Building a House

So, in April 2005 (Easter Sunday to be exact) Rich and I decided we were going to build a new house. We own 5 acres of land in Leander and live in a somewhat decrepit (although habitable) pieced together house. I am trying to be nice in my description of the thing since we did, at one time, decide to buy it. Anyway, we decided that it would be more cost effective to tear down the old structure and build new. You see, the old home was originally a singlewide manufactured home that was added onto in two different spots. The additions however, were not entirely engineered, nor professionally done. The floorplan is also not very functional. One of the things I most don't like is the lack of windows in the living room that face the front of the house. Not only is it dark (which I don't particularly mind), it just feels like I don't know what's going on in the world when I can't sit on my perch and gaze out the window.

So, it has been a long and trying process getting easements vacated, surveys done, redone, appraisals done and redone. But, on August 3rd, we closed on the loan and the next Monday we were funded. ***On a somewhat amusing side note (and commentary on the condition of some of our state governmental offices - your tax dollars at work, right Rich?) my driver's license had expired two days before we closed. The rep from the title company informed me that they wouldn't be able to fund the loan without a current ID from me. It was 3:30 on a Friday afternoon after we signed our loan documents that Rich and our loan officer went to have a celebratory beer while I had to go wait in line at the DPS to renew my license. I experienced a 20 minute wait just to get my number. They were on 232 and my number was 276. I decided that I didn't want to wait what was obviously going to be an eternity as I still had some work to finish at my office. I went back to the office, did my work, and headed back to the DPS (all in all about a 90 minute ordeal). Lo and behold, they were only on #272. So, I was able to get my license renewed after all. End of story.***

This morning the surveyors came out to "pin" the corners of where our slab is going to be. Now that that is done, we are really ready to get moving. This is a picture of the floorplan we are building.
We are also leaving one of the additions that will be Rich's geek out room (computer nerd) and our pool table room. I really want to put in some big garage doors (like the kind at Little Woodrow's) so that when we have friends and family over we can throw that garage door open and people playing pool can interact with the people on the patio. Yes, when we tear down one of the additions, we are leaving an approximately 12' x 40' slab. That is where we want to build an outdoor kitchen, fireplace, comfy lounging outdoor furniture, etc. Hopefully we won't be too ancient to have friends and family over by the time all of these plans are realized.

I intend to post pictures of notable progress, so stay tuned.