LAKEWOOD, Ohio — As the housing market continues to boom, builders have stayed busy, but the supply chain and inflation keep interrupting their timelines. During all that, one company came up with a way to bring blueprints to life to help make changes before the foundation is laid.
Darla Kurtz has been building for quite a while; she first built interiors for 30 years, then spent the next 15 years building exteriors, new builds, and home additions. During the past few years, the broken supply chain issues and the cost of materials have delayed some of her company's builds.
“There's a lot of lighting fixtures and plumbing fixtures and things like that that are extremely back-ordered,” said Kurtz, co-owner of Latina Design Build Group.
What sets that timeline back even further is when the homeowner wants to change the plan.
“It's a big deal, because you have to figure out if it's going to work for one; there's also all sorts of mechanical issues that could come into play,” said Kurtz.
But with the help of a local company called Walk Your Plans, they can take that blueprint and bring it to life.
“What we do is — we're a projection facility, and we take blueprints, and we project them to scale within one inch of exactly what your blueprints will be,” said Joe Matejka, owner and founder of Walk Your Plans.
Walk Your Plans can project up to 3,025 square feet at a time, but they’ve done projects all the way up to 40,000 square feet. They are the first of its kind in Ohio that provides a visual 1 to 1 scale opportunity, where homeowners can adjust and change anything in their blueprint before the foundation goes down.
“What matters actually more than you would think is the smaller spaces. People spend a lot of time making sure that their bathrooms work,” Matejka said.
On average, they say people make up to 10 to 15 changes to their blueprint once they come in and physically walk it.
“With most people, your home's your biggest asset, right? It's when you live there, you want it to be perfect, and those little changes can make a world of difference,” said Joe.
However, the software doesn't eliminate the building challenges.
“There are still barriers in the fact that when the structure is actually constructed, they may want to make some other minor changes,” said Kurtz.
It can help people visualize their dream home while also saving them money because changes once the foundation is down can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
It can also save the construction company time, all with a simple projection.
“If more of the decisions are made ahead of time, it doesn't slow the process down,” said Kurtz.
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