Sounds like you have ideas but no specs. Who is designing the house? The builder? I would first get some more details around the plan. In the form of a spec document. An architect or deigned can help you

We used a metal (Decra) roof that is fire resistant on our home here in the woods. We have some standing seam on our "porches" as well, due to the slope there. Great decision for our location. Still, we had to go through some pushback to get it done. Our GC's roofer lost money by not getting our job since I had to hire someone who knew what they were doing with Decra. Our architectural committee had to peruse samples, which is understandable. Once we were approved and our builder met our roofer, everything was copacetic;)

On the kitchen cabs- don't say the word Ikea to a builder. Just know that there is a stigma attached to the old Ikea kitchens for them, and most of these guys haven't set foot in an Ikea probably for the last 10 years, or ever, in our case.

Depends really on how your builder handles his cabinetry usually. Does he have job carpenters who depend on him for work? Is he busy enough elsewhere to leave your kitchen a blank slate because his guys have cab work elsewhere? You will need to research and give him specific measurements for the framer if you are to fill in the blanks later. This is true whether you buy a Kraftmaid, Ikea or Kent Moore kitchen.

You really have to address the roof early on- but you can tell the builder that you are looking into prebuilt cabs. You don't have to tell him/her the brand.

If you want a builder to help you design the house, you should consider a design-build approach. If you want to design the house, you should consider a design-bid-built approach. For that you will need to hire a designer and you could also hire a builder as a consultant during the design phase.

It all depends on how responsive to your needs and desires you want the design to be and how much you are willing to pay for that service.

I have nothing against Ikea, I am using a lot of their products in my house. But I would never plan to use them for the kitchen in a new build. They simply don't have enough variety in their sizes. So you end up with spacers everywhere, and not making a good use of the space. They actually got WORSE in this regard with the new line. Plus, the amount of work to make it all look built in will eat up any cost savings. And it won't look as good as semi-custom would.

I do have Ikea cabinets in my mudroom and closet, where the sizes happened to work. I wasn't able to use it for all of the mudroom, though, or the living room built-ins, the upstairs window seat, or the bathrooms. And ugh, the amount of time I would have spent assembling them if I'd been able to get them for the kitchen makes me want to cry. That's a LOT of cabinets.

You *could* design the house to make the Ikea cabinets work. But then you're hooped if the framer screws up and puts the wall an inch too far to one side, which is too small to even consider an screw up in construction.

The answer will always be, IF it's an actual custom home, sure you can do what you want, it'll just cost you more. If t's a production build, forget it.

What's the attraction to an ikea kitchen? I've not heard good things about their quality.

What's the attraction to an ikea kitchen? I've not heard good things about their quality. - Post this question on the kitchen forums, or just search the threads. There are experienced cabinet makers that would use Ikea for their home. Many experienced woodworkers use Ikea boxes and make or order the doors, for their own kitchen. Generally, Ikea are considered decent to high quality at an excellent price. A custom kitchen for my home was exactly three times the price of the Ikea kitchen. While I am not sure I am going with Ikea, it certainly provides a good starting point for comparison.