One of the joys of designing your own home is that you get to put your stamp on it. That saying about the “little things” mattering, well that’s never been truer until you sit down with the Design Custom Home team to discuss all of the things that go into creating a custom home. We make the process fun and exciting thanks in part to the quality vendors that we work with to provide outstanding lighting and plumbing fixtures, hardware, and units. In this “finding home” blog, we look at some of the options available that help our customers make their custom house into a home.

Doors, Hardware, and Fixtures

A house has a lot of doors.  Exterior doors include your front door, back door, sliding glass doors, garage doors, and French doors. Exterior doors come with several considerations. including security, durability, weather
protection, and esthetics. Interior doors also require some consideration. Those include:

• Energy efficiency — The ability to close off certain sections of a home
• Esthetics — adding to the feel or look of a room
• Functionality — sliding versus swinging open
• Security — Protects valuables and keeps children and pets out of rooms where they do not belong.

Wisconsin Building Supply is a great source for whatever type of door you are looking for.  They have a wide selection of doors that are sure to fulfill all of your needs.

Locks and openers

There are a few types of locks available. Those include:

• Common keyed locks — Key outside, thumbturn inside
• Deadbolts — built into the lock or in addition to a lock
• Handlesets — for front doors uses a deadbolt rather than a common keyed lock.
• Interconnected lock — requires a key for both outside and inside.

Handlesets are one of the most popular exterior door locks because they provide optimal security, a nice selection of design styles and they hold up to constant use. What is important to consider is how the door and hardware function. You can add your own flare to the process by choosing designs that fit into your lifestyle. That is part of the fun of making your house your home.

Lighting — How to Make Your House Your Home

For lighting and fixtures, we turn to the professionals at BBC Lighting. They offer a wide range of lighting styles for both residential applications and for commercial applications. Many custom designed homes have a mixture of residential and home-based businesses. The choices to focus on include:

• Ceiling Lights — include fixtures such as chandeliers, recessed lights, and even track lighting.
• Wall Lights — include sconces, torchieres, picture lights, swing arm lights, and lights that are specially designed for bathrooms.
• Outdoor Lighting — includes some of everything including landscape lighting, lights for fountains, chandeliers, sconces, gas lanterns, spot lights, etc.

When you begin to design your home, think of how you want the light to flow and then pair the capabilities of lighting to your own style. In some rooms, you may want lights to have more than one function. Don’t shy away from creating spaces within spaces. The kitchen and dining room table are two examples of how that works. A dining table serves many functions such as a place where the kids do their homework or where you and your spouse have an intimate dinner for two.

Lighting directly impacts the function of a room and BBC Lighting offers a stunning variety of lighting options and across many different design niches. Our rules for helping people design their home is to remind them to:

• Be yourself — You have to live here. If you want the crazy western antler chandelier, then get it.
• Create spaces within spaces — Doing so helps you creating the most livability within each room. Put your vision of how you want to live into motion when you think about lighting and fixtures.
• Shoot for the moon — We can always edit but being open about what you want helps the result become not a house, but a home.

Bathroom and Kitchen Fixtures — What to Consider When Choosing Kitchen or Bath Fixtures

When it comes to bathroom and kitchen plumbing fixtures and design, we turn to the professionals at RHD Plumbing, Inc.  They offer a wonderful assortment of faucets, basins, sinks and even toilets. They have so many styles that it is easy to tie a design idea together or to create kitchens and baths that are functional and beautiful.

Considerations for Kitchen Sinks — One of the first considerations is how many sinks do you need in the kitchen? For the home chef or people who love to entertain two and even three sinks may seem excessive, but this is all about function. Many kitchens include a main sink with a large basin and disposal. Add in a small island sink with a disposal for prepping food. A second sink saves you steps and you are not walking back and forth from the main sink to your workstation.

Faucets are another big consideration. While faucets are beautiful they also have a job to do. You may not want one of those big commercial faucets that hang over your sink, but there are options for faucets with retractable spouts.

Kitchens are both a place that people admire and a place where a serious amount of work takes place. When you sit down with the Design Custom Homes design team they will show you how to create a beautiful kitchen that is highly functional.

Bathroom Considerations

You are building a custom home. Go ahead and build a custom bathroom too. A bathroom is one of the busiest rooms in a house. You have morning work routines, getting the kids ready for school, bathing, cleaning and somewhere in there relaxing. Considerations to make all of that happen include:

• Space — Enough bathrooms to fit your morning routine needs today and for the future.
• Luxury — Master bathrooms should help you soothe rattled nerves and help you regenerate. Consider fixtures that make life easier.
• Basins — His and hers is the standard but they have amazing basins that range from base metals like copper to hand blown glass. Even small bathrooms can be beautiful.
• Lighting — A well-designed room, including a bathroom, takes advantage of natural lighting. Supplement natural lighting with fixtures like pendant lights, recessed lighting, under-sink lighting, and specialty lighting such as for a cosmetic station.

There is a lot that goes into designing a custom home. Our focus is always to help you through the process so that it is never overwhelming. There are a lot of choices and many options, but we talk with you about what you want each room to do, the aspects of design and then we show you options that fit those needs. At Design Custom Homes, we make the process of building a home easy. Reach out to us with questions as we are happy to provide you the best answers possible.