Hello, I'm looking for feedback from those with a home elevator. We're less than a year from breaking ground on our modern custom dream home. We've been planning it for more than 6 years now and it's likely to be our forever home. I say likely because you never know but we don't plan on moving. I've asked that an elevator shaft be designed in since it's a 3 story house and at some point we'll need to move or need an elevator.

The elevator location is very well placed and essentially 3 closets stacked on top of each other with bolt our floors with a mechanical room in the basement and a 20 inch deep concrete pit to accomodate. I've put a lot of time into planning the shaft for a future elevator. My wife and I are in great shape and health so I always refer to it as future since we don't need it now.

We're building a very sleek and modern home that will have floating wood stairs with no carpeting due to aesthetics. We're also using glass railing and don't plan on using a hand rail other than the top edge of the glass. We'll have a temporary rail to get by code then pull it off....looks cool without hand rails.

Given the stairs will have a small element of being a slip hazard (probably just once!) :) I'm starting to wonder if we shouldn't just put in the elevator versus in the future when we need it. My wife's always said she doesn't want a 40 year old elevator when she really needs it, I don't want to pay taxes on something we don't need now, have a phone line we don't need and I feel it might be a bit pretentious.

We can likely squeeze it into our budget pretty easily but as with most we keep running over what we originally thought we were going to spend but we keep saving more and more and that's why we've been planning/saving for 6 years to assure we accumulate enough cash for flexibility and stability.

I'm starting to think we just put it in and I'd save some money by not drywalling the insides of the 3 closets, not having to build the temporary floors, put in lighting, etc.... I'm probably looking at about $5K for those items and $28K for an elevator for a net cost of $23K and it's done for the next 40 years.

I'm curious what other homeowners with them would do if they had to do it all over again. Put it in now or wait.

Thanks for any feedback!