Alexa and Phillip Falconer were on vacation in Washington state's Wenatchee Valley when they saw a stunningly beautiful, 40-acre parcel of land for sale. The couple, who work remotely and were living in Texas at the time, had never built-or even owned-a house before, but they had dreamed of living in the Pacific Northwest. They bought the Waterville, Wash., property for $125,000 in 2022.

This past April, they finished building a custom-designed, two-bedroom modern house on the site. The cost: $861,000-exactly on budget.

"I'd always thought that building your own house was only something that really rich people could do," said Phillip, 33, an accountant. "But we were able to swing it,"

The Falconers gave their architects a list of features they hoped would be included in their 1,176-square-foot house, including a sunken living room and lots of windows for views of the surrounding fields, which are dotted with basalt boulders. They didn't request any specific style of house or materials. "We gave them a blank slate," said Alexa, 31, who works in corporate sales for a manufacturing company.

It was that trust-and flexibility-that made the project work, said their architect, Steven Booher of Leavenworth, Wash.-based architecture firm Syndicate Smith. "It can be really easy for clients to get off track and make micro decisions," he said.

The Falconers said they are happiest about the way the design makes the house fit into the boulder-strewn landscape. "It's like our house is another rock," said Philip. Keeping that concept in mind helped keep the design compact and efficient, said Booher.

The right location

Booher spent a lot of time scoping out the Falconers' land to find a spot with the fewest boulders. He also looked for a flat area, since building on a slope adds cost to the process, requiring structural elements like retaining walls or supports for cantilevers.

Meanwhile, the Falconers found a contractor willing to agree to a final price ahead of the work. There was a contingency of $90,000 in case they ran into rocks when preparing the site (they didn't), which would have required bringing in a crew to blast the rocks away.

Booher designed the house with two floors; that allowed a more efficient allocation of square footage without increasing the price. "The more you spread out, the more expensive it gets," he said. He put in large but not floor-to-ceiling windows, saving money on the amount of glass while giving more intentional views. "Limiting the ability to see it all at once makes it more dramatic," he said. "It's using the glass wisely."

When it became too expensive to have wooden ceilings on both the second and first floors, the Falconers decided to use them only on the first floor. They saved about 30% on the cost of the wood by buying it straight from a local lumber mill and having the contractor stain it, rather than buying manufactured wood that comes pre-stained.

Creative trade-offs

The Falconers requested metal on the exterior of the house for fire protection, and Booher originally wanted to use zinc metal panels; the material, often used for modern houses, develops a patina over time. But when that priced out at $175,000, he pivoted to using corrugated metal, turning the panels horizontally and vertically in different spots to mimic the look of the zinc, but at half the cost. These days there are so many products, it's often easy to find cheaper materials, said Booher. "The trick is to not get your heart set on a specific material or look, as long as you can achieve the same feeling with an alternative," he said.

They decided to forgo a professional landscaper, and are working on the grounds themselves. And Alexa did make one big sacrifice. She desperately wanted a $15,000 stone bathtub she saw at a shop in Seattle. Ultimately she decided to skip it because it was too big for the space and would have been even more expensive to customize. "Next house, if we do it again," she said.

There may be a second chance. Since Alexa has to travel a lot for work, they moved from Austin, Texas, to a rental home near Seattle. They want to build another home in the Seattle area and continue to use their new home in Waterville for weekends and vacations. "We had a good time building this," said Phillip. "It was fun."