The bespoke build process
A bespoke home build is the ultimate way to flex your creativity, sculpting your dream abode from the ground up to reflect your unique needs, wants, and nice-to-haves. It’s about building a place that is uniquely yours, every detail carefully considered and catered to you. Building to your environment, incorporating materials that reflect your style and ethics, and future-proofing for your family will set you up with a space you’ll look forward to coming home to for years to come.
Though it’s easy to see the attraction, building your bespoke home isn’t always an easy process to navigate, and can come with its own set of challenges. We’re often asked what the steps are to building your own home - and though it’s not always as clear cut as the bullet-point list you’ll get from a group housing company, we’ve pulled together a topline overview for anyone looking to start the bespoke building process.
Here are our curated steps to building a house in NZ that’s crafted around you:
Find your inspiration
Tailor it to you
Select a site
Craft your plans
Find the right builder to bring it to life
Step One: Find your inspiration
Queue, the fun part. The Home magazines stacking higher and higher on your coffee table. Taking the long route home so you can slow crawl past that new build on the corner. Suddenly developing a targeted interest in walls and ceilings, interior finishings and bespoke light fixtures. During the early days of planning, you’ve got the freedom to dream big in all the best ways - so make the most of it. Drawing inspiration from other homes is a great way to start planning your build, helping you piece together ideas you might just be looking at in your future home.
Write down your ideas.
Collect ideas over time - write them down, save pictures on your phone, start a scrapbook, tattoo them on your body. Whatever your method, start building up a collection of designs, features and styles that might provide some fresh inspiration when the time comes. Create a board on Pinterest, and overtime, the app learns your style and feeds you similar inspiration which you can easily share with your building partner, architect or building company.
Take inspiration from the world around you
Nature is an architect’s playground. Finding inspiration doesn’t only mean peeping over your neighbours fence - get creative in whatever form it comes. Our mountain home is the perfect place for it. As well as nature, look into the history of your site, home and region for design and material ideas.
Visit show homes
If you’re wanting the inside inside scoop on the latest trends, show homes are a good way to draw inspiration for your build in a very hands-on way. Especially new sustainable homes, such as passive houses and rammed earth houses.
Travel
The world is wide. If you need another excuse to see it, let this be it. Getting inspiration from different parts of the world might be exactly the fresh take your build needs. It certainly is for our builds - in fact, parts of our latest Cardrona renovation were inspired by Japanese architecture.
Neighbourhood cheat sheet
Okay, so we’re into keeping up with the Joneses too. But forget the old fashioned way - we use QLDC’s eDocs: the Queenstown Lakes District Council’s handy collection of house plans for existing and consented builds in the region. Driving past a house you like? Check it out in eDocs. Joneses renovating? Snoop in eDocs. The world is your digital oyster.
Step Two: Tailor it to you
Your bespoke build will be catered to you, in all your glory. That means you’ve got the chance to create a space that fits your lifestyle, aligns with your needs and meets all the ‘must-have’ requirements for you and your family.
Think about your lifestyle. Your hobbies. What you’ll be using the space for. Big on dinner parties? Need a workshed to store your tools, a woodshed for your winter stash, a gear-shed for the skis or a garage with an opening big enough to get the boat in and out? Whatever you’re into, now is a good time to think about the kind of space you’re crafting and how it can facilitate your lifestyle.
Tailor the space to fit you and your family. If you’ve got six kids, you’ll likely be needing more than one bathroom. If food is more than a necessary fuel to you, you’ll want a kitchen big enough to hold your culinary ambitions - butlers pantry and all. If you’re building a home for you and your family, future or otherwise, make sure it’s working hard to accommodate you.
Above all, maximise the space you have with a smart, efficient design. Make the roof space usable with an attic or loft. Make sure your kitchen has enough cupboards that you don’t have to wrestle the pots and pans every day. Don’t waste space - use it, and it’ll save you a lot of grief in the long run.
Step Three: Select a site
Location, location, location. Finding the right spot to build your custom home comes with its own set of challenges. You’ll need to find a site that:
Fits your budget, considering the increase in cost required to access and build on a tricky site such as on a hill.
Accommodates your ideas around size, shape, views, and all the other elements you want to work in.
Makes the most of the natural environment for energy efficient building. Think about a site's positioning to the sun (you’ll want to make sure it gets lots of sun, especially from the north). Consider Wānaka’s notorious spring wind, and create protected spaces away from it.
Isn’t negatively affected by its surroundings - things you might not be able to control now or in the future, such as busy roads, commercial infrastructure zoning or protected trees.
Another one to consider is the community you’re living in. While it might not seem like a biggy at the start, the community you’re in will make a big difference in how much you actually enjoy the neighbourhood you’re now a part of. Consider the lifestyle, schools, amenities and take a look at the Council Docs page for future plans for the area.
If in doubt or just need some guidance, call in the experts (aka your architect or builder).
Step Four: Craft your plans
And then it begins. We won’t pretend that this is our forte - when it comes time to turn your Architecture Pinterest board into your future home, you’ll want to choose an architect who shares your ideas and vision. We’ve got a few great architects in Wānaka we like to work with, and would be happy to make a recommendation based on your ideas. They’ll help you figure out how long the planning and building process will take, and what to expect throughout. They’ll also help you get building consent when the time comes.
This is the time you want to really consider what materials you’ll use and the overall effect they’ll have on your home. For example, we love working with recycled timbers and materials. Not only do they look great, you’re also breathing new life into well-lived and well-loved native timbers for an authentic, historical focal point in your new home. Materials will make a big difference in the long run both in style and quality, so if you’re unsure of where to start, give us a call.
Step Five: Engage Your Builder
Once your plans are finalised, your home designs have been fleshed out and every ‘i’ dotted, it’s time to engage your builder and start the build. With such a carefully considered design, it’s crucial to find the right builders that will give your home the time, effort and quality you’ve intended. This is arguably the most important stage - don’t let a few cut corners get in the way of all the work you’ve put in to date.
At Hawkeye, quality builds are what we pride ourselves on. We’ve stood in your shoes, which means we understand how much trust goes into finding the right builder. To us, every single build is an important build. We craft quality and care into every step, and do our best to make the whole home-building process as easy for you as possible.
Our goal is to make the pre-build negotiations and pricing simple and easy for you to understand. We’re always transparent with our costs, will keep you updated on build times, and are happy to work with you to figure out where you can save money without losing quality, if necessary. If you’re looking to build a house in Wānaka, Hāwea or surrounds, get in touch to discuss the first steps.
So there you have it - the basic steps to building a house, in checklist form. Oh, and if you’re after more home-building tips, there’s more where that came from.
