Building A Home In HSV

A lot of people retire to HSV wanting to build their dream home. This is a great place to build because the natural beauty of the Village makes any home more beautiful. Also, you can build any size house you want, from efficient to lavish, without worrying about how it fits in.

Although one HSV web site refers to HSV as "upscale", it isn't -- not if you think of upscale as rows of million-dollar-plus houses. HSV itself benefits greatly from the natural beauty of its hills, trees, and lakes, and the golf courses and other HSV facilities are beautiful and well maintained, the fact is that HSV is very affordable with many low-cost homes, duplexes, and townhomes.

On the other hand, there are some pricey homes in the Village as well, but this only serves to add to the balance here, not make it "upscale".

Upscale or not, you cannot help but be impressed as you drive through neighborhoods in HSV at how well maintained all the homes and yards are.

But getting back to the actual building of a home -- you will find that building a home in Hot Springs Village is quite a bit different from building in many other areas:

• You have a much wider variety of types of home sites (lakefront, mountain view, golf front, forest).
• The building standards and workmanship are generally higher in HSV than other places.
• It takes a little longer to get a house built here (7-8 months, on average) than in some metropolitan areas.
• Builders here are more accustomed to building homes from plans scratched out by their clients.
• You can choose a builder. Many of the other developments we have visited restrict you to houses built by the developer and often to a small choice of floorplans. The Villages in Florida and Stonebridge in Branson are two like this which we have visited recently.

Following is a combination of a journal of the building of our house in 1998, plus tips and recommendations based on what we learned along the way and since, plus a journal of the building of a home in HSV for a relative (Judy) in 2007.

As we went through the planning and building of our house, there were a lot of things we had to learn the hard way, or didn't learn until it was too late.

We never realized we would be using this information ourselves as we helped Judy select her lot, design a floor plan, and find a builder. And then when we watched a quality builder at work, we found out that we didn't know as much as we thought about home building.

So we have updated these pages with what we learned at Judy's, but they still won't make anyone an expert, but they should give you a little better understanding of the building process.

If you have corrections or other information to add to these pages, please email us. You can find an email link on our home page at www.hsv-life.com.

Chapters:

• Choosing and purchasing a lot
• Finding a Floor Plan
• Planning The Garage
• Choosing a Builder
• The Building Process:
• How involved do you want to be?
• Making Changes During Construction
• Checking Prices
• Clearing Trees
• The Foundation
• Framing
• Electrical: Wiring, Lights, Fans, Audio-Video, Computer
• Walls: Outside, Inside, Insulation, Paint
• Windows and Doors
• Flooring
• The Living Room, Den, Study
• The Kitchen
• The Bathroom
• Storage
• The Deck
• Driveway and Sidewalks
• Air Conditioning
• Dealing With Mistakes
• Landscaping
• The Completed House
• Updates to the House
• Follow the progress on Judy's house

Related Links:

James Dulley is a newspaper columnist who writes about home improvement products. His articles and other information are available online.

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