In this day and age of inflated and unstable home prices many homeowners are foregoing plans to trade up to a larger or nicer home and are instead, planning on doing improvements to their existing homes.

Angies List, a website where members rate specific contractors and can also choose contractors based on their ratings, recently conducted a survey on their members. This survey indicated that homeowners intend to spend 13% more over last year on their 2008 home improvement and maintenance projects.

So when you are planning a major remodeling project such as a kitchen, living room, bathroom or room addition, who do you turn to for planning and designing the project? The two top choices would be to hire an architect or a design/builder. The question is which one should you hire? Which one would be better?


Ten Reasons Why a Design/Builder is Better

These are the reasons why I think a design/builder is the better type of professional to hire for planning your home improvement project:

1. This type of builder is more in tune with your remodeling budget and can therefore create a design that will be best able to stay within it.

2. An architect tends to be somewhat detached from the building part of the project; a design/builder, however, because of his intimate familiarity with the building process and materials, will tend to do a better job.

3. The architectural plans from an architect can sometimes be vague or unclear causing conflicts between the architect and builder.

4. A builder who bids the job from a set of architectural plans will potentially cause conflict with the owners for missing data and will use this to add extra charges to the homeowner.

5. A qualified design/builder will save the owner money from preventing any architect/builder conflicts.

6. A qualified design/builder will simplify the design process since only the drawings that are necessary for that specific job will be done.

7. A design/builder’s drawings are more understandable since they use a standard medium for the drawings that everyone in the house and field is familiar with.

8. The design/builder is not only interested in the design, but has responsibility for the final product.

9. A design/builder process saves money since the homeowner does not have to pay the architect a heavy fee to oversee the project once a week, which is oftentimes 10% of the construction contract price.

10. A qualified design/builder is very likely to have an in-house architect who oversees the process.

So there are the ten reasons why the design/builder is the better way to go for your home remodeling or addition project.

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Roger Perron is President of Fine Designs by Roger Perron, Inc., General Contractors (http://www.rogerperron.com), offering Architectural Design, Home Remodeling and Additions of all types, as well as Custom New Home Construction in the Los Angeles area. He can be reached at: http://www.rogerperron.com/site/contact.html.