Over the years, I have worked on many beautiful homes. Most of them were structurally sound. But the beauty of many of them was only skin deep; They turned out to be uncomfortable to live in, expensive to operate, and next-to-impossible to maintain. I have no doubt that the money wasted during construction became a lingering burden on the new owners.

It's all-to-common to find that after living in their "dream home" for a few years, the owners notice that some rooms are too hot or too cold or too drafty. It may vaguely bother them that there doesn't seem to be enough light in the kitchen and laundry area (We paid all that money to the electrician for this?). They may become annoyed to find that it takes 60 seconds for the water to get hot at their bathroom sink (Why didn't the plumber do something about that?).

I recently worked on several million-dollar-plus homes in the Cashiers, NC area, which had these faults and many more. One had a smoke detector (containing a 9V backup battery) at the peak of the cathedral ceiling in the living room - twenty feet above the floor. I wondered how the new owners intended to to change the battery when the unit started beeping at them after a year or two. There was a ceiling fan up there too with no provision to change the fan speed or reverse it's direction (Didn't anybody know that you can buy remote controls for those fans?)

This same home didn't have a light switch at the doorway of the kitchen coming from the hallway. So if the owner had happened to want a midnight snack, s/he would have to either carry a flashlight or stumble across the large, dark kitchen to turn on the lights. Nobody in the design process thought to provide space on the kitchen island to mount a switch for the garbage disposal. The only place for it was underneath the cabinet below the sink: To turn on the disposal, the owner had to bend down and open the cabinet door and feel around under there for the switch. (This is what you get for $1.5 million?)

One of the two furnaces in this "luxury home" was located in the crawl space under the house, and the other in a tiny attic space above a bedroom, accessible only with an extension ladder. That's where the air filter was located. I wondered whether the new owners even knew it was up there, and that it needed to be changed every couple of months.

The duct work in this home was a tangle of flex-duct hanging down in the crawl space - the cheapest possible material one could use located in the worst possible location for energy efficiency, maintenance, and protection from vermin. That type of duct work is almost impossible to clean should mold develop, and prone to accumulate dust (and dust mites) in its convolutions. (Mold? Mites? We didn't think of that!)

How can an owner spending $1.5 million dollars for a custom-built home get so little for his or her money? It's easy. As described above, "It's been done before!"

Most owners have grown up unaware of the science, engineering and standards of home construction. They've been busy earning money in their own profession and don't have a clue about how things should be done in this one. They know nothing of new materials and new building techniques - It might as well be brain surgery to them. So, the owner relies on an Architect and Contractor(s) to work out the details of building a home. But as I have described above, they need more.