📑 Administration
- Talk to your lawyer about the best way to set up the project for your goals You may want to talk to a lawyer and an accountant to set up a legal structure for your goals. This may save you quite a bit of money
👷♀️👷♂️Team Building
- Know your builders, use only recommended builders. Interview many architects and builders! We interviewed 8 or 9 before we landed on the ones we chose. Trust your intuition. If you see a red flag when interviewing, trust it. Ask for recommendations too. Ask neighbors what their experiences were.
- Make sure you get multiple of references.
💸 Budget
- Discuss VAT with your builder. Include detail of finishes in your contract, what's included and what's not. Make payments only based on advance and not on time
- The hard part was getting my money out of the US so that I could build
- Make sure to put 15 % of the cost of your build asside for the planting and landscaping that you ganna need to do, to protect from erosion. Remember when you get the build price, it doesn't include furniture and the fixtures.
- The final phase of construction is always the costly part, save ahead to avoid surprises Prioritize the critical aspects of the house to be habitable, avoid spending on areas that can wait for after moving in
- Being more involved and having shared design and buying process with other expert to know better materials and costs.
🎨 Design
- Live in Costa Rica for some time before you build if you are able to. Perhaps in more than one type of house. You can see what your needs/wants are by experiencing different homes.
- Make sure the windows slide the way you want
- No butterfly roof (Khaya)
- Have a ladder or other way to get to the roof
- Making sure to go in full detail room by room during the design. What seems obvious sometimes may be overlooked.
📐 Engineering
- Have a credentialed (or at least verified or trusted by the community) engineer survey the structure of the home before they apply any wall/ceiling/roof finishing.
🌊 Adaptability
- Remove the sentence: "It should be like this..." from your brain. "It" will be however "it" will be. You will not change when a truck arrives etc.
- Don't get upset when unexpected issues arise. Usually a better solution is revealed.
- Be patient because the build will not go on schedule. Be open minded because you may have to modify or adjust your plans depending on if things are out of stock, understand it may get too expensive and have to cut back on things so decide what are must haves and would be nice to haves.
- Do not expect perfection. Have standards and be clear about what you want, but also realize that things are done differently than they are back in your home country. The process can be slower, communication is not as frequent as you'd like, and the execution may not be the standards you are used to. Also, realize that there are culture differences so try to be mindful of how you approach dynamics between you and your architects/builders.
- So far the biggest lesson has simply been how much longer everything seems to take here than it reasonably should, to the point of shattering any pretense of a schedule I had been working against originally. Very discouraging, to say the least…
👀 Attention
- Communicate communicate communicate
- Keep detailed notes on everything that was discussed, and follow up with your builder as much as possible.
- Be on site as often as possible and take many pictures. Living here before designing the house helps to understand the lifestyle, climate and creatures better.
- Take copious notes and photos. You will need them.
- Be on site as much as you can. Bring food for the workers and be nice. They are building your house. Make sure if you are not here physically you have someone to look after the build and take pictures for you.
- Be here whilst you build, make sure you have an accurate timeline and if things change due to permitting (ours was held up for about a year!) get a new timeline of what is expected, get everything in writing!
- Be very specific and detail of what you want. However do not assume its done the way you said. Check and verify!!!
- Make sure when you make suggestions that they follow through with them
⚡️ Electrical
- Have them wire for solar.
- I think you are better to have more electrical outlets and circut panels. So if one gets blown out, the other can kick in.
- no light switches in the shower LOL
- Plugs and outlets should be in proper locations, make sure internet is properly prepared for ICE and in the right location
- Be present for your build. Have an actual credentialed (or at least verified and trusted by the community) electrician work on (or at least audit the work on) the house.
💨 Ventilation
- Make sure that the house has air flow, be sure to set up a smart house, so that you can turn on and off fans to help air flow.
💧 Plumbing
- Make sure they use a wax ring and bolts (not secured by concrete without a wax ring) to install your toilets.
🧱Materials
- Being more involved and having shared design and buying process with other expert to know better materials and costs.
🛒 Sourcing
- Buy your water filters, and fans and stuff like that not in CR.
- Shipped in some items for quality and price
🎨🛠 Designer and Builder reviews link
🎓 Add your lessons learned, or add additional lessons learned
[Insert link to new survey]
📑 Administration
- Talk to your lawyer about the best way to set up the project for your goals You may want to talk to a lawyer and an accountant to set up a legal structure for your goals. This may save you quite a bit of money
👷♀️👷♂️Team Building
- Know your builders, use only recommended builders. Interview many architects and builders! We interviewed 8 or 9 before we landed on the ones we chose. Trust your intuition. If you see a red flag when interviewing, trust it. Ask for recommendations too. Ask neighbors what their experiences were.
- Make sure you get multiple of references.
💸 Budget
- Discuss VAT with your builder. Include detail of finishes in your contract, what's included and what's not. Make payments only based on advance and not on time
- The hard part was getting my money out of the US so that I could build
- Make sure to put 15 % of the cost of your build asside for the planting and landscaping that you ganna need to do, to protect from erosion. Remember when you get the build price, it doesn't include furniture and the fixtures.
- The final phase of construction is always the costly part, save ahead to avoid surprises Prioritize the critical aspects of the house to be habitable, avoid spending on areas that can wait for after moving in
- Being more involved and having shared design and buying process with other expert to know better materials and costs.
🎨 Design
- Live in Costa Rica for some time before you build if you are able to. Perhaps in more than one type of house. You can see what your needs/wants are by experiencing different homes.
- Make sure the windows slide the way you want
- No butterfly roof (Khaya)
- Have a ladder or other way to get to the roof
- Making sure to go in full detail room by room during the design. What seems obvious sometimes may be overlooked.
📐 Engineering
- Have a credentialed (or at least verified or trusted by the community) engineer survey the structure of the home before they apply any wall/ceiling/roof finishing.
🌊 Adaptability
- Remove the sentence: "It should be like this..." from your brain. "It" will be however "it" will be. You will not change when a truck arrives etc.
- Don't get upset when unexpected issues arise. Usually a better solution is revealed.
- Be patient because the build will not go on schedule. Be open minded because you may have to modify or adjust your plans depending on if things are out of stock, understand it may get too expensive and have to cut back on things so decide what are must haves and would be nice to haves.
- Do not expect perfection. Have standards and be clear about what you want, but also realize that things are done differently than they are back in your home country. The process can be slower, communication is not as frequent as you'd like, and the execution may not be the standards you are used to. Also, realize that there are culture differences so try to be mindful of how you approach dynamics between you and your architects/builders.
- So far the biggest lesson has simply been how much longer everything seems to take here than it reasonably should, to the point of shattering any pretense of a schedule I had been working against originally. Very discouraging, to say the least…
👀 Attention
- Communicate communicate communicate
- Keep detailed notes on everything that was discussed, and follow up with your builder as much as possible.
- Be on site as often as possible and take many pictures. Living here before designing the house helps to understand the lifestyle, climate and creatures better.
- Take copious notes and photos. You will need them.
- Be on site as much as you can. Bring food for the workers and be nice. They are building your house. Make sure if you are not here physically you have someone to look after the build and take pictures for you.
- Be here whilst you build, make sure you have an accurate timeline and if things change due to permitting (ours was held up for about a year!) get a new timeline of what is expected, get everything in writing!
- Be very specific and detail of what you want. However do not assume its done the way you said. Check and verify!!!
- Make sure when you make suggestions that they follow through with them
⚡️ Electrical
- Have them wire for solar.
- I think you are better to have more electrical outlets and circut panels. So if one gets blown out, the other can kick in.
- no light switches in the shower LOL
- Plugs and outlets should be in proper locations, make sure internet is properly prepared for ICE and in the right location
- Be present for your build. Have an actual credentialed (or at least verified and trusted by the community) electrician work on (or at least audit the work on) the house.
💨 Ventilation
- Make sure that the house has air flow, be sure to set up a smart house, so that you can turn on and off fans to help air flow.
💧 Plumbing
- Make sure they use a wax ring and bolts (not secured by concrete without a wax ring) to install your toilets.
🧱Materials
- Being more involved and having shared design and buying process with other expert to know better materials and costs.
🛒 Sourcing
- Buy your water filters, and fans and stuff like that not in CR.
- Shipped in some items for quality and price