Met with Terry the Builder

Oh, if only his name were Bob! Then I could have clever post titles.

Dennis and I met with Terry last night to talk about proposed modifications to the house plans. Dennis was there for just under 2 hours before he had to leave to go to a firefighter officers' meeting. I stayed for another 2 hours after that. Yes, almost four hours talking with Terry. He was very thoughtful and patient with our many pages of questions and diagrams and whatever. And I guess he didn't want to eat any dinner himself, because I was there from 5:30 until about 9:15.

And after all that's said and done... we probably won't change too much at all. As you can sortof see in the picture from yesterday's post, we had over fifteen changes we had documented, and he had a couple more. We'll probably do:

• a walk-UP basement with those groovy cellar doors like in Twister or The Wizard of Oz. Terry's not a fan, but it does seem easier than making a full walkout.
• extend the back wall of the master bath approximately 2 feet to create more standing room around the vanities
• switch the closet and vanity for the third bedroom
• change the closet to a mudroom with 2'8" doors
• reduce the inset of the front door

We're also definitely removing the gables from the roof and reducing the pitch. Terry is getting back to us on estimates for doing the vaulted ceiling, blown-in insulation, and a ton of other stuff.

The money did start to add up last night. The house plan as currently estimated is about $XXX,XXX, but we'll definitely be adding to that. Then "little things" like a sewer connection, water and gas lines, garage door openers, blah, blah, blah, was adding up to about $13k. So that's $XXX,XXX, plus the lot ($XX,XXX)... we'll probably have to get the construction loan approved for $XXX,XXX to be safe. Which means we need to come up with $XX,XXX in the next 16 days. Strangely enough, I think we can do it. (In 30 years, our kids will laugh at how cheap our house was. The way we laugh about our parents and grandparents buying a house for $30k total. Right?) ... OK, I had actual dollar amounts in here. But this is the internet, after all. So $X it is!

The BEST news is that we can probably start digging on December 3, and we might have a basement poured during the week of Dec. 10 if the weather cooperates! Unbelievable.