Our Process: Building with Unshakeable Custom Homes

Building a home is a daunting undertaking. The hardest decision you will make is choosing who builds that home for you. 

Teamwork makes the dream work framing a modern home in Star Valley Ranch, WY

In every consulting call with a new or potential client, the very first thing I do is break down our process - and what I mean by that is, what does the home building process look like when you build with Unshakeable Custom Homes?

Transparency is the one of the most important values that I see missing today in most contractors and, unfortunately a lot of us have failed in that regard. In the quest to optimize profit margins we’ve eroded trust in our clients, and this in turn gives contractors in general a bad rap.

I won’t list out our values again, you can find them here. But our values are important to us, and they guide us (and you) through the entire process of building a custom home. What I’d like to do is to have our process written down, so that anyone can see and hold us accountable through every step of the process.

To keep it as simple as I can, I’ll break it down into four phases:

1. Consultation

2. Pre-Construction/Design

3. Site Preparation

4. Construction

Let’s go through each one of these phases.

Consultation

Before we even start on designing a home, we hop on a call, we FaceTime together, talk over Zoom, we meet for coffee or lunch; we get to know you. I answer questions, talk about your project from a 30,000 foot view, and get a feel for what you want the end product to be. At this point, I don’t care about your budget.

We can talk once, twice, ten times - the point of this part in the relationship is to build trust. I wouldn’t trust someone I hardly know with potentially the largest investment I’ll ever make, so you shouldn’t either. 

So however long this part of the process takes, remember that this is THE most important step. You’ve gotta trust the person you’re hopping into bed with. When you feel comfortable, we move on to the next phase.

Wait, hold on.. So what’s all this going to cost?

Well, because you’re building a one-off custom home, that’s a hard thing to nail down. But, that’s why I do Pre-Construction (keep reading, that’s coming in the next section).

The way I’ve structured my business and pricing, you may or may not have heard of before: it’s called cost-plus. I’ve written up a small article explaining what this pricing structure means, but to put it simply, you pay for what it costs to build the home (labor and materials) plus a fixed management fee.

What this ultimately means is, you pay what I pay. I don’t add a markup to materials, I don’t add a markup to labor, and I don’t add a markup to subcontractor rates. Any labor that I do or my employees do, gets billed at a set rate and you pay the invoice. I believe this is the most honest and transparent way of doing business.

And you may be saying to yourself, “that sounds too good to be true”, and yeah, it does sound that way. But I make money by the time and work it takes managing the project. The fixed management fee I mentioned is determined by the scope (meaning the details and finishes) and complexity of the project. There’s many home builders that operate this way, and I’ve found it to make the most sense for the way I’d like to do business.

If you’ve made it this far, I’ll tell you how Pre-Construction adds value to my process.

Pre-Construction & Design

This is when we start doing the fun stuff - planning and designing your home! I once heard someone much smarter than me say, “a job well planned is a job half done.”

Pre-construction & design consists of working with design professionals, whether that be an architect or drafter, and an engineer, to come up with a floor plan and engineered blueprints needed to secure a building permit and an accurate (not a shot in the dark) budget.

I don’t usually work off of price per square foot - although that can be a good indicator of level of finishes. I sit down with every single subcontractor and material supplier and create the most detailed budget I possibly can.

You may be thinking, “wait, there’s no way you’re doing all that for free!” And you're right, I don’t do it for free. This process does take some time. I have a Pre-Construction Contract that lists out everything that’s included and the cost. That cost isn’t a lump sum that’s due to me all at once, it’s a retainer that’s billed against bi-weekly.

This contract is totally separate from our construction contract - by signing a Pre-Construction contract with us, you’re only locked in for the Pre-Construction phase of work.

By the end of this phase you’ll have the following:

1. Detailed Scope of Work

2. Accurate Budget

3. Preliminary Schedule

4. Permit-ready set of blueprints

This way, if you get to the end of Pre-Construction and go to shop for other builders (which you should ALWAYS do), you have a detailed scope of work and budget to compare another builder's price to.

Let’s use the example of siding. Say I quote your line item for siding at $30,000. Because I’ve included a detailed Scope of Work, you know that I arrived at that number because I’ve listed out cedar 1x8 tongue and groove, stained and sealed, a rainscreen below, and continuous insulation below that (that’s IRC 2021 code requirements). If another builder tells you he can side your house for $20,000 that sounds great, but are they including the same scope?

All this to say, the value I see in Pre-Construction is that you know EXACTLY what you’re getting for EXACTLY the best price I can get it for. We both walk away from Pre-Construction with something in our hand.

Site Preparation

If you decide to move forward with Unshakeable Custom Homes as your builder, we move to the Site Prep phase. First off, before we start any physical work, we sign a construction contract (this is separate from the Pre-Construction contract) that is the contract pertaining to the construction of your home.

After the contract has been reviewed and signed, we can move on to getting the site ready for building. I get the surveyor on-site to pin lot corners and foundation corners so that the excavators know exactly where to dig the hole.

We get a temporary toilet set up, temporary power and permanent water hooked up to the lot for all the trades that will come after. If there’s any special engineering considerations for your building lot, we have civil or geo-techincal engineers on-site to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

Once the site is ready, the coolest part of the process begins.

Construction

This part of your project is when it all comes together. It starts with a muddy hole in the ground, and ends with a home that's finished and ready to move in.

This process will largely be the same no matter which builder you choose. The hole gets dug, the concrete gets poured, the home gets framed, and so on. What's different is the level of execution (the craftsmanship and quality), the communication, the jobsite cleanliness, and ultimately the finished product.

The Craftsmanship

Most builders that care about the work they put out are using quality materials. The type of framing lumber, for example, isn’t changing from one builder to another. The difference is the amount of care put into the final product.

Ever been at a friend's house on a Saturday afternoon for beers and burgers, the setting sunlight shines on a wall, and all of a sudden you can see where every screw went into the drywall or how badly the wall bows and dips? That's not because they used different lumber - it's because they didn’t think about the details. It could be the same crew that framed your house; the difference is they didn’t take the extra time to think about how that wall would look in the late-afternoon sun.

The Communication

Good communication is the key to successful relationships. When we communicate with each other, and really listen, we can respond and execute well. Throughout this process, we will be in CONSTANT (and I mean, constant) communication with one another.

Whether it’s picking out finishes, managing budget, or scheduling site visits - you might even get sick of me! But it's my job to communicate everything important. Again, a home is possibly the largest single purchase you’ll ever make; don’t you want to know what’s going on?

At a minimum, weekly calls and site visits is the way I operate. Sometimes clients want to be even more involved and that's okay too.

The Jobsite Cleanliness

I mean, this one’s self-explanatory right? When I was 14, I worked at this sandwich shop in the town where I grew up. The prep-cook would come in early to get the deli meat, veggies and sauces ready for the day ahead. I’d walk in a few minutes before my shift and there would be crap EVERYWHERE - metal bowls of ranch half-mixed, scraps of lettuce smeared into the floor, dirty spoons and knives littered across the prep tables.

My mindset coming into work would become scattered, I couldn’t focus on my job, and my performance suffered. We clean up after ourselves - that’s all I’ll say about that.

The Final Product

When it’s all said and done and you’re tired of moving boxes filled with the unused record collection that’s been following you around for the last decade, that’s by far the best part. 

You’re not thinking about the money you spent, the time it took, and you’re definitely not thinking about the hours and hours of time and energy it took to get to this point – you’re thinking about the home you built. You can finally take a breath and enjoy it.

And I hate saying this because it sounds really damn cheesy, but THAT is exactly why I do this. I could make money doing something a helluva lot less stressful, but I truly enjoy building things and seeing what I can create from someone else's vision.

That vision came entirely from you, I was just the guy who built it.