My husband and I had our house built four years ago and experienced all of the ups and downs that go along with the entire process. I remember making last-minute changes that drove our builder crazy and I remember all of the long hours of thought we put into it before we even broke ground. Since then, we have shared our experience with friends and family that were getting ready to build or remodel their homes in hopes of sharing some of our lessons learned. Here’s a short list of a few tips we always bring up during those conversations:

• Outlet placement: A builder will put in so many outlets in each room and no more unless you ask. In our opinion though, the more outlets the better! We placed electrical outlets in the eaves of our house hooked to a switch inside so we could easily hang our Christmas lights without a lot of extension cords. We also put an outlet in the middle of our living room floor so we could place our Christmas tree there (Fig 1). I like being able to walk around the entire tree and see it from every angle. During the rest of the year, we plug lamps in behind the couch. This outlet is also on a switch making it easy to turn the tree and lamps on and off.
• Propane tank hook-up: Our neighborhood does not have gas run to it so in order to have our gas fireplace, we had to get a propane tank. To make use of our tank year round, we had the builder install a hook up so that we could run our gas grill off of the propane tank.
• Water taps: We asked the builder to install extra water taps around the house so watering would be easier and we have used them all but we forgot one that we really wished we would have thought to have installed. We have a deck that comes off the main floor of our walk-out basement style house. We wish we would have placed a water tap on our deck to make cleaning the grill, watering the flowers. washing the deck a whole lot easier! Another great place for a water tap would have been in our sun room. We have a lot of plants and running back and forth to the kitchen sink to water them is a pain. If we had thought to install a water tap in this room, it would have made that chore a lot easier.
• Mudroom: A lot of traffic goes in and out of our basement door since it goes from the family room into the back yard. We also have a hot tub on our back patio meaning a lot of dripping wet people coming into the house. The original house plan did not call for a mud area off the back door but I am really glad we thought to add one. We asked the builder to bump out the wall to accommodate some built-in shelving with hooks to hold toys, towels for the hot tub, supplies for our dog, and to hang wet bathing suits. We put in tile flooring in this area to keep the dirt and water from getting on the carpet (Fig 2).
• Shelf around support pole: We have one large support post in the middle of our basement. We put a shelf around the post at bar height to make an otherwise obtrusive architectural blight into something very useful. We have two stools that slide underneath on either side and we use it all the time for parties and while waiting for a turn at the billiards table (Fig 3).
• A well-placed stud: The stud framing above your fireplace will most likely be spaced in tune with the rest of the wall, and this may or may not result in a stud being exactly in the center of your fireplace. If you plan to hang a picture or mirror over your fireplace, it’s incredibly helpful to have a vertical stud exactly in the middle, so if needed, go ahead and add one before the drywall goes up. Your pictures will be much easier to hang and balance in the future.
• Take interior wall/ceiling pictures: Take pictures of all of your walls and ceilings after they have done all of the wiring and plumbing but before they put up the drywall. We have referred to these pictures many times since building to find wires and avoid pipes.