There was clearly not going to be any progress with our dream house for 2011. Samurai was still heavy into culinary school, I was still finishing up my semester at school before our daughter came and outside of that, my time was well spent on my laptop fiddling around with my Live Interior program.
One good thing... While houses were built on the first two lots of the development, we really didn't know how sales on the remaining lots were going. I then noticed a listing for the development on a well-know website and there were only a few more lots being advertised and the value increased to $1.1M!!! The agent that put us on to this property was right about the potential. This meant that the property value increased by 16% in two years and it would be even more for us because of the introductory price we got. Score!
My cousin's house not too far from us was almost completed and it was so exciting to get the tour. She gave us lots of pointers and tips and tricks and suggested some key people for the different aspects of the construction process.
That night we reviewed the changes to our plan and called up the draughtsman she recommended. We thought he might have forgotten about us but he didn't. She was right about the fact that he really listens to what you need and your wish list...
We again discussed the costs and process to start designing the house and arranged to meet him by the land so he'll get an idea of any structural issues that might occur. He seemed really laid back and patient and answered all our questions.
He mentioned that because the land sloped on both sides, it will be best to include a retaining wall to the left and back of the house. This meant a slight increase again in what we budgeted for thanks to this new retaining wall cost.
The more he spoke the more it seemed our costs were adding up. So at the same time, I saw my dream home slipping away again.
We gave the draughtsman prints of the final plan I developed after slaving on my little ole program. We also had two internal staircases. One was 4ft wide because Samurai believes that a wide staircase will be needed for lugging large furniture and another was 2ft wide only to find out that the minimum width of a staircase must be 3ft and we would never get it approved. He suggested we converted that second staircase to a spiral. Everything else he said should be okay.
He promised to quickly send across a completed version for review which he did in a few weeks... and after a few calls but his changes were a bit too... well, I just didn't feel it.
Samurai left the inspection and feedback up to me and even though much of the layout was the same, the upper floor had this awkward new hallway that started to make the house very maze-ish. Samurai and I are also very particular about the size of the rooms and the kitchen for one just wouldn't work.
Anyways, we made some changes and sent it back to him but the more we thought about cost, the more we wondered if we would be able to build the entire house, of settle for just the upper floor for now. Hey, when you're in Central, do as the Central people do.
We decided to call the draughtsman and tell him to hold on any further work until we got our budget and costing in order.
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