification can often be done on site by working with the builder—since none of the changes were structural, it did not require having the plans re-designed.
The benefits of pre-designed house plans are numerous. Not only do you gain the peace of mind that comes from knowing the design is tried and true, it is also far less expensive compared to hiring an architect to design a custom plan.
Most people have a list of requirements that they want and need from their new home before they go shopping for a plan—general size, number of bedrooms, etc. Sometimes homeowners find a pre-designed home plan that they really like but then toss it aside because it doesn’t contain one or two features that they might want. A plan might meet their basic needs of three bedrooms and two and a half baths, but because it is only a two-car garage and they want a three-car garage, or the exterior is siding but they want brick they eliminate that plan from consideration.
If the plan meets most of your needs, don’t be so quick to take it off your list. It’s much easier and less costly to start with an existing plan and modify it than it is to create a whole new plan from scratch, and most design firms have in-house modification departments who work directly with clients to rearrange plans to fit their needs.
 It’s important to make a distinction between a true modification and simple customization of a plan. Colors, materials, and finishes—wood vs. tile flooring, light vs. dark cabinetry, granite counters vs. laminate—will all affect the final look and style of your home. Pre-designed plans include a rendering of what the designer intended the exterior of the home to look like, but simple substitutions—stone instead of brick, shakes instead of siding—are considered customization rather than a modification. Similarly, kitchen layouts are often highly customized by the homeowners, especially those who work with a professional kitchen designer or cabinet maker. Rearranging the cabinet layout or changing the location of the appliances is also considered customization. The general rule of thumb is that if the change does not affect the structural aspects of the plan—no walls have moved, the roofline is not affected, etc. Then it is a customization.
In contrast, modifications change the structure or footprint of the plan, and the changes need to be made on the drawings before construction begins. The designer’s modifications team can add that third garage bay, flip the entire footprint, add another room or make any other changes you might desire. By working with the designer who created the original plan you are assured that the modifications will be structurally sound and minimize the chance of complications or unsatisfactory results that you might encounter if your builder simply “wings it” in the field. While adding a porch or changing the garage door location may seem like simple changes, in reality they will affect the integrity of the structure of the plan and if not done properly they can cause problems down the line. That’s why it’s best if you want to modify a plan to consult with the designer of the plan you’ve chosen. Because you’re dealing with the original designer, you can be sure the modifications will preserve the integrity of the original design while allowing you to incorporate everything you want in your home.
MOST COMMON MODIFICATIONS
House plans can be modified all sorts of ways, ranging from simple changes to very complex re-engineering of the plans. Here are the most commonly requested modifications, in no particular order:
Add a third garage bay
Change location of garage doors (from front entry to side entry, etc.)
Adjust width/depth of plan to fit specific lot size
Expand the plan all sorts of ways: this could be either adding a room or simply enlarging all the rooms proportionally to make the entire house bigger
Add a screen porch
Convert a screen porch to a sunroom
Add a walk-out basement foundation
Reverse the plan
Add a dedicated media room
Replace sliding doors or retreating glass walls with a wall of windows
Reconfigure spaces to meet special family needs
Suzanne and Brian Schwemmer loved the Donald Gardner plan Cedar Court, but felt that they would not get year-round use out of the screen porch. They elected to enclose it and create a four-season sunroom that is surrounded by windows to take in a beautiful view of the lake and woods.
Compare the changes in the Castaway Cove and the Nicholas Park:
Our current Reality Home Building family is an excellent example of modifying a home to fit a lot and add more living space (read more about the Lavelles on page 12). Kristen and Mike Lavelle visited a model home built from the Sater Design Collection plan Nicholas Park and thought the plan would make a perfect vacation home. Unfortunately, the existing plan was too wide to fit on their lot, so they went back to Sater Design to have the plan reconfigured to be narrower and deeper than the original, and to add living space on the ground floor.
A side-by-side comparison of the two floor plans shows how the plan retains much of its original layout and character while still having to be adjusted to fit the new size requirements.
The first floor retains the same basic room configuration as the original plan, however you can see that the great room is narrower and deeper, and the powder room/master closet area had to be reconfigured to fit the space.
On the second floor, the Lavelles flip-flopped the location of the loft and bedroom 2 and reconfigured the bathroom/closet layout to make more efficient use of the space.
On the ground floor, the Lavelle’s enclosed much of the storage space to create a guest suite and a game room.
Everyone has different tastes and personal preferences for how their dream home should look, and curb appeal is very important both for making the owner feel at home and for ensuring that the home is appealing should you decide to sell. Regional differences also influence preferred styles; for example, an Adobe-style house would be right at home in the Southwest but would look out of place in the mountains of Tennessee, just as a rustic log cabin that would be right at home in those mountains would look equally out of place in the desert.
To address both regional variation and personal preference, designers often take their popular floor plans and create different exterior elevations for it. Some designers are even selling some of their plans with multiple elevation options packaged together for one price. These package deals are especially appealing to builders and developers. Keep in mind that designers are always able to create a new exterior treatment through their modification programs.
These three homes (1210, 1211, 1212) are part of the Donald Gardner Neighborhood Starter Kit collection, which consists of floor plans and three different front elevation options packaged together for one price. Frank Betz Associates offers a similar program called Home Plan Packs. Sater Design Collection does not package plans together, but they do have several designs that have multiple elevation options (Gardner and Betz have many as well beyond the packaged plan sets). If you find a plan you like and are curious about other elevation options, you can always contact the designer’s office and find out what is available by calling 1-888-840-6020 and entering the extension number that corresponds with the designer.
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