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.

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.