After meeting you, our next step is to talk about your project. What is it that you see when you picture your new home? Which components are most important to you? What do you like in some houses you’ve seen, and what would you change to fit your needs and style? We (James & Heather) spend 3-4 meetings with you in our office to prepare your custom design, revise it based on your feedback, and tweak it until it’s just right. This is important because we know that you want a home that is designed to be unique and special. We also know that when we craft your custom design with you and your budget in mind, you will end up with a beautiful (and realistic) plan.

Designing your home with your budget in mind goes hand in hand with the previous step, but here we take it further. After you have given your approval to your new home’s design, we prepare a comprehensive quote for your project. This stage can take several weeks, as it is important to ensure that everything is accounted for in the quote.

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This is a key step, because when we meet with you to present your quote, you can rest easy knowing that it is a fixed price quote – no surprises later. Because we have taken the time to get to know you and your plans for your new home, even the amounts in the contract that are presented as “allowances” are designed to ensure that you can have the items in your home that you are envisioning.

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This is important, because if a builder doesn’t pay careful attention to what you want in your new home, you may find that what they have included is not what you want, resulting in extra costs and conflict. We will take the time to listen, ensuring that your quote reflects your wishes.

Allowances are amounts given for you to spend on certain components of your new home, and are included in the overall quoted price. For example, you may have a kitchen and vanity allowance of $20,000: that means that you can choose a kitchen and vanity package for your home of up to $20,000 without adding any cost to the contract. You will have already told us that you want a white shaker style cabinetry with a grey quartz countertop, so we calculated $20,000 as a realistic amount to include in order for you to get the kitchen you want. Sometimes our clients change their minds, and that’s ok – allowance amounts mean that if you find a kitchen you want that is actually worth $16,000, then you can deduct $4000 from the cost of your build! And if you fall in love with a kitchen that costs $25,000, you can have it, you just decide that it’s worth an extra $5000 to you.

Making things official is the easy part – we’ve already done the hard work of deciding exactly what your new home will look like, and what it will cost! You will sit down with James and Heather to carefully review the contract, ask any questions you may still have, and take the exciting step of committing to your new home. FFH will ask for a letter from your financing institution confirming your approval.

While James gets the ball rolling with the many details required before starting construction, our focus will shift to picking the specific products for your new home. At each of our 5-6 selection meetings (each of which will take approximately 1 hour), Heather will guide you through options for each product selection, and offer as much or as little guidance as you desire. Breaking down the choices you have to make into sections makes it more manageable and therefore less stressful – we want this process to be fun!

Heather will create a secure online client portal just for you, on which will be posted all of your building plans, product selections, minutes from your meetings with us, and an up-to-date budget. You can access your portal any time, ensuring that you can always look up any detail of your project.

Throughout the construction process, the team at FFH will closely supervise your building project, coordinating the trades, ordering supplies and ensuring all is built according to plan. James and Heather will meet with you several times on site, which will give you opportunities to ask questions, view the progress and get you even more excited!!

Sometimes as construction progresses you may change your mind about a construction detail. Our extensive pre-construction meetings are designed to minimize your change requests, as it is always more costly to change things than to simply plan for them from the beginning. However, rest assured that if a change needs to be made, we will talk it through with you, present any added cost to you for your approval, and proceed only with your authorization.

The best part for us at FFH is the moment we hand you your keys. It is simply exhilarating to see our clients so happy at the sight of their beautiful new home. It is why we do what we do!

Right before we turn possession of your home over to you, we complete an extensive checklist to ensure that every detail is taken care of. We also have your new home professionally cleaned from top to bottom, so that you can simply move right in.

When your new home is complete, our relationship does not end. We stand at your side to ensure that any warranty items that arise are promptly and professionally resolved. We give you a 1-year comprehensive warranty, which involves our return at your first anniversary to inspect any areas that might need touch-ups (such as caulking and drywall), and a 5-year structural warranty. You will also be enrolled in the New Home Warranty Program of Manitoba, giving you additional peace of mind that your home is covered.