For those ready to build their next home, there are many things to do in preparation. It’s an exciting venture as you get to design your dream home to fit your needs and allow you to make it your own. Here are a few tips to preparing for your new construction home needs.

Planning

The best part about designing your new home, you get to make it fit your specific needs today. Maybe you’re getting older and don’t think you’ll do well with stairs down the road. You could have wide doorways for wheelchairs or ramps throughout the home as needed. If you’re a parent of a toddler, maybe you want to plan the home to be kid-friendly.

Don’t forget the future

One mistake people tend to forget about is planning ahead for when the children are 10 years older than they are now. While it may sound like a good idea to turn your downstairs master bedroom into two rooms to keep a better eye on your kids, you’ll be cutting down on your closet size forever and the kids will become teenagers that need space from mom and dad.

Another mistake to avoid is making your kitchen and great room into one giant combined area. While a new mom might like it for watching the toddler while cooking, down the road it might be annoying to have the sounds in the kitchen in the background of your favorite TV show. It could get very loud and not allow you privacy for phone calls or enjoying a show.

Instead, design your home with these tips in mind:

• Choose roughed-in electric and plumbing, so that someday you can make an attic or basement that will be great for housing elderly parents or boomerang kids.

• Create a main floor den, which can be used as a bedroom, if necessary.

• Soundproof the bedrooms to ensure more privacy

• Use temporary partition walls to attach to hardwood flooring so that if you want to combine bedrooms later you just have minor floor repairs to do.

• Using plywood sheathing behind tile in your bathrooms allows you to place grab bars in the shower.

The best advice for new construction

The best advice is to plan for the future. Focus on what you think you may want most in the future rather than what would be nice for now and temporarily. Work with a consultant to make sure your home is everything you’ll need it to be.