Building With Style: Reforming a Planbook Colonial

One of the ironies of the home-building industry is that despite its being the most fragmented industry in the country, populated by small builders, its products are standardized and unimaginative rather than customized and site-specific. A recent job illustrates my point. A young friend, soon to be married, called me to help her and her fiance with their new home. They were buying a three-bedroom builder’s Colonial in a new development outside Boston, and they asked me to look over the plans. I did, and we made some changes that added about $10,000 to the $190,000 purchase price (houses are beastly expensive in these parts). Plus, they added a $10,000 “farmer’s porch.” Now married, they are slowly accumulating furniture to fill