Eric: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Tilson Live. It's Tuesday, it's two o'clock, and we're coming to you live on YouTube and Facebook, as we do every week, to talk about all things building a custom home on your land. I'm Eric Alarid, part of the fourth generation of the Tilson family, joined as always by the great, marvelous Dawn Dantzler, Tilson's Vice President of Marketing and Customer Experience.

Dawn: Hey, Eric. How's it going? It's a wonderful Tuesday for a wonderful Tilson Live. Folks, jump into the chat and tell us where you're watching from, where you're building, and what part of the process you're in. We want to hear your questions, whether they're about plans, financing, design, construction, customer care, or getting your site ready to build.

Eric: This is one we do every once in a while, walking through how to read your floor plan, decoding the abbreviations and symbols you'll see once you get into the plan review process. Most of what we're covering is pretty universal to how home building and architectural plans work, regardless of who you're building with, though there's some variation as you move through the design process all the way to a true construction set.

Dawn: Denise is watching from Pearland, building a Canyon D in Chapel Hill, and says they just had a last-minute change order for electrical and are almost ready for spray foam. Nice timing for fall. Folks, keep the questions coming, plans, financing, site preparation, whatever you want to know.

Dawn: Before we get into the plans themselves, one important note: everything you're about to see is copyrighted, Tilson Homes, all rights reserved. These plan versions are detailed enough that you could technically build a home off of them if you screen-grabbed them, which is exactly why we don't usually show this level of detail. We picked a retired plan for this presentation for that reason, so, don't steal my stuff.

Dawn: You're going to see a variety of versions of a floor plan as you go through the process, and the way we show and even measure things changes from version to version. The first one, and the one most of you have already seen, is the online version, the same one you'd get as a pretty brochure at one of our design centers. We call it the marketing version, and it's a simplified view showing all the basics: every room labeled, dimensions given, and callouts for special features you'll want to know about, like a step ceiling (shown with dotted lines), a walk-in closet, raised ceilings, or an eating bar.

Eric: On the online plan, the room dimensions you see are sheet-rock to sheet-rock, the interior finished measurement, not exterior wall to exterior wall. That distinction matters more once you get further along, because the construction set of plans calls out dimensions differently.

Dawn: There's a little code to the exterior wall lines, too. A solid black line means siding of some type, could be vertical siding or board-and-batten. A diagonal hash mark means full brick from the bottom of the wall to the top, set on an extra ledge since it's full-size masonry. A squiggly line means full stone the same way. And a straight line partway up the wall indicates a masonry wainscot, where the wall starts as brick or stone at the bottom and switches to siding or stucco partway up.

Dawn: Porch posts get their own code, too: a solid black square with an outline is a composite post; that same shape with a line partway down adds a masonry base. A smaller square with no outline is a rough-sawn wood post, and the same shape with a masonry base variant looks similar with that added line. That covers everything you'd see on the online, marketing-level plan.

Dawn: Once you come into one of our design centers, your consultant pulls out what we call the work copy. It adds more detail than we'd clutter the online plan with: a flooring schedule, veneer percentages, more precise measurements, a full electrical layout, elevations of every side of the house (not just the front), and cabinetry layout detail. Your consultant marks up any changes you want in red, which is why we call it the redlined work copy.

Dawn: The flooring schedule breaks out, room by room, exactly what material is included and how much square footage of it there is, grouped by material type, so all the carpet is listed together, all the ceramic tile together, and so on. We use this to order all the materials for your home. There's also an area chart showing the slab's total square footage, split between heated/cooled living area and unheated area like porches and garages. When someone asks what a builder's cost per square foot is, ask which of those two numbers they're using; it can differ by a couple hundred square feet.

Dawn: The veneer percentage chart tells you how much of the exterior is stone versus brick versus siding, which matters if you're building in a community with an HOA masonry requirement. By default we count windows within the masonry percentage, since that's standard practice, but we can pull them out and report them separately if your architectural control committee requires it.

Dawn: Once you're at the work-copy level, you'll also start seeing the electrical symbols. A smoke detector is a circle with an X through it, typically placed in every bedroom and a hallway, though exact placement depends on your county's code. A recessed light looks like that same circle without the X. Outlets are marked to show whether they're 110 or 220, with 220 typically going to your washer, dryer, and other heavy appliances. A switch looks like a dollar sign, with a dotted line running to whatever fixture it controls, so a ceiling fan with a light will show two separate switch symbols, one for the fan and one for the light. We'll also mark coax and Cat5 cable runs if you've selected those.

Dawn: Windows follow their own numbering system. If there's no number before the dash, there's one window; a number there tells you how many are grouped together. The first pair of numbers after the dash is width in feet and inches, the next pair is height in feet and inches (so "5-0" means five feet, zero inches, not fifty inches). Letters after that identify the window type, SH for single-hung, FX for fixed, along with any tempered or obscured glass notes. A final two-letter code, highlighted separately, indicates the window's divided-light style, which you'd only see fully illustrated on the elevation, not the floor plan symbol itself.

Dawn: Doors work the same way, width then height in feet and inches. A front door with sidelights will note how many sidelights there are and their width, which can vary between ten, twelve, or fourteen inches depending on the manufacturer, something we'll confirm with you at selection. The door swing arc on the plan also shows which way the door opens and which side the hinges are on.

Dawn: Cabinetry uses the same style of code, but switches to inches instead of feet-and-inches. A cabinet might be called out as 30 inches wide by 24 inches tall. If you see a dash followed by another number, that indicates a change in depth, upper cabinets are traditionally 12 inches deep, base cabinets 24 inches in a kitchen and 21 in a bathroom, so a callout like "32x24-14" tells you that cabinet is deeper than standard because it's sitting over a microwave. Abbreviations like BPD (bi-parting doors) or CWC (corner wall cabinet) show up here too, and hinge sides are indicated by where the dashed lines converge.

Dawn: Michelle asked whether arched windows are a specialty size. Typically yes, you'll see those listed as something like "3-0-CT," where CT means circle top, so it's a standard three-foot-wide window with a circle-top arch above it; the actual arch pattern only shows up on the elevation, not the floor plan symbol. She also asked about arched doors, also a specialty item, and traditionally used only on a front door, not elsewhere in the house.

Eric: That's exactly why we redraw every plan that comes to us. I saw a design once where an architect specified a full barrel ceiling with an arched door that swung inward, right into the curve of the ceiling. It didn't work. We caught it before construction and fixed it, which is the whole point of redrawing plans rather than building straight off outside drawings.

Dawn: Michelle also asked if we use RTA, ready-to-assemble, cabinets. No, we use a company out of Bryan, Texas that builds all of our cabinets to order using laser measurements of the actual house, with a controlled finish process rather than job-site painting.

Dawn: Renata asked a great question: she's originally from Wisconsin, where smooth walls are standard, and wanted to know why smooth walls are a specialty upgrade here. When in Rome, we do as the Romans do. Sheetrock finishers throughout most of Texas are set up for an orange-peel or knockdown texture as their standard, which conceals seams and nail pops. A smooth, or "slick," wall is a level four or five commercial-grade finish, the kind you'd see in a medical facility, and it takes four to six skim-coat and sanding passes to get the wall perfectly flat, a much bigger labor lift than most Texas crews are set up to do routinely. Ceilings actually get an even heavier texture than walls, since light fixtures cast shadows that show every imperfection more than a wall would.

Eric: Once you've marked up your work copy with your changes, your consultant turns it into what we call the A6, the file copy, basically the same plan updated with everything you've chosen, plus a handful of new pieces. The first is the slab plan, which shows every penetration into the foundation: the overall dimensions, a dark gray area for your main heated and cooled living space, and lighter checkmarked areas for porches, and in this example, the primary shower. Anywhere you see a double-rectangle symbol, that's a change in slab height, in this case a three-and-a-half-inch drop from the living area down to the porch, since porches are designed to slope away from the house so rain doesn't pool against it.

Eric: The slab plan also gives exact plumbing and electrical stub locations, for example, a sink drain located 14 feet, a half inch from the back exterior wall, or a conduit run stubbed out under a kitchen island so power can be pulled later even though nothing's live yet. Commode and tub drains get the same precise dimensioning. This is where the file copy starts giving exterior wall-to-exterior wall dimensions rather than the sheetrock-to-sheetrock measurements you saw on the earlier plan tiers, because these numbers are built for the framer and superintendent to hook a tape measure on an exterior wall and pop chalk lines directly off the plan.

Eric: The file copy is also the first time you see the actual chosen front elevation, in this example, stone wainscoting with board-and-batten Hardy siding and a gable bracket, along with the roof pitch callouts. This home has a multi-pitch roof, 12-on-12 left to right and 8-on-12 front to back, partly because you don't need a steep front-to-back pitch to get the intended look, and partly because an equal 12-on-12 pitch both directions can make the hip look taller than the ridge, which reads a little off. The rear elevation shows the same level of detail for the back of the house, including where the porch slab drop happens.

Eric: Electrical gets its own dedicated page at this point, because trying to layer all those dimensions onto the floor plan makes it too jumbled to read. This page calls out exact fixture spacing, GFI outlets under the sink for the disposal and dishwasher, 220 circuits for things like an electric water heater or dryer, floodlight and switch locations, and even how high off the finished floor a TV outlet or CAT5 jack should sit if a buyer wants it at a specific height, say 72 inches AFF. AFF, above finished floor, is about the only acronym we'll allow on these plans, simply because the full words don't fit. There's also a cabinet elevation page showing wall-by-wall cabinet layout and any arch radius framing dimensions, kept on its own page so the framer and concrete finisher aren't distracted by unrelated floor-plan clutter.

Eric: Jose asked whether we use foundation piers. Very rarely, only if the engineer specifically calls for it. These days we're far more likely to use hard points or wider, deeper beams. Piers don't work quite the way people thought they would when they became popular in the nineties, they only help if a house is sinking, not if it's heaving, and they're mostly used now for repairing an older home's foundation rather than for new construction.

Eric: Mary asked about a walkout basement in the Hill Country. It depends entirely on the lot, our build team will evaluate a specific property's suitability if you're interested, so it's a case-by-case conversation rather than something we offer as a standard option.

Dawn: Michelle also asked whether you can bring your own floor plan or if you have to pick one of ours. Bring in whatever you're interested in, we're glad to work from it. When you come into a design center, your consultant will find the Tilson plan that looks closest to what you brought and start drawing your changes onto that plan, purely so they can give you a fast, ballpark price. That doesn't mean you're locked into our plan, the design can move as far from that starting point as you'd like.

Eric: Last plan tier is the K1, your final construction set. It looks a lot like the A6 with a few extra pieces added. The foundation plan now references the separate engineer-designed foundation set directly, calling out beam details and, on a windstorm-certified home like this one, hold-down footings, something you won't see called out on every house, only in counties that border the Gulf of Mexico. Jackson County is the one funny exception, since it doesn't technically border the Gulf, but don't worry about that, we still love you, Edna.

Eric: The K1 also adds roof framing detail, since this is a multi-pitch hip roof, the soffit detail differs section to section, and there are dedicated detail sheets showing exactly how to cut the lumber for the eaves, the gable brackets, and different cornice styles depending on whether that section is masonry or siding. We go to a lot of trouble to make sure the french fries taste the same at all the McDonald's, meaning every house gets built to the same standard no matter which crew is on site. Framing uses precut studs in standard lengths, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve feet, and the plans are built around using that material efficiently rather than cutting it down, it's a little like Legos: hand-built and stick-built, but with materials designed to be used a specific way to keep costs competitive. The rafter detail page does the same for roof framing, cut lengths and all, and honestly, none of this K1-level detail is really designed for the homeowner, it's designed for the end user, who in this case is the framer.

Eric: On upgrades, we traditionally see people spend 15 to 18 percent of their total contract amount, so on a $500,000 contract that's roughly $65,000 to $75,000, though it varies a lot by plan and selections. On the specific question about a cathedral ceiling in the Whitney's primary bedroom and family room, that runs somewhere around $7,000 to $8,000 total for both rooms, and it varies some by elevation and where you're building.

Dawn: Michelle also asked if there's ever a lull time during a Texas build. Yes, several predictable ones. The first is right at the start, while engineering, permitting, geotechnical investigation, and loan approval are happening but no physical construction has started yet. The next comes right after you're released to construction, since we stagger job starts so a superintendent isn't managing too many sites at once, though that lull tends to be short. The biggest one is usually after framing and the mechanical rough-ins, HVAC, plumbing, and electrical, go in, while we wait on inspections to clear before the spray foam and cover-up stage; that lull runs shorter outside incorporated cities, since work inside city limits waits on the city's own inspection schedule. And then there are the unplanned lulls, rain delaying a foundation pour, for example, since pouring concrete is a chemical process that needs the right conditions.

Eric: Alright, we're a little over time, but great questions today. Dawn, take it away, what's happening this weekend?

Dawn: This weekend is the grand opening of our Brazoria model in Spring, and that's where Eric and I will be this Saturday. Eric's giving the general built-on-your-lot seminar starting at 11 a.m., followed by a food truck lunch from noon to two. If you're in the area, come see the seminar and the model, Wendy and her team did an amazing job designing it. We've also got seminars happening in Waco and San Marcos this same weekend if either of those is closer to you.

Dawn: Renata asked when the Brazoria model will be posted online. The photos are up now, the video was filmed last week and should post soon, and we're filming the 3D tour this Friday, so that should be up next week as well. And just to close the loop, the plan we used for today's presentation has already been torn down, so, true to what we said at the start, that was genuinely a retired plan.

Eric: Thank you all for watching. This doesn't have to end here, we have 12 design centers open seven days a week, a website open 24/7 with new home specialists on standby, and our Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube channels, where every one of these episodes lives permanently. If you'd rather watch ad-free, they're also posted to Vimeo.

Dawn: We'd love to hear from you, reach out to a new home specialist or stop by one of our offices, and we genuinely hope to make you part of the Tilson family soon. We'll see y'all later. Bye, everybody.