DESIGN SERVICES

Bay Lakes Builders is proud to offer design services for new custom homes, garages, additions, and basement remodeling projects.  Owner Paul E. Soletski is passionate about the design process and offers over 40 years of experience as a talented designer and builder.  While there are many designers that just design and many builders that just build, working with someone who excels at both provides the needed perspective to ensure each client's dreams can become a reality.

As a general contractor, Bay Lakes Builders has been asked to prepare pricing for many prospective customers who have had house plans prepared by an independent designer or architect.  Sadly, Bay Lakes sees it happen all too often where these carefully-crafted plans never get built because the cost to build far exceeds the budget (regardless of which home builder prepares pricing for the plans). This is where working with Paul and Bay Lakes on the upfront design can have its greatest benefit:  eliminating the disconnect between designer and builder.

With designer and builder one and the same, the designer/builder has their "finger on the pulse" of real-time conditions that affect construction costs in the material and labor markets.  Being able to more accurately forecast building costs allows Paul, as designer, to design in reverse.  In essence, once Paul gains an understanding of the client's building site parameters and desired amenity package, he can then value-engineer actual house plans from a size, layout, appearance, and structural perspective that can fulfill the client's home design requirements within budget.

A critical part of the design process before ever looking at house plans and amenity packages is determining how much of the total project budget will be used by the building site and site improvements.  Once we know how much of the budget remains after the site-specific costs are estimated, we can then turn our focus to the house itself.