2 More Weeks and Some Real Progress!

Since my last post we would wait another week to finally receive the revised plans, in fairness to the architect, he actually sent them when I made the post, but we never got them in our email.  It was only discovered when we received his invoice without receiving plans that we figured it all out and got them.  We looked them over and sent them immediately to the builder.  Then to pass the time we found a new restaurant, right, a great little Mexican place, Taqueria Cambray with awesome street style tacos and more.

We had an awesome visit including dinner, bourbon, and cigars with friends, John and Diane, a wonderful afternoon and evening.  Yeah, I forgot pictures again:-(

Our neighbor bush hogged our lot for us, made quite a difference as it is growing like wild fire.

That's our new neighbor to be's house under construction
with the same builder we picked

Each weekend we go down and have a picnic on our lot then go over and walk through the neighbor's construction to see how they are progressing and also to see how the builder is doing.  

When we found out our favorite Vietnamese restaurant shut their doors, we went on a quest to find another and we did, 575 Bistro, very good, so on one of our hot days we thought a Vietnamese Bun would be good, it is a salad with a very light dressing and cold noodles, hit the spot, delish!

Shrimp and pork

Short rib

We were even able to go out and celebrate Jan's birthday with a Birthday Guinness!

The builder was quick once he got the plans, we had a 1 1/2 hour zoom meeting the next day to confirm the plans and make many more choices, he said he would send them off to various subs for estimates, but the lumber quote normally took about 3 weeks, putting us at least into the week of July 20th.  Meanwhile he sent the plans over to another company that handles flooring, cabinets, countertops, tile, etc, and said we'd hear from them fairly soon.  And sure enough we spent 2 1/2 hours there yesterday making choices about all of those items.  So coupled together with quotes for all of that and also from the subs and lumber company, we will have to keep our fingers crossed for another 2 or so weeks before we really, really know if this is a go, so what to do?

A 5 week getaway to Maine, that's what, cool off bit and try to put a dent in the lobster population, as well as keeping the seafood industry afloat:-)

Progress, Maybe?

It's been 2 1/2 weeks since my last update.  First we sat down with our CAD/Architect guy for an hour and a half, changed a few things around, he knew we were meeting with the builder the next day so he told us he would hold off on the revision in case the builder had some new input.  The next day we met the builder, signed an initial contract with him and then started on our choices.  Wow, 3 hours later after hundreds of choices, and a few changes to the plan, we had to leave off until the revision was completed, and could be evaluated so we'd be able to make even more choices, such as flooring, cabinetry, countertops, appliances, etc.  So here we are still working on the plan revision, lots of back and forth, but progress.  We had an item we really wanted on the house, that we had removed, much to our disappointment to try to save money, but now it is back which makes Jan and I very happy.

The funny thing is other than a very rough estimate to even encourage us to go as far as we have, it will most likely be another 2-3 weeks before we know more precisely what the house will cost, and whether it will be palatable or not, if it is, and man, do we have our fingers crossed that it is, then it goes to the bank for approval and appraisal, another 30 days or so to close, then 2-4 weeks for permits, so we are still 10-12 weeks away, translating to breaking ground in October????

So what to do?  We have to be here in the near future so we can make a lot of the choices, but after that, not much sense just hanging out twiddling our thumbs, and that's got us thinking about maybe heading out somewhere, hmmmm.