Questions, answered.

We draw the plans that houses get built from. A client comes to us with a lot, a budget and an idea, and leaves with a complete set of residential construction drawings their builder can price and build.

Around that we sell four things that attach to a build: 3D renderings, interior design packets, landscape design, and lumber and material takeoffs. You can buy any of them on their own without ever designing a home with us.

No, and we're careful about saying so. CDS is not a registered architectural firm and not an engineering firm. We are residential designers — which, for the overwhelming majority of single-family homes, is exactly who draws the plans.

What that means in practice: we don't stamp or seal drawings, and you'll need a licensed engineer for the foundation, framing and drainage. We'll tell you when you've hit the edge of what we do rather than let you find out at the permit desk.

We're based in The Woodlands, Texas, and most of our work is across greater Houston and the surrounding counties. But plans travel — we've drawn homes for clients well outside Texas, and the add-on services have no geography at all.

One thing to understand about building out of our area: you pull your own permit and you confirm that the design meets your local code and HOA rules. We cooperate fully with that process, but we don't practise your jurisdiction's code for you.

Book the free design session. It's an hour with an actual designer — not a salesperson — going through your lot, your must-haves and roughly what it's going to cost. There's no obligation and nothing to pay.

Come with whatever you've got: a plat, a Pinterest board, a napkin sketch, a plan you found online that's nearly right. All of it is useful.

Within one business day, to contact@constructiondesignsolutions.com or the form on our contact page. A real person reads it.

BGCH is our sister company — they build, we design. You are under no obligation to use them, and plenty of our clients take their plans to a builder of their own.

If you do end up building with BGCH, designing your home with a CDS designer is the engagement that carries toward that build. Buying a pre-drawn plan from the catalogue is a separate transaction and doesn't carry a build credit.

$1.75 per total covered square foot, with a $7,000 minimum.

“Total covered” means everything under roof — living space plus garages, porches, balconies, basements and any future space roughed into the plan. It's the same basis a framer uses, which is deliberate: it's the number that reflects how much drawing the house actually takes.

A 3,800 sq ft house with a garage and porches that comes to 4,900 covered feet is $8,575. Your price is guaranteed for twelve months from the date you sign.

Three payments, each tied to a phase rather than a calendar date:

Three sets, each building on the last.

• Preliminary Pricing Set — square footage legend, floor plans with room sizes, four basic elevations, material takeoff estimates, and a site plan if you've given us a boundary survey. Delivered as a PDF. This is what you hand a builder for a ballpark.
• Bid Set — the above plus general dimensions, door and window sizes, a roof plan and an electrical plan. PDF and two full-size hard copies. Marked Not for Construction; it's for getting comparable bids.
• Final Plans — fully dimensioned floor plans, four elevations, electrical and roof plans, a building cross-section where one is needed, a standard detail sheet, site plan and forming plan. PDF and five full-size sets.

In the preliminary phase, up to three rounds of changes to one general layout, plus three two-hour meetings with your designer, in person or over video. That's six hours of face time, which is more than it sounds like once the drawings are in front of you.

After that, additional work is $125 an hour. The one thing to watch: if you decide partway through that you want a fundamentally different house — a new layout, different design criteria — that's a new design, not a revision. We'll tell you clearly when you're approaching that line.

Changes also get more expensive as the set matures. Once you're past the Bid Set, moving exterior walls, adding or removing a brick ledge, or changing the roof is hourly work, because it ripples through every sheet.

This is the question we'd most like you to read, because every unhappy conversation in this industry starts with an assumption about scope.

Engineering is not included — foundation, structural, MEP, windstorm and civil are all yours to commission. You should hire a licensed engineer for drainage, foundation and framing.

Also excluded: pool design, landscape design, plumbing riser layouts, architect red-stamping, 3D renderings, interior material selections, and cabinet elevations and details.

A current boundary survey, your deed restrictions and any ACC or HOA guidelines, a topographic survey, your utility requirements, and a concept for the layout and elevation — even a rough one.

You're also the one who confirms the design meets local code and HOA rules, and who signs off on every room, garage, porch, driveway and turnaround dimension before we move forward. We draw it; you confirm it fits your life and your lot.

You do, or your builder does. We cooperate with the process — questions from the plan reviewer, revisions a jurisdiction asks for — but the permit application is yours.

The drawings remain CDS intellectual property. You receive reproducible copies for your own use — build your house, hand them to your builder, give them to your engineer, keep them forever.

What you can't do is sell them on. The design is the thing we actually make, so reselling it is the one use we hold back.

It depends on the house, how fast approvals come back from you, and what else is in the studio that month — so we give you a schedule at the start of the engagement rather than a number on a web page we'd have to hedge.

The honest version: the preliminary phase moves at the speed of your decisions. Clients who turn around a set of changes in two days finish considerably sooner than clients who take three weeks.

The standard engagement delivers PDFs and full-size paper sets. Editable CAD files are handled case by case — ask your designer early rather than at the end, because the answer can affect how the set is built.

Talk to us before you plan on it. Your copies are for your own use, and a second build is a conversation worth having up front — it's a straightforward one, but it isn't automatic.

Exterior: $250 for a front elevation rendering, $350 for the complete package.

Interior: $150 per room, or $100 per room once you're doing three or more. The whole home — all six rooms — is $550, which is $900 of rooms at the per-room rate.

If you've bought an interior design packet, your free room is credited against the whole-home price, so all six rooms comes to $400.

No. Send us a plan set — ours, another designer's, or one you bought online — and we'll render from it.

Three on paid rooms. The free room that comes with an interior packet includes one.

Often, yes — but let's be precise about why. A rendering carries no formal weight in permitting. What it does is make an architectural review submission easy to say yes to: most committees ask for exterior elevations, and a photorealistic one answers the question they're actually asking, which is what this will look like from the street.

A complete interior, already specified. Thirty-six to thirty-eight pages covering six rooms, naming every product — brand, model number, finish code and supplier. Counters, tile, fixtures, hardware, lighting, appliances, paint, with the sheen and the room for each colour.

It is not a mood board. You can order a house from it.

$500 each. Twelve packets across four collections — Farmhouse, Refined Traditional, Modern Industrial and Mediterranean — at three tiers each, so there's a budget, a middle and an heirloom version of every style.

Every packet includes one photorealistic 3D rendering of a room in your house, in that packet's exact selections. Email us your floor plan and a few photos of the room after you buy. One room, one revision round.

It exists because a specification list is hard to picture, and seeing your own kitchen in the materials is the fastest way to know whether you've chosen right.

Each packet carries an approved alternates page with a second choice already selected for the items most likely to move, plus lead-time planning. A substitution shouldn't unravel the palette, and the packet is built so it doesn't.

No. A packet covers the fixed interior — finishes, fixtures, appliances, paint. Sofas, beds and dining tables are yours.

Three phases, bought in order or stopped wherever you've got what you need.

• Phase 1 — Planting Schematic, $600. Site review, opportunities and constraints, and a schematic planting layout. Enough for many HOA and ARC preliminary submissions, and enough to hand a good landscaper.
• Phase 2 — Concept Site Plan, from $1,000. Hardscape footprint, full plant palette, a rendered to-scale plan, one revision round.
• Phase 3 — Construction-Ready Plans, from $2,000. Full plant schedule with quantities and spacing, dimensioned hardscape plan with materials, wall and step details, contractor coordination.

Pricing assumes a typical single-family lot. Larger or more complex properties are quoted from the starting figure.

Phase 1. It's deliberately scoped for exactly that — fast, compliant, and without revision cycles you don't need. If the committee comes back wanting more detail, Phase 2 picks up from it and nothing gets redrawn.

Yes, including houses that have been standing for thirty years. Send photos and whatever plot plan or survey you have.

We design them under three feet where the site allows, which keeps you out of needing a structural engineer. Anything taller gets flagged and scoped separately rather than quietly drawn.

Send us a plan set and we send back exactly what to order — framing lumber, housewrap, board feet and piece counts, itemised so a supplier can quote it directly.

14¢ per total covered square foot — the same covered-area basis as our design fee, so a 4,900 covered foot house is $686.

Three to five business days from a complete plan set.

No. Any plan set, from anyone. Builders send us other designers' drawings regularly.

We're building the catalogue now and would rather launch it with a handful of genuinely complete sets than a page of thumbnails. Join the list and we'll tell you the day it opens.

No, and we'd rather be clear about it now than improvise later. A catalogue purchase is a catalogue purchase. What carries toward a Built Green build is designing a home with a CDS designer.

Yes — that's most of why people buy one from the people who drew it rather than from a plan mill. Modifications are quoted against the change you want. The same $125 hourly rate applies to out-of-scope work.