Hope I Don't Forget Anything!

Image by dolanh via Flickr (Not our house, but ours will be Craftsman)

I spent many many hours Sunday afternoon going back through all of my computer files, images, paper materials, and old versions of the house plans, making tweaks of the current plan and making sure I don't forget anything that I wanted to be sure to include. All I have left, then, is to look at all of my Firefox bookmarks. Then I can finalize the floor plan, window size and placement, etc. It feels good to be in a position where I'm doing all of this, but there is a lot of pressure on me (put on by me) to make sure we get this right. I mean, this is going to be our house, for at least the next 20 years, if not longer. At least we hope. So if I create something that's got glaring annoying unfixable bits, that's bad. Chances are very good that there will be some parts that annoy us, that I didn't get right, but hopefully those are minor or fixable.

Once I'm done with my part of the plans, I'll go over them with Ed, make sure his bits are included, and then he'll work on drafting them up. Then we'll be able to go to builders, find three that we like, and ask for hard bids. Then, and only then, will we know if we can actually afford to build this thing. If we can't, my plan B is to leave the basement unfinished (but with interior walls, I hope), except for a full bathroom. Then we'll live up stairs and finish the downstairs as we have the money. This will be a vast improvement over what we live in now, for a few reasons, even though the square footage of the upstairs is about the same or a little less than what we're living in now. One, we'll have the entire downstairs to store things. Two, we'll have a real kitchen, with an actual oven, and a dishwasher! Three, we'll be paying a mortgage instead of rent.

So... On I go some more.