Brian and Jenny's Story

THE BEGINNING
We were living in a little condo and expecting our first child. It was clear that we needed to move, but as we started looking for houses, we had a hard time finding one that fit our lifestyle. It soon became clear that the best solution was to design and build our own home. While we found this idea very exciting, we also knew people who had built homes and their horror stories rang in our heads. We were already facing one life changing event and didn't feel that we had the energy to be "bird dogging" a builder.

CHOOSING A BUILDER
We decided to first select our architect and then choose a builder. We asked our friends who had built houses for referrals and we kept hearing the name Dan Marshall. We set up a meeting and once we met him, we knew that he was going to be the one to design our house. After the initial drawing was complete we started to extensively interview the 3 builders who Dan had recommended. At the end of the process, the only one we felt comfortable with was Fred Didier. Fred was the only builder who took the time to understand what WE wanted to build. He also conveyed a level of experience and self confidence that put us at ease. The other builders basically said "we have this library of designs, choose one and get in line." If we were going to spend this kind of money, we wanted to build a truly custom home, not one that had been modified from a design in a magazine and we wanted to feel our builder was going to really listen to us. Fred was the only one who conveyed that kind of commitment.

BUILDING THE HOUSE
As the building process began, we were worried about two key things: 1) how were we going to find the time to be frequently at the job site and 2) would our home be completed on time. Both of these concerns were significant since Jenny was often not feeling well and it would be difficult to live in our tiny condo once our baby arrived.

We soon realized that we didn't have to worry - Fred and his team were on top of everything!! We found Fred very accessible and felt he kept us well informed about both the building progress and the budget. Fred hid nothing and found fair compromises for any issues that arose.

We visited the site to view the progress and were amazed at how our design was taking shape. The building process was going so well that we just assumed things would run smoothly, so you can imagine our surprise when one day we arrived and found that the staircase was not being built the way it had been designed. We brought this to the attention of the carpenter who disagreed with us. We talked to Fred about this and he immediately stepped in, looked at the plans (which admittedly were open to some interpretation) and agreed that the staircase was not being built according to the plans. Fred made sure that this was corrected and that we were not charged for any extra work. After this experience, our confidence in Fred only grew - in fact we often let Fred make the design decisions when the plans were open to some interpretation.

Happily, we found that the hardest part about building our home was making all the decisions regarding the interior of the house: cabinets, lighting, doorknobs, tile. Being able to say this only reinforces our decision to choose Didier Custom Homes.

THE CLOSING
Once our baby came, we found that it was really impossible to live in our little condo and we begged Fred to push up the completion date of our house. Having four children himself, Fred understood our dilemma and worked a few miracles to move up the date. We understood that by pushing up the date, the house would be livable but not fully finished. While in most cases we would have been nervous to sign the final papers and give the remaining $500,000 balance to Fred without the house being complete, we just knew that Fred would finish the job. Even knowing this, we were still surprised that Fred worked just as hard once he was fully paid as he had before the close.

As we began living in our new home, we found ourselves awed by how our ideas had been transformed into this beautiful house. It was amazing that everything we had spent two years planning had really come together and surpassed our expectations - Fred made our ideas into a beautiful reality that we get to live in everyday. And not only that, he made the building process enjoyable by really taking care of us and making any situation a win/win for everyone.