Custom Home Builder · Nashville, TN
The Blueprint
Building on Middle Tennessee land: site costs that surprise people, barndominium against stick-built, pole barn foundations, and the permits and schedules a builder should put in writing.
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Recent posts on building
Written by Michael Blair, owner of Nashville's Contractor, from the trade’s own practice.
October 12, 2026
Site Grading Plans in Nashville: When Metro Needs One
Before a house goes on a Davidson County lot, the ground has to be shaped and its water sent somewhere. When that work needs a Metro grading permit, what the exemptions cover, and the order the review runs in.
Read itOctober 8, 2026
Barndominiums in Tennessee: When a Barn Becomes a House
A barndominium is a post-frame building held to a house’s code. What that changes in the foundation, the walls and the windows, and why the farm exemption is narrower than people hear.
Read itSeptember 28, 2026
Permits for a Detached Garage or Workshop
Four walls and a slab look simple until zoning, easements and a bathroom enter the plan. What the county looks at before a detached garage or shop goes up.
Read itSeptember 21, 2026
Building Through a Middle Tennessee Winter
Nashville winters are mild enough to build through and wet enough to complicate it. The trades that care about temperature and the ones that care about mud are different.
Read itSeptember 14, 2026
Who Insures the House While It Is Being Built
A fire, a hailstorm or a theft during construction can land in a gap between two policies most people assume overlap. Find out before work starts whether yours do.
Read itSeptember 7, 2026
Change Orders and How They Get Away From You
The budget rarely breaks in one place. It breaks across a run of change orders, each of which seemed reasonable on the day it was signed.
Read itSeptember 1, 2026
What a Construction Contract Should Say
A one-page estimate is not a contract, and the gap between the two is where a disagreement finds room to grow.
Read itSeptember 1, 2026
How Permits and Inspections Actually Work
A contractor who offers to skip the permit is saving themselves the inspection, not saving you the fee.
Read itSeptember 1, 2026
Paying a Contractor Without Losing Leverage
Money not yet paid is the strongest say a homeowner has in how a job ends, and it should stay behind the work rather than ahead of it.
Read itSeptember 1, 2026
Hiring a General Contractor or Managing It Yourself
Owner-building saves real money and costs more than most people expect in time, sequencing and risk.
Read itSeptember 1, 2026
The Contingency Every Renovation Needs
A budget with no contingency has nothing behind it when a wall opens up, and federal rehab lending requires one on any house 30 years or older.
Read itSeptember 1, 2026
Checking a Contractor Before You Sign
Three checks, each answering its own question, and all of them done before a signature rather than after a problem.
Read itService area
Where we build across Middle Tennessee
Our builders take on lots in Nashville and 64 more places in 12 counties. Land up to about an hour’s drive from Nashville, wherever it is in Middle Tennessee, is ground we will walk.
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