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the avanti group WASHINGTON - Julie Friedman, 40, and her fiance, Jonathan Spector, 48, were on a mission last fall to find a home that would comfortably fit the two of them plus their combined five kids. They were well aware that any house might need some tweaking to fit the bunch, so they brought along Howard Kandel, who is a design builder - a contractor who both designs and remodels homes. Thanks to new technology, little needs to be left to the imagination when it comes to home building, renovations and purchases these days. Remodeling companies use 3-D home-design software to present computer images of what a renovated home could end up looking like. "At the end of the day, very few people have the imagination to be able to look at a set of plans and have any idea of what that's actually going to look like," Kandel says. "We can throw in furniture and wall coverings, paint colors and different materials and literally build it probably to 90 to 95 percent of what it's really gonna look like." Friedman, who is a landscape designer, had always wanted a rambler with a U-shaped patio. "I wanted to feel like you would walk out of the back of your house and be surrounded by the garden, surrounded by the house," she says. "And somehow we just found it." Her dream home was on the market in Rockville, Md. But there was one problem: It was short two much-needed bedrooms. Cue Mr. Kandel. Using a 3-D home-design software package called Chief Architect, Kandel showed Friedman and Spector a lifelike rendering of what that house would become if they converted an unwanted formal family room into two extra rooms for the kids. "It really felt like what your home was going to look like," Friedman says. "Some of the girls' rooms were going to be these bright fun colors instead of just a plain white room, so he was able to change the color of the walls and change the color of the furniture." Companies such as Kandel Construction and Bowa in the Washington area work wi