| >Isn't this partially what you pay your architect for? If you're willing to pay top dollar you should be able to find one that's very hands on and coordinates the whole building process as your representative. It is amazing how separate most architects are from the actual implementation. I sort of wish architects were required to apprentice as builders before doing design. I recently built a custom house with a long time friend as the architect and have a family member I could talk to who is an architect. Additionally there was a structural engineer involved in the project for things like truss design and sheer calculations I could talk. That's a lot of talent and experience in residential and commercial design! On the other hand my father is a general contractor and I have some construction experience and grew up around roofers, framers, etc. All the architects I talked to frequently had very low visibility into the difficulty and cost factors of their design proposals. For example: flush baseboards make the wall super clean and don't get dinged up. But no indie contractors in our area can install them. Curves on drywall interior walls will match the curves in the plastered exterior walls - but while wetted 1/4 inch drywall will bend a pretty tight inside curve it can't be attached to an outside curve because it pulls through the fasteners - I ended up kerf cutting plywood to make the bend, priming it for adhesion and plastering the curves with help from a high end plaster specialist. High windows downstairs go all the way to the ceiling inside which looks more balanced on the outside... but would require a small "vault" in the otherwise flat ceiling... Which would have affected the framing of the wall, required at least one custom floor truss instead of a standard TJI, made for super complicated trim in the affected rooms, required a very non-standard window size, and an expensive plaster detail at each such window. On my investigation it was going to be at least $25K to make 4 windows 8" taller! In my experience custom home building architects generally were not very construction aware. Talking about installation practices or costs usually resulted in advice to "get a bid"! Despite being very pleased with my architectural collaboration I don't think hands-on supervision of actual building practice is likely a realistic expectation from a typical architect. |