No client finishes a house with the list they started with. A room grows, a stair moves, a trip abroad brings home a new idea about a roof. That is normal. A builder's job is to keep the house buildable while it happens.
This concept house changed too, more than once, and we used it to show how we handle it.
The roof was a plain slate hip until the look settled on a Paris town house. It became a mansard, and because a dormer has to light something, the ceilings of two bedrooms and the upper gallery went up into the roof. The grand stair at first went down to the basement as well. It became a stair that only rises, with a plain service stair beside the elevator, so the marble floor of the hall stays whole. A second fireplace went into the dining room, with its own chimney. Two large trees left the front garden so every front door shows from the street.
Each time, the order was the same. The drawing changes first. Not a note, not a text message. The plan, the elevation and the schedule that the change touches are revised, so the next person who opens the set sees the house as it now is.
Then everything downstream follows the drawing, and gets checked. When the theater gained a stepped floor for its back row, a check found that its door now opened onto a step. The steps were stopped 4 ft short of the wall, and then every door in the house, 78 of them, was tested the same way.
Some changes cost room, and we say where. The house sits 56 sq ft under the City's cap, so a larger room somewhere means a smaller one somewhere else. The primary bath was set at 240 sq ft against 320 in the first program, and the plans show it.
Estimates are corrected in the open. We expected eleven solar panels to fit the hidden part of the roof. Laid out, it held ten, and the drawings say ten.
Then the owner sees it in writing. A real project gets a written update every week: what was done, what is next, which decisions are waiting, and what each change does to the cost and the schedule before anyone proceeds. There is a sample on this page.
Some things do not change, and we say so early. The floor area cap, the height limit and the rule that a basement is a whole level or none are not open to negotiation on this lot. A wish that crosses one of them gets a clear answer on the first day, not a hopeful maybe.
What this asks of a builder is patience and paperwork. We read the full set before we price it. We keep the drawings current. One person stays accountable from the first meeting to the keys, and you can reach him.
Akopi Builders has been building in Los Angeles since 2014. We ran this house the way we run a real one.
The images on this page are renderings of a concept design, not photographs of a built home.