In this comprehensive 56-minute deep dive, Bill Reid explores the first critical phase of the home building and remodeling design process - schematic design. This episode serves as your roadmap through the creative playground where Pinterest dreams become actionable plans, budgets get reality-checked, and the foundation for your entire project gets established.

Key Timestamps & Topics:

[00:00:00-00:08:00] Introduction to Schematic Design

• The three stepping stones: schematic design, design development, construction documents

• Why discovery work prevents wild goose chases and cost overruns

• Bridging the gap between endless ideas and actionable decisions

[00:08:00-00:16:00] The Four Core Objectives of Schematic Design

• Seeing visions come to life in design work

• Exploring options and studying feasibility

• Narrowing down to one clear direction

• Building a solid foundation for design development

[00:16:00-00:29:00] The Professional Process: Remodel Projects

• Phase 1: Deep discovery review and forensic analysis

• Phase 2: Budget integration and investment goal discussions

• Phase 3: Property analysis and existing systems documentation

• Phase 4: Regulatory research with planning departments and HOAs

• Phase 5: The design development phase

[00:29:00-00:38:00] The Big Reveal: What to Expect

• As-built floor plans and overlapping design concepts

• 3D renderings and professional explanations

• Interactive discussions and budget touch points

• New construction considerations and land surveying

[00:38:00-00:45:00] Decision-Making Checklist and Red Flags

• Essential questions to evaluate your designer's work

• Red flags: vague explanations, missing 3D presentations, budget dismissiveness

• How to provide quality feedback and maintain design momentum

[00:45:00-00:51:00] The Master Plan Strategy

• Solving the endless loop of indecision

• Relationship analysis between project elements

• Phasing possibilities and system impacts

• Financial clarity through modular cost breakdown

[00:51:00-00:56:00] Validation and Moving Forward

• Revisiting original investment goals

• Getting contractor second opinions

• Triggering design development phase

Your role as project general manager

Pre-Schematic Design Preparation Checklist

• [ ] Complete comprehensive discovery work including lifestyle analysis

• [ ] Organize Pinterest boards and inspiration materials systematically

• [ ] Establish realistic investment goals based on available resources

• [ ] Research potential design professionals and their visualization capabilities

• [ ] Prepare specific questions about design process and timeline expectations

Designer Evaluation Checklist

• [ ] Did designer review discovery package thoroughly before beginning work?

• [ ] Was budget integration addressed early in the process?

• [ ] Did designer complete regulatory research with planning departments and HOAs?

• [ ] Were existing home systems documented and analyzed appropriately?

• [ ] Does designer provide high-quality 3D renderings and professional explanations?

Big Reveal Assessment Checklist

• [ ] Are design options clearly explained with pros and cons identified?

• [ ] Do renderings accurately represent proposed designs from multiple angles?

• [ ] Has designer addressed all discovery criteria and specific requirements?

• [ ] Are preliminary cost discussions included with realistic ranges provided?

• [ ] Does presentation provide sufficient information for quality feedback?

Master Plan Strategy Implementation Checklist

• [ ] Document all desired project elements regardless of initial budget constraints

• [ ] Break project into logical modules that can be independently evaluated

• [ ] Analyze relationships between different project elements and existing systems

• [ ] Identify phasing possibilities and coordination requirements

• [ ] Assign preliminary cost estimates to each module for decision-making

Budget Checkpoint Validation Checklist

• [ ] Revisit original investment goals after seeing design options

• [ ] Evaluate whether proposed directions align with financial realities

• [ ] Consider bringing construction professionals into consultation process

• [ ] Assess impact of design choices on existing home systems and infrastructure

• [ ] Make informed decisions about project scope and phasing based on real data

Decision-Making and Moving Forward Checklist

• [ ] Confirm comfort level with selected design direction before proceeding

• [ ] Ensure all regulatory constraints have been identified and addressed

• [ ] Validate that design team understands project priorities and constraints

• [ ] Establish clear communication protocols for design development phase

• [ ] Document decisions made and rationale for future reference during detailed design

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Mentioned in this episode:

The Awakened Homeowner Book

Or major renovations that a lot of architecture firms and design build firms deploy for a project. And it's a methodical stepping stone process that most of them go through, and most of them even call it the same thing. But how they go about it and what matters to you is what's really important and what our goal here is today.

Now schematic design is the very first stage of design, unless you had to do some very early preliminary discovery with your architect, this is where actual design work begins. So very early on in the podcast, I talked about the discovery series. And what are some of the really important things that you as a homeowner need to do before you even contact an architect or design firm to begin working with you on your project?

And that is like the very, very beginning of undermining a project—by skipping some of that early stages of the Discovery series, and I talked about the budget in the discovery series too. The budget is always going to be this looming dark cloud over everybody until it's really faced and discussed, and we're going to be doing that during the design process.

It's important to do that during the design process. So let's hope that you've listened to that part of the podcast or read that chapter in my book, and you've got a sense of some of the things that you and your partner can do by literally just sitting on the porch and discussing things, maybe whipping out your laptop and doing a little bit of number crunching.

So I'm really actually elaborating on much of the content in the book and the things that I wanted to say in my own voice. But the book is a really good framework to empower you as a homeowner to control your design process and to make sure that you're on track, both from a design perspective and a budget perspective.

Or maybe what you thought you wanted isn't exactly what maybe you should have compared to all of the visions and ideas that you've collected through maybe your Pinterest boards or your house idea books or your web links, which was part of the Discovery series. Visualize this as a launching point, getting off the front porch, getting out of the bed, scrolling through the Pinterest pictures for hours on end.

"I want to spend $800,000. I want to do a remodel project. I want to expand my home. I think I want it upstairs. Maybe I want it downstairs. I don't know." These are the kind of things that you vet out. Now as a homeowner, I know that many people spend months, years, decades, sometimes thinking about a project, but I also know people get stuck.

You're just going round and round. And this is why it takes people so many years to get to a project built out. Not to mention the actual design time and construction time. So this is a process. The whole Awakened Homeowner podcast and me Bill, as your home building coach is [00:07:00] providing a framework for you to wrangle all this up and into a system where you can actually get something done in a timely manner.

But it's also to really empower you by thinking about all aspects of the project. So it's great and it's fun to go thinking about all these ideas and go buy a lot. "You got a great deal on the lot." Come to find out—you learn that's really not a big deal. You paid a hundred grand for a lot, or 30 grand for a lot.

That's going to be the most insignificant aspect of the project when it comes to cost. Really what's more important is the design, the orientation, the neighborhood, the quality of the lot. So don't get all hung up on buying some great—"you got a great deal on a lot" because you might spend twice, you might get burned and end up spending a lot of money to build your home on that lot.

So the four core objectives of schematic design is to see your visions and ideas come to life in design work, and that is what your architect or your interior designer or residential designer is for, and they explore the design options and study construction cost and feasibility. So that's number two.

Unfortunately the cost part and sometimes the feasibility part gets devalued or deprioritized and everybody just jumps on a bandwagon and just has fun creating these masterpieces and these big glass doors and whatever the case may be, a huge basement—come to realize that it may not be in your budget.

It's important for you as a homeowner to realize that you need to make that priority, the feasibility and the cost feasibility from a construction standpoint on the lot, but also the cost feasibility. Because sometimes the design teams don't necessarily put that front and center, right? So if they do, great, that means you're talking with a professional architect that says, "Look, I'll spend all kinds of your money designing, but I want to see it built."

So the third core objective of the schematic design is to narrow down your design options into one direction. So that could be your style, it could be the configuration, the design of your project, the rooms that you want. Where the house is going to go on the lot. It can be all different kinds of things, but at the end of the schematic process, we're all going to want to be in a position where we go, "Ah, it's pretty close, let's go with it."

And the fourth: we're building a solid design foundation to build upon in the next step, which is called design development, which gets way more involved.

Hopefully you're not that far off when it comes to the style that you like, but it can be. Keep in mind, this is the free flowing organic process, but what you want to do is you want at the end of this to go, "We're going that direction. We're putting the house there. We're not doing the basement."

And we're going to go through that today about how you hopefully can get to that point. This phase is different from the others that we're going to be talking about in the future, and it's because this is the maximum flexibility phase. This is the creative—really creative part of the process.

Not to say that you should come up with all the ideas, but that you know that you want a particular style, you know the rooms you want, the orientations, you want the view that you want to maximize, all different variables. And that's part of that discovery series. So there I go emphasizing that discovery series. Your architect will absorb all of this information and then they'll analyze your property.

So that's a big part of this phase is this is the very first stage where they just start absorbing all of your input and hopefully you've provided that to them. I've had clients where they just didn't have the time or didn't know where to go, and we end up on a little bit—on a wild goose chase trying to help them, and that's okay. But it just costs you a lot more money and you may not get exactly what you want.

So keep that in mind. It's your job as a homeowner to help them gain focus, and that's because of the input that you provide them. So the realistic expectation setting—so your first schematic design meeting can be compared to kind of like a big reveal party, right? It's really can be really fun where designers can be just as excited as homeowners actually to share their ideas. I can recall [00:14:00] many times when my design team sat down with a client and you can tell that they're just really excited.

What happens in a designer's mind is if they have good input and good direction and they start exploring different ideas, it could be different floor plans, it could be different options, but what usually happens is design starts to take on its own momentum and it starts to go its own direction.

It's almost like it has its own life. The design process—I know it sounds a little strange, but, so as a designer's working through a project they look at plan A, plan B, plan C, or they look at upstairs, downstairs, whatever, they're looking at their options, but they all of a sudden start to feel like it's going this direction.

But keep in mind that the first presentations can vary widely because creating new homes and remodels is—it's very customized and a personal process for actually both parties, the design team and you. So what's beautiful about the world of design and residential custom construction is it's never the same. There's a lot of similar details and a lot of similar styles, but ultimately [00:16:00] custom home work, custom design work is done from the ground up by using a lot of different experiences and modules and so on. But we're creating this all over again every time to a certain respect for custom work. It's not a cookie cutter design.

So let's talk about the next segment and what actually happens in schematic design. So you've gone through the steps, you've selected your design team, and we're going to get into that later. I wanted to introduce the design process to you first as a foundational level of education so that we can talk about more details when it comes to design itself and also the designers.

How to find them and what to ask them and how to hire them. We're going to do all that later, but I want you to understand the process first and why some of the things that we talk about later are important. So let's break down the professional process step by step. That is in a lot of architect's minds and designer's minds.

Okay, so let's just envision for right now, a typical 1970s, suburban track home that are all over the country that needs a major remodel and renovation, and maybe you want to do a kitchen and a great room. You maybe want to open up the floor plan. Maybe you want to add on a master suite—primary bedroom. You're not sure where. You know in your discovery stage, that these are your requirements. I need more square footage. I need more [00:18:00] bedrooms. I need more bathrooms. I wish I had a shop in the back. My kitchen's horrible. It's too small.

You are coming up with your criteria of the things that you want solved, not necessarily what you think the solutions are. You may have those in the back of your mind, but let's keep in mind that in the discovery phase of the very early stage, sitting on that front porch talking about what you want, that's what you're going through. You're not going, "Oh, let's move it over here. Let's add it in there." You can always do that, and you can do that during the design process later on.

But you have got your master objectives there. This is what you're going to want to look for in a designer. What I'm about to list out for you are the things that should be done. May not always be done. But good designers will do it. But you need to know what you need to know in order to say, "Hey, how about this? How about that?" So let's dig in.

They should be visiting your inspiration links and the files systematically so they understand some of the visions and ideas that you have. And you should be looking for them to be coordinating and asking coordinating meetings with you prior to beginning any design work so they can ask questions to gain direction. To gain focus, right? Because remember, that's what we're trying to do. It's to our benefit that our architect and our designers gets motivated by the project. And we can control that as homeowners by [00:20:00] saying, "This is what I love, this is what I want. Tell me more. What can you do for me?"

So they'll be doing all of this. They'll be studying your Pinterest boards or house idea books or whatever you've done to create inspirations. All that work you put into the discovery series, discovery phase should be used. And that's the idea.

The less time and effort you put into that, the less focus your design team will have. The longer it will take to get schematic design done and up on a screen so you can go, "That's what I really want." The more you do on the front end, the more pleasant the process is going to be.

Unless you're one of those 1% of the one percenters that's just not a priority—that you just want to go for it and build your massive estate. That's great. I mean that unshackles your designer to a large degree and they can just go for it. Now that doesn't happen as often as you think, as even some of the one percenters or the one percenters. The reason they're there is because they watched every penny. We're not going to dig into that.

But opening up the dialogue about the budget early on before any design work is done. Now hopefully your architect or designer initiated that to ask you and you can share what you think you wanted to invest in the project. You haven't done any costing. You have no idea how much things cost, but I bet you have an idea of how much you want to invest, how much money you have, how much you want to invest in this particular property or this project.

If you are in the $2 million range, $500 a square foot, perhaps 400, 500—I know you're going to hear a lot of weird, stupid numbers out there, like $200 a square foot. But if you're the homeowner that I'm talking to right now—and not to say that you have to be, you could be a DIYer or an owner builder, and that's cool too. Because that's just going to help you theoretically anyway, help you keep the cost down. Not always, but if you're the type of homeowner that's looking to hire an architecture firm, hire a general contractor and focus on your inspirations and ideas and getting it all [00:23:00] out to the people to build it and hire somebody to actually do that—that's what I'm talking about.

So if you're $500 a square foot, it's probably a good number to go off of. But you're talking about that, right? With your design team. It's got to come up because you don't want them designing this just beautiful masterpiece when you couldn't have even begun to invest that kind of money into the project.

So talk about that early on. In the discovery phase, you've already talked about that with you and your partners and you've come up with some kind of value that you want to put in the project. And then, based on that conversation in this phase two budget integration is, you can provide feedback and direction during the schematic design process to discuss options perhaps.

And this allows to further focus the scope based on financial reality. This is part of the motivation too, because for an architect or designer to not really understand your budget and then just to go for it. That can sometimes undermine the mojo when it comes to design.

And you're also going to want to be looking for the design team to document some of your home systems, your plumbing, electrical, HVAC systems within the structure. Because who knows, you may have to upgrade the electrical system. You may need to upgrade the HVAC system. And if nobody takes note of that early on and all, it could go all the way out to construction, right? If we really do a poor job planning and all of a sudden the electrician says, "Oh, your electrical service is inadequate. I need $8,000 to upgrade it. Oh, your HVAC system is not going to serve the expanded home size. You need all that's $25,000."

There's the four walls that we're working with and structures that are limiting what we can do. And the next level is like when an architect or a designer will start peeking into the attic and under the crawl space to understand the home structure, and you're going to want to watch for this either now or later in the design process.

Because if they don't do that and they want to blow this wall out and realize that, "We can't do that because it's holding the roof up." Finding that out during construction happens way too often and it doesn't have to. So pay attention. And then you can be asking questions during that process by saying "Do we know if that's possible or can we do that? Have you ever looked in the attic?" That kind of stuff.

So they will be researching your local planning department, which is in your building department office. You have planning department and building department. And these are the departments that kind of regulate the size of the home that you can build, how close you can build to the property lines, the height, there's all kinds of things.

HOAs, homeowner associations can be a real surprise. You'd be surprised if you're in a planned development. And there are design review guidelines they call them, and there's design review committees. So understanding HOA guidelines is really important early on so that you don't waste time during the design process.

And then understanding the expansion options and limitations, right? So that's kind of like the regulatory research—the primary things that need to be done before any design work occurs if you're expanding or if you're building a new home.

They have done some research on the property to make sure that we can design towards those restrictions so that we're not wasting our time and presenting design ideas to you that actually aren't even possible. Happens a lot. So they go away for—it could be weeks at a time on a project and do perform the schematic design.

And most architects and designers will do all this within their design software. There's software called Revit, or Soft Plan or Chief Architect. All of these programs are now able to generate 3D modeling so that you'll be able to visualize these ideas and we're going to talk about that. Because that's a big one.

And then they'll come up with multiple floor plans. If that's what you've agreed to with the architect is they'll come up with plan A, plan B, plan C of different thoughts and ideas to get that primary suite that you want. "Here's a second story option. Here's a single story option."

This helps homeowners visualize, but it doesn't do enough for visualization. But I like doing that overlapping floor plan idea. And there's other added benefits with that too. For example people that need to interpret the plans like a contractor, a plumber, an electrician, they can see where the old plumbing fixtures were and where the new ones are, and that helps them visualize the project, which ultimately transpires into accurate estimating, right? So "then we're going to move the tub over 10 feet. We're going to"—all these kind of things so the overlapping idea of the new over the old is always a good idea.

And back in the day when we did it when we first started doing this, we didn't have those capabilities and it made it a lot harder for clientele to make decisions. There's a lot more trust that has to be put into the designer. But guess what? The more that happens, the more misunderstandings happen when things get built. People walk in over the weekend and go, "I have no idea what is that? I had no idea what that was going to look like. I hate it."

This is the funnest part of the big reveal schematic design presentation. And this also tells you you've hired the right designer. If you go back to my earlier episodes about the profiles of designers, if you're somebody who just knows exactly what you want and you're just so rigid, don't want to explore ideas, then they're just going to regurgitate your ideas, and maybe you're happy with that.

But what I like to do is propose ideas to clientele that have never even thought of it. Only because it really makes sense, right? Designers, you have to give them some rope, let them do that. So you're going to—you're going to hopefully see that.

And that's where you can also bring up the budget. But let's talk about that. This is your very first kind of budget touch point, we'll just call it. You may not have to do a lot at this stage, but you may want to establish a budget touch point, to keep your investment goal the forefront. I call it investment goal because we didn't know what was going to cost. We were going through the discovery phase, and then maybe discussed in preliminary cost discussions for each of the options that maybe you're pursuing in the design.

So the new home project process, it's—a lot of the fundamentals are the same. But there's some elements that should be incorporated into the early schematic design that require an investment from you as a homeowner, and one of them is the land surveyor. You may have listened to one of my previous episodes about the land surveyor. I had a dedicated episode to that.

All this stuff gets incorporated into a survey drawing that's done through software that your architect imports into their software design, and when they're conceptualizing new homes, they can site the new structures on the land. This is what you need as a homeowner in order to make educated, informed decisions.

So you could be moving the lot around the site. Rotating it for view orientations, all kinds of things that should be explored in the very first early stages of schematic design so that then everybody can move forward on that. And then enhanced regulatory research is pretty important in new construction.

You might be looking at multiple floor plans, right? Different floor plan ideas based on your criteria that you went through the discovery phase. You've selected the rooms that you've wanted, and you're seeing different versions of this to achieve your goals. So you're hopefully, if you're looking at a few different floor plans.

Now, remember I said earlier, a lot of times the design takes on its own momentum where an architect just goes, "Oh, this feels right." And you might see them emphasize one plan over the other. That's okay. Pay attention to that because usually they know what they're doing when it comes to that.

And nowadays you should be able to do that in schematic design. Because there's no point in moving forward into the next stage of design until you feel like that's where you want the house. That's the look of the house you like. And the last one is showing some of the materials and colors that you like, that you've shared from your inspirations and ideas.

Showing that to the architect and then displaying that on the schematic design, big reveal presentation. So that is what I'm talking about. In new construction, there's a lot more to it, but in the early stage schematic, all of the other things I talked about in the remodeling that were relevant. You are also going to want to see some of these elements in the schematic design so that you can make informed decisions that empowers you, but also empowers the designer and motivates and focuses the designer for that stage of the process.

Did my designer explain the floor plans and how they may impact my existing home? So in the remodel world, everybody wants to add on or double the size of their home or whatever but doesn't realize that [00:41:00] it's going to require to renovate the existing home as well. Moving walls around, opening up hallways to get to the new areas. Putting maybe an entire new roof on the whole house, a whole new HVAC system. Structurally when you add onto an existing home upstairs or even expanding on the first floor, it's likely you'll have to do some structural retrofitting for the project on the existing home that people don't realize affects costs.

And have I requested to engage with my design team, structural engineer or contractor for additional perspective? This is important because some of these ideas that are getting proposed to you could probably be feasible, but might be significantly impactful and expensive. So the question's going to be, "Should we talk to a contractor now? Should we get your structural engineer involved now? Are we okay? Do we think this is feasible or are we really pushing the limits?" And it's important because ultimately you're the one paying for it. Ultimately, you're the one holding the bag, right? When things go wrong.

If you get any kind of dismissive attitude towards the budget discussions. Red flag, that's part of their job is providing solutions, it's not 100% their responsibility, but it's their job to be sensitive to that, to provide methods and pathways in order to achieve that. You should expect that from your architect.

If they don't really understand the impact of the existing homes or maybe the site in a new home, that means they maybe don't have enough experience or they haven't thought through that. And like I said, if there's no methodology for the cost feedback that's a big red flag.

Now, a good designer appreciates input and a great one puts their ego away and listens. But to elaborate on that statement I also like to listen to designers that say, "Let me tell you why that's probably not a good idea." In other words, they're telling us that's a dumb idea, but I'd like to hear that. I may not agree with it and I still might want to continue with it, but to me, that is the next level designer. Yeah, they put their ego away to listen to you, but you don't want them necessarily just regurgitating what you say.

You—it's okay that you have great ideas, but they might be able to share with you why your ideas might not be the greatest or how they could impact other aspects of the design.

Same thing can happen with new construction. But what I like to do for a client is say, "Okay, that's great. You love all this stuff. You think maybe you want to spend $500,000 on this remodel. What I would recommend we do, since we're not quite sure how much this thing's going to cost, is how about we do this? Let's come up with a master plan in this schematic design process and document every single thing that you want. Then what we'll do is we'll start to analyze it and see if there's options that we can extract out or modules, I call them, so that we can assign a value, a construction cost value to each of these modules or ideas so that you can then make an informed decision."

Like I said earlier, how many of you have been running around in circles through your house with ideas, right? Millions of ideas. But you haven't been able to figure out the solutions to make you feel great. Can you afford it? And all this kind of stuff. So that is the idea. The master plan solution—it's kind of like stress relief through visualization, so [00:47:00] seeing ideas laid out stops that mental spinning we talked about.

Relationship analysis so understanding how different project elements interact. So you might want a new kitchen, you might want a master—primary bedroom. You think you want it upstairs, you think all these things. But when you start thinking about in a master plan standpoint, and you may not be able to do all of them or want to do all of them, frankly, but you need to understand how they interact because if you want to add a second story, you're going to have to retrofit the first floor to hold up the second floor probably, right? So that might mean triggering the kitchen. So you may not do the second floor. You see what I'm saying? So this is that relationship analysis that's really important for the designers to study, but for you to know so that you can decide, make informed decisions about where to go with that.

And then in new construction, in custom homes. And I can think about a project I was working with in Napa for one of my great clients. And there were a lot of requirements and the needle moved a lot and the direction moved a lot from architectural style to where we ended up.

But there were also outbuildings and structures that we wanted. So we broke that all out into phases, whether they did them all at once or not. And I was able to assign a cost for the shop, the garage structure. The cabana and the pool experience, the main home, basement options for finished or not.

But it might be more cost effective to do the remodel all at once. And financial clarity so now you can see the cost associated with that. Here's the goal of the schematic design. Let's talk about that. At the end of schematic design, you're going to want to say to yourself, everybody should be sitting around the table saying, "This is darn close to what we wanted."

That might be where you end up. And what's great about that is you can design the project, you can end even engineer the project if you want. You can get cost for the project at the end, later in the design process and make the final decision if you're going to really implement it.

But if the architect can design the plans that way, submit the project to the builder "We want these specific options," everybody is in a good spot. So that is where we want to be at the end of schematic design. And you don't want to go any further. You may have to go back to iterations, if you're not feeling right. If you're not feeling the love with the design that you got you're going to want to pause. Don't be afraid to say that because you're saving everybody a ton of time and saving you a lot of money.

It's probably been months now that you've gone back and looked at your investment goal, or maybe you've touched on it, but you need to revisit your original budget exercise. Is this still the kitchen in the same spot? Is the primary suite still 500 square feet based on your original investment goal discussions and open up the dialogue with your design team, and talk about that, and just make sure that you feel comfortable, that you're close enough.

You're better off to pay them, several hundred or maybe a thousand dollars, I don't know, a couple thousand dollars for them to spend time on it to get a contractor's second opinion on the solutions, the feasibility, especially the cost. I mentioned in the opening of the design process, the previous episode. These guys have a lot of information in the back of their minds. They know what they did for this last project that was similar. So go through that process.

And the next three or four episodes are going to be specifically about design development. The detail work begins. The other thing they do is they start assembling their design team. And they begin like more of a regimented process. So the big picture here, let's close out on this schematic design episode.

The budget checkpoint is the toughest one to work with, that's the hardest. Who does that? Who can help you with that between your design professional and a construction consultant or contractor, bringing them in early, paying them to do it so they'll actually do it. Because these guys are busy. They don't necessarily want to spend a bunch of time if they don't have the project.

And just keep in mind that you are the general manager for a project. Even though you're hiring all these people, it's still your home and your money. So you are acting as a general manager. And there's different ways to tackle that too with your architect. And the more you relinquish those decisions to them, the less you have to do. But you have to put a lot of trust and faith in them.

And, plan for iterations, plan for revisions and go through that process. You have to feel comfortable before you go to the next stage. Otherwise you'll waste time and money and you may not meet your expectations. So that's what I have for you today. It's called the schematic design.

So I'm Bill Reid. I'm your home building coach from The Awakened Homeowner. Thanks for listening, and I will see you as we hop over to the next stepping stone of design. Thanks.