Last week we shared why prioritizing comfort and lifestyle makes a great home.
This week, we’re talking about the final universal design priority: longevity
And most importantly, how you can afford it.
Unfortunately, many homebuilding choices are made for a near-term benefit (like cost savings) rather than a long-term benefit (like zero maintenance).
For example: pressure-treated wood decks are installed on new homes every day, with full knowledge that they will need annual maintenance to hopefully get 20 years out of them.
This extends to roofing, siding, windows, doors, and so on.
The rule of thumb holds true: the cheaper something is up front, the more it usually costs in the long run. Not only money, but time and energy.
Building anything in 2026 is expensive, and for most homeowners, budget plays a huge role in finalizing decisions (rightfully so).
Here’s our philosophy:
Build what you can afford now, plan ahead for what you can add later.
Inside The No Regrets Build Guide, we’ve created Selection Guides to streamline your decisions on the most important, difficult-to-change items. These also happen to be the most expensive items on most builds - foundation, framing, insulation, windows, and so on.
The Selection Guides are paired with Infographics we made to help visualize the details:
The goal is to be smart about allocating your build budget.
It’s easy to get excited about beautiful hardwood flooring, but a bouncy floor platform from low-quality subfloor or skipping the upgrade to engineered joists is less than ideal.
You’ve probably driven past new houses with a door to nowhere (missing deck), an unpaved driveway, or Elaina’s biggest pet peeve, unpainted drywall in the garage. (please paint the drywall in your garage 🙃)
These are some of the easiest places builders cut costs to keep the final price down.
Building your forever home doesn’t mean you have to have all your dream features on move-in day.
But you should plan ahead for what you can foresee you’ll add later, like:
- insulated basement slab & walls for future finished living space
- running conduit and installing an empty box for an EV charger
- garage ceiling or floor outlets for shop equipment
These aren't the most exciting items in a build, but you'll be glad you thought about them.
We took this concept to the extreme.
The COVID lumber spike caused us to split our home build in two phases- garage apartment now, main house later. That was the only way we could afford to build with high-quality materials without taking on debt.
We made plenty of mistakes (all painfully detailed in the Build Guide’s Field Notes 😅), but every design decision for the garage apartment was made with the future addition in mind.
For example:
- the front elevation is designed as a carriage-style garage, so the future addition will look like it was always there (not a big house attached to a smaller house)
- the 2nd floor hallway has what looks like a window from the outside, but is actually framed as a doorway. It’s ready to open into the 2nd floor of the future addition.
- the utility room layout was planned around where plumbing and wiring would need to extend later
We designed The No Regrets Build Guide to help you with this is the kind of planning. You can decide what is worth the budget to prioritize now, and plan for features or additions later*.*
Next week
We're sharing important lessons from our own build that we think every homeowner should know before breaking ground. A few might surprise you.
What's one feature you're willing spend more on up front for long term benefits? Ours was definitely triple-pane windows. Hit reply and let us know! We read every message.
Talk soon,
Alex + Elaina
PS.