TOP: One way to get 90% of the look of a designer kitchen at 30% of the cost is to keep the layout simple, but to add a focal point, such as granite countertops or an island. Many homeowners save even more by using an heirloom such as a butcher’s block from the family farm as a visual anchor. In this New Mexico home, the owners purchased the cabinets and cupboards from an old Mexican market. They decided on polished solid pine counters because “granite’s too fancy for a log cabin,” according to the wife. ABOVE: Building a two-story home will help save costs in two critical areas: It will help reduce excavating costs for the footprint of the home, and will save on roofing expenses, since you’ll have less area and fewer valleys and ridges.

Flexibility
and frugality

No one ever wants to deliver the news that someone’s tastes are a little too rich for their wallet, but Drew Ridder, vice president of sales and custom design for Dogwood Mountain Log Homes in Harrisonburg, Virginia, recalls a client who, through creativity and sheer will, was able to work around her restricted budget: about $80 a square foot versus the area’s average turnkey construction cost of $95-$100 a square foot.

The big issue, he noted, was that the client, a single woman, had chosen a design with multiple dormers on the front and curved glass that would fancy up her 1,800- square-foot, three-bedroom Cape Cod-style log home. “It really did add some punch to the home from an aesthetics standpoint, but it was expensive,” Ridder says.

Because those features added zig-zags in the foundation, as well as additional labor time, they bumped up the overall costs dramatically. Ridder convinced her to flatten out some of the corners and reduce the number of direction-changes in the walls and foundations, but she was able to keep much of the look, including several louvers in the roof, by cutting back strategically in other areas.

For starters, she took Ridder’s advice to go with lower-cost flooring, lighting, and plumbing fixtures. “These are things I recommend that you can go a little light on in the budget, only because they are so easy to replace later,” he notes. “These are things that can wear out or you get tired of and might end up changing out eventually anyway.”

The homeowner also acted as her own general contractor, enlisted friends and family to help, borrowed expertise, tools, and equipment whenever possible, and did all her own shopping. She bought appliances, fixtures and other supplies at estate sales, flea markets, close-out sales, and scratch-and-dent sales. “She was just a great bargain hunter and very, very determined to get as much house as she could while still staying on budget,” Ridder says.