Eeek, it's almost December!

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a very nice Thanksgiving! I know I did. Thanks to Jane's 14 pies (well okay, there were four pies but it seemed like 14!), I think I gained about 5 pounds in 5 days. That's impressive, even for me.

I really have no update - I just e-mailed the architect to get a status check on our blueprints. I'll check in again once I've heard from him. I'm hoping December will be the month we can start uploading some pictures showing actual progress!

We're back in bizness

Let's see, where did I leave off? Oh yes, the deal was falling through.

Well, to make a very VERY long story short, we're back on again. It took a few candid conversations with our builder, some long conversations with our attorney, and a threat to walk away, but I think we're good again. The architects are fast-tracking our drawings in order to move things along. In fact, we've gotten two new drafts of the floor plans just in the past couple of days, so things are finally coming together. We think we're 97% happy with the current drawings so they are now converting them into full-on, buildable blueprints. They're hoping to apply for permits in the next 10 days, after which we should be able to build within 3-4 weeks. So our new ETA for breaking ground is Christmas.

All we want for Christmas is a hole in the ground and some poured concrete. Do you think Santa can manage that? Please God I hope so. :)

Here are the latest drawings - the biggest changes are to the living room (we added a bay window), the master bedroom (we added a tiny balcony - no big deal), and we added in some architectural details (coffered ceilings, hard wood flooring, etc.) I've included two of the exterior elevations too so you can see how the balcony will look from the outside - it's pretty neato (if I do say so myself). :)

NOTE: All of this is subject to change once we get the budget and promptly pass out.

In other news, our builder commissioned a full-color rendition of our house to use in some marketing materials for his company. We haven't seen the results yet but our builder insists that it will knock our socks off. Word on the street is that the artist made the house a brownish/red instead of pale yellow. (!) We're having a hard time picturing that, but we're trying to keep an open mind. Who knows, if we like it enough we might change our mind about the color. I'm hoping to get a copy of it this coming weekend - I will be a good blogger and update the site once I have it.

So, stay tuned...

This blog may not be long for this world.

Looks like our deal might fall through. I spoke with the fired architect this morning and he gave us a lot to think about. Much of what he said was pretty shocking. So, I'm not sure if we're going to move forward at this point - everything's on hold. Still waiting to hear back from our attorney, but things are not looking good.

#$%^&*(

Our architect was just fired. It did not end on good terms so he will not be handing over his notes from our 2+ hour meeting last Saturday. There will be no transition. We are basically back where we started 2 weeks ago. We just lost a lot of ground. :(

Now THAT's a balcony.

We met with the architect again this past Saturday to go over some additional changes to the latest set of drawings.

We may or may not have doubled the size of the balcony off the master bedroom.

We started to get into some of the fun details like flooring, lighting, and architectural details. I'm sure our imagination is a lot bigger than our budget, but it was still fun to dream. In the words of our architect, "it costs nothing to draw it in - we can always take it out again later."

Yeah right - famous last words.

Our architect said it will take about 2-3 weeks to make our changes and put together the official blueprints, after which we're hoping to start applying for permits and get this process rolling. Our new ETA for groundbreaking is looking like mid- to late-December, which may not be possible if the ground freezes before then. We're keeping our fingers crossed - if groundbreaking gets pushed off till the spring, we're thinking there's no way we can do a July closing.