Both plumbing and electrical are big decisions that will impact how functional your house is, so be sure to put lots of thought into both of these areas.
Let's start with electrical. We planned the bulk of our outlets and switches early on in the building process, but once we started to get drywall installed we walked through the house with our electrical map to see if the locations made sense.
For outlets, I would encourage you to add a lot. Very rarely would you feel that you have too many outlets. For our build, our cost included a certain number of outlets and we added on top of that. It wasn't a significant expense but it was an additional cost. I'm really glad we added as many outlets as we did. We even added some outlets in spaces you wouldn't necessarily expect (like our master closet which gets a lot of use!)
Also, be sure to plan for future as much as you can. We put outlets below every window (including in our attic) because we use them for Christmas lights and we also put outlets in the soffit below the gutters for Christmas lights as well. Additionally, we added them next o the front door. These outlets are all attached to a single switch next to the front door that we call the Christmas switch so we don't have to fiddle with timers on all of our outlets.
Another thing to plan ahead for is security cameras. Discuss this with your electrician and share where you want them to go, even if you aren't planning on installing them immediately have you electrician run those wires now so it can be installed easier down the road. Same goes for video doorbells because these are wired differently than a traditional doorbell.
Something else we did when planning for the future was putting in an electrical car outlet in our garage because it's not out of realm of possibility that we will have an electrical car in the future. It's less expensive to do it during the build than having to run that big cable through the walls after the house is finished.
Now let's get into plumbing. When you are planning your house, you need to know where you want a sink, bathroom, running water, etc... but it's also important to know where you don't want one (like our vanity instead of a second sink in the master bathroom).
If you want to do a large tub (soaker or freestanding), your builder will need to know that early on because the install is different in terms of flooring reinforcements, tile, etc. I've mentioned before that I wanted a free standing tub until we got the estimate back. Instead, I opted for an extra long soaker tub because I'm tall and that was a pretty insignificant difference in price.
Lastly, I get a lot of questions about if I'm happy that we did a single basin sink in our kitchen or if I wish we would have done a double basin sink. Short answer: I love the single basin and will never go back to double basin. It's so convenient for washing and I love it.
Be sure to check out Building 101 on my Instagram stories next Wednesday!
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