When You’re Ready to Build Your Dream Home
or Remodel Your Current Home: Where Do You Start?
When it comes to putting a home budget together, you have to consider the type of home builder – home remodeler that you’re hiring, floor plan details, as well as costs for building, contractor fees, energy efficient modifications, and more.
Buying a piece of land sounds so simple, but is often more complicated than you would think. We’ve seen everything from land that’s too flat for drainage to flood plains that weren’t properly noted. Attention to detail in custom builds is crucial.
Your design builder team provides expert advice for a quality home where your future can grow. With input from you on your preferred floor plans and land and home details, together we can design a home that is unlike any other.
Building or remodeling the home itself is the most straightforward part of the overall process. But doing it efficiently is the hard part. A Texas home builder with years of experience can make that a reality.
Why Choose Monogram Homes?
The Monogram Difference
While many think all new homes are created equally behind the drywall, major differences affect the cost of a home and its operating costs. Many of these items are out of sight, out of mind, but as a homeowner; you should be asking what materials are being used in your home. Understand that the building code is the minimum standard by which a home shall be built. While many codes, such as one smoke detector in each bedroom, are acceptable (there is no value in putting two smoke detectors in a bedroom), others such as insulation R Values or energy efficiency of your HVAC systems leave much to be desired if you only build to “code minimum standards.” Monogram Homes believes where practical, code minimums should be exceeded, adding value, and saving homeowners money in future years.
Let’s cover a few home areas that you should consider when building to code minimums or the MONOGRAM STANDARD:
How big are the doors going into the bathrooms? Have you noticed when you walk into most bathrooms today, you have to turn sideways? Why is it that homes today are built with the intention of short-term occupancy, i.e., you will move in 5-7 years. Today’s homes need to be designed with aging in place as a focus. What does this mean to you? As we age, and we all will, there may come a time when you need the assistance of a walker or wheelchair. While building codes dictate a minimum 28” wide door for bedrooms, big tract builders use 24” doors into most bathrooms, including the Master bathroom. In our experience, larger doors will fit easily in these areas, but big tract builders are more concerned about saving a couple of dollars than they are in livability. Monogram Homes uses a minimum 32” door into all bathrooms, with a 36” minimum in master suites, a full 8” larger than our competition. We also strive to use 36” doors in other public areas of the home for future access without the need of remodeling to increase door size.
How your exterior walls are constructed is not a question most homeowners think about, but they are the major line of defense against high energy bills. Exterior walls of a home consist of (from exterior to interior) exterior cladding (Siding, brick stucco), vapor barrier, wall sheathing, framework (i.e., studs’ headers and wall plates), insulation, and finally drywall, trim, and paint. The real test of a wall’s insulating value is not in its insulation but rather in the wall’s ability to prevent airflow. Today’s most common form of insulation is fiberglass, followed by cellulose and finally spray foam. While fiberglass meets the code requirement for R-value, its downfall is its ability to stop air movement or your cool interior air escaping to the outside; that is why all Monogram-built homes use foam insulation. What makes foam better than fiberglass is simply its ability to decrease the transfer of cool air from inside the home to the exterior by sealing every crack and penetration through the wall cavity. Because the home’s building envelope comprises the conditioned air space with foam, you insulate the home’s walls and the underside of the roof sheathing, not just the ceiling. This allows the attic to be part of the conditioned space, where the air temperature will typically stay 10 degrees warmer than the house—in other words, no more dreaded 150-degree attics. Ask yourself why builders put the HVAC systems and ductwork in the house’s attic and allow it to warm to incredible temperatures. When the AC comes on, you now blow that hot air into the home before the air conditioner has a chance to cool that air meaning higher energy costs. Does this make sense?
Speaking of HVAC systems, using foam is so efficient, and because it seals the home so well, you actually have to bring fresh air into the home mechanically to prevent a home’s air from becoming stale. You see, the HVAC system in foamed homes typically operates 20-30% less time than a fiberglass insulated home. Since AC is actually not a “cooling” of the air but rather a dehumidification, Monogram Homes needs a dehumidifier on the HVAC system to decrease the indoor humidity level. Running the dehumidifier is far more efficient than the AC compressor. Additionally, most Monogram Homes are zoned, meaning the Master suite is on its only zone, while the rest of the home may have 1, 2, or even 3 additional zones all controlled individually. What is the SEER value of your air conditioner? – The code minimum as of 2019 is a SEER rating of 14. Monogram Homes uses Seer 16 air conditioners in its homes. It’s estimated that for every increase in SEER value, annual energy costs for an average home will decrease by $208 per unit of SEER ($416). That’s an $832 savings for two units in annual electric costs.
What type of water heater is being used, energy-wasting tanked, or efficient tankless water heating? How often have you been in a shower and had the water go cold or tried to fill that beautiful tub in the master only to have a lukewarm bath? With a tanked water heater, you only have approximately ½ of the stated water that is hot; why? Because as cold water enters the tank to replace the hot water exiting, the tank’s internal temperature drops. So that 50-gallon water heater will net you 20-25 gallons of hot water and quickly drops in temperature to 70–80-degree water thereafter. With a tankless water heater, as you demand water, the water is heated instantly to meet demand and continues to provide hot water until the demand is met – in other words, that 100-gallon bathtub you have can be filled with hot water to the brim. Additionally, all Monogram Homes are built with tankless water heaters sized to allow every shower, dishwasher, and washing machine to be used together without running out of hot water. So, take that 20-minute shower and don’t ever worry about it again; you will never run out of hot water.
There is an old saying “you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig”. Lets look at the lipstick and compare a Monogram Homes home to the average big box builder.
Have you felt the paint on the door jambs and casing most builders include? Is the paint they are using latex or oil-based enamel? Feel the difference between our glass finished paint and the sandpaper feel paint that most builders provide. The type of paint used by most builders is latex and, as such, provides a less than excellent finish. First off, it isn’t as hard a surface as oil-based enamel. This means that if you “wash” it often, you will take part of the paint off with the dirt. Latex enamel is considered track home builder paint since quality is not the primary driver, but cost reduction is. Most builders use a 2-step process to paint a home. They start with “primed” wood or MDF baseboards and casings, then they simply caulk/putty and spray the finish coat. Their finished product is rough, and often imperfections are clearly visible. Monogram Homes uses a 3-5 step paint process in our finish painting of woodwork. While we may use primed materials for baseboards and casings, we then take the added step of priming and sanding after caulking and puttying the trim. Depending on the materials used, we will spray a second coat of primer and sand again prior to applying the finished coat of paint. This process creates a glass-like finish on the woodwork. While this process is time-consuming, we believe the process we use provides the best quality product available. Additionally, if you want to paint the woodwork a different color in the future, you simply have to scuff the paint and respray with the new color. We have all seen the old house and the woodwork that looks like bombs have gone off on it; you won’t have that problem with our paint.
How was the paint applied to your drywall, sprayed, or rolled? – Most builder’s painters spray the paint on the wall and then maybe roll finish it with one coat. Monogram Homes applies two coats of paint to the wall, both rolled and back rolled. This process puts more paint on the surface and eliminates the shadowing of drywall imperfections on the final product. Monogram Homes uses nearly twice as much paint as the big tract builders in our process. Additionally, we don’t use the track builder paint in our homes; we use Sherwin Williams Superpaint.
Have you seen your Master Closets? While a large closet is an item we all want, properly designing and building shelving/hanging units can make smaller spaces more efficient and usable for the homeowner. Big tract builders typically build shelving units with no adjustable shelves; they use cheap round steel or wood closet bars to hang clothes and often do not even put a shelf above their closet rods. Sometimes these rods are 12 feet in length with minimal supports in the middle, bending under the weight of your clothing. Not so with Monogram Homes; we always provide adjustable shelving units in the master closet. We use upgraded oval closet rods and seldom over 36” in length, and we always put shelves above all of our hanging. We do this in the Master closet and the kid’s closets also. Every closet with a 12-foot ceiling height will have high hanging allowing you to move winter clothes up in summer and summer clothes up in winter. Notice also that each Master closet has a “full” length mirror to make sure you look great before leaving the house.
What type of doorstops are being used in your home? Most big tract builders only care about the bottom line, and therefore they use the least expensive products available, and doorstops are no exception. They use cheap spring bumpers that make all kinds of noise when you bump them. Not so with Monogram Homes; we use nothing but solid door bumpers. The small details matter, and we don’t overlook them.
These are just a few of the items you should consider in your new home. Finding the right builder with a passion for building high-quality homes at affordable pricing is challenging to do. With Monogram Homes, you can be assured that you have found that builder.
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