Are We Moving Finally?

Here we are almost another 3 weeks into this process, and........

So to get our mind off the builders and plans for awhile we decided to go try a restaurant that we haven't been to in over 15 years, Nori Nori.  It's in Sandy Springs so it's a pretty good haul, but what else are we doing?  It used to be very good, it is a Japanese buffet, but very high quality, lots of sushi, salads, sides, hot and cold dishes, soups, and desserts, that is replenished continuously.  And quite affordable with all that is offered, especially since the price at sushi restaurants seems to always be going up.  Well, it turned out fantastic!

We've kind of fallen into a routine on Saturdays to go down to the property and have a picnic and then go through our new neighbors house that is under construction, but the last few times it has turned into a picnic inside the truck as it has been raining. 

Karen and Tom came in for a week, so lots of HH's, visits, dinner, and discovered a few, new to us, restaurants.  Trying to break out of our rut of repeats, and we've been pretty successful, new Pho, sushi, taco joint, etc.  Do I have pictures of the new places, unfortunately no, so you get to escape even more food photos:-)

So the latest saga on the house building, after revising the plans and sending them to the original builder with high hopes, and being told it would take 7-10 days to get the new estimate, we confidently waited, ended up being actually 3 long weeks to get the estimate and when we looked at it, we were flabbergasted once more, it was an insignificant reduction in price, in fact, with the reduced square footage, the actual price per foot increased!  We don't know if we were led along on a wild goose chase or actually if he was trying to pull one over on us even though he seemed really nice and has a great reputation, nonetheless he is totally out of the picture now.  Completely dead to us:-(  That left one final builder and the same builder that is already building the house next to us.  We have had several conversations with him, talked to our neighbor that is using him who is very satisfied, and we felt he would do a good job, has many houses under construction or already built in the area, and has a superb reputation.  He is a small family builder and since he is a cost plus builder, we get to control and impact the costs as we move along.  Mostly he is willing to do as little or as much as we want with items that we directly choose.  It's a little different concept, but more as if we were contracting it ourselves.  We are finally very encouraged and it looks like we will be starting the contract procedure next week, so who knows, maybe we have finally got the show on the road.  More to follow in the next few weeks.

Another 3 Weeks, and Little To Show

It doesn't feel like we've accomplished much over this last 3 weeks, but actually looking back, we did quite a bit.

We sat down with our architect for 1 1/2 hours to revise, reduce, economize where we could, all trying to keep with the original vision that Jan and I have, and I think it turned out very well, lost a few things we want, but the majority and the basic bones are still there.  That process of drawing the new revised plans took about 10 days.  Meanwhile we talked to a few other builders and eliminated 2, so we are now down to 2.

So with nothing else to do but wait we found a new to us Vietnamese restaurant, I Luv Pho, that we really enjoyed, in fact we have been there twice already and are looking forward to more visits to explore more of their menu!

This is a lemongrass Bun, served warm

Tasty shrimp tempura

A delicious spicy shrimp salad

And a more traditional Bun served cold with shrimp,
BBQ pork, and an egg roll, yummy!

We met our friends' Diane and John for a nice visit over lunch.

And we've been cooking here as well, an Asian inspired lamb shank, unique for us and very, very good, and home made pizza.

We even decided to get away for a few days and went back up to Talona Ridge in Ellijay for a change of scenery and to visit Karen.  No, no pictures, unfortunately.

We also had to move sites here in Winding Waters.  When we were making the initial reservations we were told we could only stay in the premium sites on a monthly basis until Memorial day, then we would have to move to either a classic or preferred.  We picked what we thought was a very desirable site on an end, pointing north so we'd be in shade at HH, very important here as the summer heat arrives, but unfortunately it turned out to be a poor decision.  It was right across from one of the dumpster locations, so people banging on the doors and garbage trucks coming and going at all hours, and I do mean all hours.  It was weird, the garbage trucks even came often in the middle of the night 0115am, 0300am, as well as other times throughout the day.  Another thing we missed was we were between three dog pen sites, yes they have several sites that have a small dog pen installed, and what we found was people figured since they had a pen, they could just leave the dog or dogs, even had one neighbor with 6 dogs in theirs while they did what ever, just letting them bark to high heaven, and then since they face the park's dog runs right across the road from us, it was quite a cacophony many times.  Then the final icing on the cake was it was also on the direct route from the area of the park that has long term working people in it, and we think every single one drives a loud diesel truck.  Then add in the fact it was also the quickest way to the pool and water park, and it seems that every kid now has an electric something, scooter, bike, things we couldn't even identify flying by at a hundred mph.  A perfect storm as it turned out, but now we have moved to a preferred site, a little smaller, but still quite large, near the back of the park, away from the dumpsters, dogs, and the loud trucks, it's almost like we're here all by ourselves, wonderful.

So latest update we have submitted the revised plans to 2 builders, one, the one that came in so high initially to see if our revisions really did the job, and another builder that is building the house next to us.  We have had many encouraging talks with him, and gone through several of his houses including our neighbors, so we still have our fingers crossed that we might hit pay dirt in the next week or so and be able to get the show on the road.