Most of what goes wrong in a custom home goes wrong because somebody found out something expensive too late. Design-build exists to move that discovery earlier — to week three, when a detail is still a line on a drawing, instead of month eight, when it is framed.
Here is the whole sequence, including the parts that take longer than you want them to.
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01
Site walk & feasibility
Two to four weeks · no cost
We stand on the land with you. Where does the water go, where is the rock, how long is the drive, how bad is the wind out of the west, and is there a septic answer. On a rock site with a long drive and a well, site work alone can run $180,000 before anyone pours a footing — and that is the number that surprises people, not the finishes.
If the site or the budget will not carry the project, this is where we say so. That conversation has saved people a year.
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02
Design, priced as it is drawn
Four to seven months, including permitting
Erin draws. Dale prices what she is drawing while she is drawing it. You see a running number the whole way, and when something is expensive you find out while it is still cheap to change.
Deschutes County is slower than people expect. A septic feasibility can eat six weeks by itself, and it is not a queue we can jump. We plan for it rather than promise around it.
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03
Construction
Eleven to sixteen months
Eight of us on payroll. We self-perform framing, the entire exterior envelope, timber and finish carpentry — the trades where a bad day shows up forever. Concrete, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, drywall and tile go to subs we have used for a decade. Same concrete crew since 2013.
Dale is on site most weeks. That is the actual reason we cap the year at six houses.
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04
Closeout, and the first February
Ongoing
We walk it with you, fix the punch list, and hand over the manuals and the as-builts. Then you live in it through a winter, which is the only real test. Call us — the number does not change when the job closes.
The money
What it costs, stated plainly.
$525–$780
per square foot, 2026
Depends mostly on site work and glazing, not on cabinet knobs.
~2,200 sq ft
minimum project
Around $1.4M all-in. Below that the fixed costs — design, permits, road, utilities — eat you alive per square foot.
15–23 months
first sketch to keys
Four to seven in design and permitting, eleven to sixteen building.
What we are not the right call for
We do not build somebody else's plan set — if you have finished drawings from another architect, you want a general contractor, and we can name two good ones. We do not do spec houses. We do not go over the pass or out to the coast, because a two-hour crew commute makes us worse at our job.
We work in Bend, Tumalo, Sisters and Sunriver, and we will look at Redmond and Powell Butte if the site is interesting.