My wife and I were quite pleased working with our architect.  He was a local architect which is very desirable because he was known by the planning and building officials at city hall.  This is extremely important.  If you do end up working with an architect you want to find someone who’s familiar with your city’s specific building codes and understands what it will take to get your plans through the building department.  The more plans they have submitted on behalf of their clients to get approved - the better.  Building officials will still scrutinize every last detail of the plans, but they’ll be used to working with your architect’s style, thinking and other nuances.

There are essentially two main phase working with architect.  The first phase is the design phase.  This phase is usually charged time and material because it is an iterative that goes back and forth between you and architect describing what will eventually become your floor plan. To save time on this phase, it is important to succinctly prioritize what your needs are.  My wife and I probably poured through hundreds of books at the bookstores with example floor plans of houses.  We were particularly fond of Dan Sater’s work and took a lot of our ideas from his high end home design.

The second phase is basically plan drafting.  This phase can be estimated by your architect based on what you come up with in the design phase.  In this phase the architect takes what you have roughly laid out in your floor plans and has them drafted.  He or she also fills in vertical views called elevations to help you visualize what your home will look like if you were standing outside peering in.

Here’s a very valuable lesson learned having worked with an architect - if you can find an architect that has experience with 3D modeling, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and surprises.  The traditional architect uses AutoCad to draft 2D floor plans and elevations but it is sometimes hard to get perpsective without fully seeing depth.  An architect that can create a 3D model of what is being proposed can render almost lifelike images for you to scrutinize at every angle.  For example, you can better check space relative to each room to make sure your ratios are inline.