Building Binder – Why You Need One and What To Keep In It
If you’re building a house, whether it’s fully custom or not, there are decisions to be made. You’ll have what seems like an overwhelming amount of materials and layout properties to nail down, but if you keep all of your choices and decisions organized it’s not as complicated as you may think.
This is where a building binder comes in handy. A building binder can be a physical binder, or a digital one like I keep. You’ll keep all the details of your build here and take it back and forth to meetings with your builder, architect, and the rest of their team.
Start Early
Even if you’re not sure when you’ll build, or if it’s even a solid plan in your future, you should still start your binder! Save all of the things you like and people’s houses and rooms that inspire you. Your taste may change by the time you build, your budget might grow or shrink, some materials you chose may not be available by then, but there are alway similar choices (sometimes better ones than what you originally wanted.) Your binder that you start today will always be there as a jumping off point, somewhere to start so you aren’t overwhelmed with choices when the time comes to actually choose.
What should you keep in your building binder?
Images
Like most people, my building journey started with seeing photos of new builds that I loved. I found a community of people on Instagram, people who were just like me, making this new build fantasy seem more attainable for my family. I saved their photos to a folder on Instagram, as well as some pinterest images. My Building Binder is digital, so including links to posts works fine for me, or including screenshots in a folder works too.
Spec Sheet
This is a document detailing everything. It’s where you want to list everything you want, room by room. You’ll want to make note of things like paint color, wall texture, window type, window size, hardware, door style, door color, door size, ceiling height, millwork details, and more. The more you can detail here, the better, that way when you enter a design meeting with your builder you come prepared and save time.
Floor plans
If you have your floor plans done, keep them in your building binder. If you aren’t that far into your building journey you can keep plans in there that you like or have drawn inspiration from. That way, you can always look back and see where you got your ideas Elevations
Receipts
Sometimes you’ll buy things for your home before it’s built, or during the building process. Things light light fixtures, a sink for the bathroom, or a unique door you wanted for your pantry. These things could be included in your allowance with your builder, or they could e extras you purchased on the side. Either way, if you are budget conscious and want to know where every penny of your money is going, keep your receipts. Keep track of everything you have for your home, and everything you’ll put money into later.
Budget
Besides your receipts, you’ll want to keep your actual budget documented as well. The purchase price of your land, the estimated cost for your build, your ceiling number you can’t spend above, things like that. You’ll regret not being organized more than you’ll regret being a little over the top with organization. Things may change as you go through the building process and life in general, so you’ll want to keep track of the increases and decreases in your budget.
Schedule
If your builder has provided you with any dates on when certain contractors will be on site doing their part of your build, write those down and keep them here. Make sure you’re going to your build site frequently (but respectfully, not getting in any crews’ way) and make sure than everything that is being built matches the documents in your Building Binder. I know that the General Contractor and people managing your build will be doing this as well, but it never hurts to be on top of things. You may catch an issue that nobody else noticed.
How To Organize Your Building Binder
I have my Building Binder organized digitally in folders on Google Drive. Whether you’re doing a digital binder or printing yours out, you can organize them the same way.
Start by making a section for each of the categories I mentioned in this post. Then, within each of those categories you can have sections organized by floor (basement, main floor, upstairs, etc.) and by room. My Spec Sheet, for example, is organized by room. I even made sure to include a section for the garage and exterior of the home.
All of this may seem tedious, but doing this extra work will put you on top of things, and possibly even ahead of schedule. Although not a requirement, it is definitely something you should consider doing. Every time you are indecisive and take a long time to make a decision about a detail you run the risk of pushing your build time and move in date out. If you come prepared, even overly prepared, you’re already ahead of schedule. Making decisions before they absolutely have to be made will save you so much time, stress, and money in the process. Having a Building Binder is the best tool to help you succeed in your custom home building journey!
If you read this far, thank you! I hope you enjoyed this post and took some great pieces of info from it. If I can inspire a love for creativity and organization through this process in even just one reader, then I’m happy. Let me know if you take any of this advice and use it during your build!
