Curtis and Stefanie Hays heard the same reaction from almost everyone they told. As Curtis tells it, “A lot of people we told that we were building a new home, they all said, ‘You must be crazy. That’s got to be an awful experience.'”
He gets why people assumed the worst. Building a house has a reputation: blown budgets, endless delays, marriages tested. But for Curtis and Stefanie, building wasn’t the dramatic choice. It was the practical one. They wanted to move out into the country, and the homes on the market just weren’t there. So they found some land instead, and decided to build.
“A custom build is pretty scary to get into,” Stefanie admits. But Hamilton Homes, one of MANS’ trusted homebuilder partners, came highly recommended, and once the Hays family sat down with them, initial fear started giving way to something else: a blank canvas suddenly coming to life.
“I was looking for a ranch,” Stefanie says. “They had a few different options, but none that we really loved. We ended up utilizing an architect and customizing exactly what we wanted. You just have this canvas where you get to really think about how your family lives and design your house around that…rather than shoving your lifestyle into an already built house.”
That canvas came with real risk attached, and Curtis knew it going in. “What you don’t want to end up happening is you find out that your site costs are twice as much as what you expected, and then you can’t actually build the home that you want to build.” Unbuilt land hides its costs. A custom build means facing them before the first wall goes up—not after.
This is where Hamilton Homes, with the MANS Lumber & Home team behind them, supplying everything from the foundational lumber to the finished millwork, earned the trust that turned the project around. “What I can say about them is they took all the worry and all the concern out of building on land,” Curtis says, “because there are a lot of unknowns.”
Trust and Partnership: Two Cornerstones of a New Home
David Hamilton, the builder, is blunt about why that trust holds up. “The most important thing is transparency. You have to be honest. Every house is going to have its challenges. There’s going to be problems. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. The key is you tell them…don’t let them tell you .”
He’s just as direct about what he won’t do: “The one thing I will not do is go back and say, ‘You know what, I’m going to need a little bit more money.’ I don’t do that.” Any overage the Hays family absorbed, they absorbed by choice. “If we were over budget, those were our decisions that we made,” Curtis says. “They weren’t surprises that came in the back door.”
Honesty about cost solved one fear. The other—the sheer number of decisions a custom build demands—got solved by sequencing.
Stefanie had watched other people spiral over choices most homeowners never used to face not that long ago. Her grandparents shopping for a toilet had four options, and those four options were just colors. Her list was longer than that on cabinet pulls alone.
“Most people say, ‘I can’t imagine the choices you have to make. How did you pick all of those things?'” Stefanie says. “It’s not something I would say I’m naturally good at. But David and Brian at MANS made it so easy for us, just to have everything very phased. They didn’t overwhelm me. David would say, ‘This week, we’re picking out cabinets, and then lighting.’”
That proactive and creative team even caught things Stefanie wouldn’t have thought to ask for. “There were a number of things David and Hamilton Homes brought to our attention, like, ‘Hey, we’ve got some dead space here in the master bathroom. I think we could fit a tiny linen closet in there.'” Nobody asked Stefanie or Curtis to spot that. Somebody was already looking, and had both the expertise and the courtesy to make a well-informed recommendation.
The Dream Come to Life
The house started to hold pieces that were purely, specifically theirs. Stefanie recalls working with Brian and David on the finest details at the Dillman & Upton (A MANS Family Company) showroom in Rochester. “I had an idea of things we wanted, like stairway spindles and railings, and when I showed Brian some photos I had saved on my phone, he immediately assured me, ‘Yep! I know exactly what we’ll do!’”
“We were even able to customize an accent wall in the office, using interesting millwork with Brian’s team’s design eye and attention to detail,” she continues. “It elevates the style of the entire home. It’s right at the entryway, and it immediately conveys the feeling of custom and not cookiecutter when you enter the home.
“Once we started the process with Hamilton Homes, it was incredible and so easy,” Curtis says. “When you’re working with partners like David and Brian, you can make some really creative decisions without breaking the bank, but still bring something incredibly unique to the home.”
Curtis and Stefanie heard from the outset that most families tell the opposite story from their own experience when building a home. Never again…our marriage nearly didn’t survive it. “Not in our case,” working with MANS and Hamilton: Curtis says. “It was a great experience.”
Stefanie puts it more simply, looking back on land that once had nothing on it but risk. “I always say if I didn’t love this house so much, I would go do it again and again.”
For David, the payoff isn’t the framing or the final walkthrough. “At the end, there’s nothing better to me than the keys and the hug. That’s my favorite part.”
And that’s what it means to be a part of the extended Mans family.
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