Before deciding to build a custom home, people usually start out by looking for ideas. For that, they go around the neighborhood and start touring homes. People visit model homes for inspiration. Taking ideas from model homes can be good as well as bad for building a custom home project. If you just get inspired from the model home, it is fine. But, it can be really bad fi you end up copying the home and your new custom home would turn out to be not unique.
While starting out to build a custom home, you would be quite enthusiastic about it. But, your enthusiasm can hide the pitfalls you may encounter in the process which can turn out to be blunders later on. One of the common blunders which people make is that they end up having a larger outdoor area which would in turn end up shrinking the size of the rooms.
It is important to hire an experienced and expert custom home builder like Merlin for your project. Such a builder would help you avoid pitfalls while building a custom home.