The house planning is going well. This week we met with the Sales Rep (Mike) and the guy who will actually be building the home (Matt). I have to say I feel bad for the guy, I doubt he has had the challenge of building a home for a builder, so I know it will be a difficult challenge. If you know me at all, you should know I have a little bit of perfectionism in me, and that multiplies the challenge. We sat down for about 2 hours to go over the plans, and pricing.
The plans were pretty straight forward. We are moving the fireplace that was originally centered on the wall to the corner, this will allow a lot more room for an entertainment area, if we didn't do this the only option would have been to hang a TV over the mantel. Moving the fireplace meant we had to move the door and delete a window, but it will be worth it. We also put in an arched opening between the kitchen and the dinning room, it's weird that the plan didn't have it, but Mike said most of the homebuyers that picked this plan have done the same. We added a bay window to the back and upgraded the living room to a Study, and that about wraps it up. Now of course I pushed some boundaries and tried to get a feel for what the builder would let me do on my own, and so far, not much. I will have to wait till the house gets under way to see what I can get away with. We would like to rough in some electrical and maybe a few other things that would be much easier to do while the house is in the framing stage. We have plenty of time, and I can buy tons of bribery beer before it's too late, so I will let you know how successful I am.
The pricing wasn't nearly as bad as we thought. We met with the Interior Decorator last week to make our selections. The whole experience went pretty smooth, but the organization at highland left some things to be desired, well sorta. So when you go into meet with this lady, all she can tell you about pricing is if it's a level 1 upgrade or level 2 upgrade, or level 3 upgrade . . . you get the point. Going through the house making the selections we would get to the carpet and have 6 choices, you could then upgrade and get 6 more options, but they couldn't really give you a price. So what I thought, and the designer agreed was to just go through and pick everything you like, and then when the sales agent gets the selections he prices it all out and tells what the damage is. I thought we did some serious damage, we picked pretty much everything we like purely for looks, not price, but it really wasn't that bad. All in all I think we added a few thousand dollars to the deal, but it's definitely worth it.
Work has been going pretty good this week, I was working on bidding out a new floor the past few weeks and then all of the sudden they decided to pull the plug on the project. I went to a ton of trouble and work to get the proposals done, but what are you going to do? All of the subs who bid the job were pretty disappointed, but were still crossing our fingers they will change their mind, something they do on a daily basis.
This weekend I will be relaxing and working on the 99K house. We are ramping down, with only the interior work to go. I wrote an article for the company newsletter next month over the 99k house, I'm hoping to get some bonus points for that. In this economy I have to do everything possible to keep my name out there.
I'm really looking forward to the new house and will keep you all updated with pictures as we start making some progress, I hope to be framing up a lot in the next week or two. As a closing thought, remember to spend time with your family, I am seeing too many people that I know work themselves to death and forget to just enjoy life.
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