I'm building from out of state, gutsy I know. My builder did specifically mention that we will want to arrange to be in town during framing. I spose its the best time to walk through and catch things that aren't as your minds eye saw them

Do you have a friend or relative that you trust to be there as oversight? Framing is so important...it's the "bones" of your home. Really, only you can decide if you should cancel your trip.

I was gone often during our build, but DH was here the whole time. He made decisions in the kitchen, and other areas, that were not what I would have done. And some of them were contrary to what we had already decided. Needless to say, these little things drive me crazy.

We are going out of town during Insulation / Drywall Hanging. Not too worried about it.

We are fortunate to be living on the property where our house is being built. We caught so many almost mistakes & load-bearing issues during the framing. Sometimes the carpenters aren't on the same page so it's vital for us to do a walk through a couple times a day to make sure everything is right.

A major change for us were the windows. We have a spectacular southern view of the mountains and we thought (on paper, at least) that the windows we had were sufficient for the view. Not! After they were framed in, we did a walk-through. I couldn't see the top of my favorite mountain while standing in my kitchen. That was just not going to happen! So...we changed 3 windows to one huge 8 x 8 sliding door alongside another large window. I'm SO glad we caught that.

We also changed our north bedroom windows to show the mountains on the other side. Our intent was to be able to lay in bed & watch the waterfalls. After the original window was framed, we did a test...nope, could not see the entire mountain as if we were laying in bed. So...we had that changed out to 2 much larger windows. Again, we would never have known unless we were actually there to see it.

We also were able to make other changes as they progressed that we would never have thought of on paper. We added lots of transom windows to allow a lot of southern light that we would never have known before walking through.

Like joyce said...framing is the bones of your house. Also, no one cares about your house than you.

We had to have the first dormer torn completely off of the house because it looked like a doghouse instead of matching our plan.

As we pulled into the site that evening with our 2 yr old twins in tow and I saw that dormer, I remember thinking OH NO.

During a building project on a former house, we went out of town for one week.
We had a front porch and a back deck already. We were adding a large room to the side of our house, and the plan was to put a balcony at the end of the new room.
When we returned, the guys had built the balcony, and, for whatever reason, had continued it so that it attached to the front porch and to the back deck, making it a wrap-around.
After much discussion and our decision to just leave it there at that point, the builder said, "You will be so much happier with it this way."
It did turn out that we loved it, and it all worked out.
But still, my husband said, "It's a good thing we came home before you had a chance to connect this thing to the neighbor's porch!"