In order to get the design of your custom home done properly, you need to sit and discuss with your home designer for long periods of time. You need to discuss extensively about the whole project. You need to talk about the cost of each element of the custom home project and decide the overall budget for the home. It doesn’t work in such a way wherein you alone decide the costs and set up the budget on your own. It may work for production homes. But, such an approach would never work for custom homes. You can never arrive at a budget for a custom home without inputs from your builder and designer.
The timeline that you fix for a custom home project should be realistic. It is not the same as fixing the timeline for a production home where it is easy for the builder to complete the project well before the deadline. But, it is nearly impossible to complete a custom home project within the stipulated deadline. Deadlines are always bound to get extended and you need to be prepared for delays.