It is fun and exciting to plan and decide on the scope of your backyard project - all the way down to the stamp of your concrete and the color of railing top cap. While it may seem thorough and proactive to chart the course of your project down to the fine details, it is not always to the advantage of your project to do so. There are certain details that end up being more beneficial to wait on deciding until right before it is ready to be built or installed.
Details like railing color or the number of skylights can be difficult to absorb looking at samples or seeing the floor plan, and projects make such drastic progress over the course of each day of construction; you may find you have a change of heart halfway through.
Customers often find themselves making different choices standing on their newly built deck or under where their patio cover is going to go than they would have before the project started.
While this may result in some change orders (and, depending on the degree of change, it can extend the projected construction time of your project), your level of satisfaction once your project is completed will be much higher if you have the ability to make these decisions as the structure is being built. By all means - clip the magazine pictures, create those new pin boards, and sketch out your ideas. They provide the designer with a much clearer idea of the direction you would like your design to go. Just think about holding off on committing to some of those finer details until you can start to see the final the product and then make your decision.
