Revisions finished, lender change

This was a relatively busy week, full of frustration and some progress here and there. We finally got the revisions from John and we are happy. The size has ballooned to 1948 sq ft., something I was really hoping to avoid. With a two-story house, it's really difficult to get it at a particular size. There are certain things you want on the bottom floor, and you have that footprint to build on top of, no matter what you want upstairs.

I was hoping to have the final construction drawings done by the Friday, but John was just too busy to be able to finish them. One big surprise- he told us we would need to have structural drawings done by an engineer- something I wasn't aware of, and said they should be under $2000. That was a real shock. I think it was something that was just so common he assumed we would know about it. David James, one of the builders we are looking at is also an engineer and can do them himself. One of the other builders said the lumber supply company will draw them up for you if you agree to buy all your lumber from them. So evidently we probably won't have to pony up the $2000.

Wednesday we closed on our Raleigh house, after taking out the last remaining items- cleaning supplies, tools and a chair and a ladder. As much as we liked the house, it was easy to say goodbye. We've been moving out over the last 9 months and that made the parting much easier. The buyers were at the closing, which I wasn't expecting. It was nice to meet them and tell them how much we thought they would like the house. They (or their realtor) had caused us some last minute headaches complaining about the location of the radon mitigation system (in the master bedroom closet) but there was no other place to put it. We thought the closing might be delayed but everything ended up working fine.

The lender from BB&T finally wrote us back last night, 8 days after I asked her 4 simple questions. She answered one. Unbelievably bad service- I really don't want to give her my business anymore.

We met the builder David James over at the lot on Thursday and he said he didn't think we would have to have a crawlspace, but that it would probably be better. He also suggested we flip the house and put the house on the up-side of the lot, something that probably seems obvious now, but we had gotten so used to the plans as they were, we didn't think of flipping. It will also make the entrance side prettier, as the backside was going to be facing the entrance- the part you'd see every day when you drive in.

As of Wednesday night, I hadn't heard back from our lender at BB&T (after 6 days) so I decided to start talking to Jeff at Wrightsville Mortgage. He was very helpful and responsive. I wish that I had spoken to him first. I went over to his office on Friday afternoon and we went through everything. I'm much more confident we can pull this off by May 5 through his company. The terms are actually better as well. My Beacon score, something I never really thought about is causing a little bit of hassle. The middle score is 695, and a lot of terms get better when you're over 700. I'm not sure why my score isn't perfect- probably a couple of late payments because of our mail getting forwarded, or perhaps when we changed banks, but it was enough to cause me some headaches now. It has really pissed me off that it's not higher- my own fault. Construction loans are a real tricky puzzle to put together, based on the amount the lot and plans appraise for, but I think we're going to be able to borrow around $340,000. With the lot costing $122,00, that leaves us $218,000 for the house- which means we're probably not going to build a garage for starters, and may mean a couple of other sacrifices we have to make- mainly because the size as gotten up to 1948 sq ft.

Waiting on revisions

It was Easter Weekend and that helped pass the time, but it was murder this weekend waiting on the revisions from John. We had add 100 sq. ft to the top floor to make the back gable wall flush with the back, and I guess it's a significant amount of work.

I sent him the email at 11:00am Friday morning. It's Monday night and I haven't heard anything from him. In my profession, we usually respond to any email with something letting the sender know that we have received their email. I sent an email this afternoon at 4pm asking if he had gotten the Friday revision email and haven't heard anything. It seems like things are different in the real estate/construction industry. It seems totally acceptable not to respond to emails and to take 2 to 3 days to get back to someone on a pressing question. Our lender has so far been the most difficult to get a hold of. She seems really busy- it's not like I think she's out playing golf, it's just frustrating that it takes 4-5 days to get an answer from her.

We're still scheduled to close on May 5 and it's going to be really tight. I was hoping to have the construction drawings done by the end of this week but it's looking like that is not going to happen. Last night, I sent out an email to all of the prospective builders, asking them how long they would need to get an estimate together. Most of them said between 1-2 weeks, which seems reasonable to me.

I went over to the lot twice this weekend at two different times to see how the sun came into the site. It was really nice, especially the late afternoon sun. There's a stand of trees in the back corner that will give us a lot of shade on the back porch in the late afternoon. LeAnne went to Lowes and has already found a washer and dryer that's much nicer than I planned on us having. She realizes the battle you face when you build a new house: When you buy a used one, you just sort of accept much of what's there- it's just to much work to question every single detail (and too expensive anyway). When your building a house, every little decision has a thousand possible answers and it can really wear you down. What color is the counter? What kind of pulls? Meaning what shape? What finish? Nickel? Brushed Nickel? Brass? And wasn't the washer we had kind of inadequate? Don't you need the 5 cubic foot capacity? 4.5 wasn't quite enough, was it? I've already fought that battle (and lost) with the little details that I wanted. The bunkroom, the stair tread that wraps around and becomes a bench, etc. It's very difficult to strike a balance when there are so many sacrifices to make.

Anyway... the waiting is difficult. You want to feel like you're moving forward everyday, but at this early stage it's difficult.

Plans are evidently not perfect.

We had talked to John about building a screened in back porch, something that we thought would be a relatively simple affair. It has caused us to redesign the entire 2nd floor. Huh?

Just to show how much of a puzzle this thing is, adding a screened in porch on the back of the house has us scrambling to redesign everything upstairs. The roofline of the screened in porch was going to be so flat/low that we were going to have to use a metal roof, something that would have been really expensive. When John designed the upstairs, he didn't make the back gable wall go all the way to the back of the house (to save on square footage) and I think now that we got around to doing some side elevations we realized how much of a problem that was going to cause, especially with a porch (of any kind).

So LeAnne and I are trying to reach a consensus on the upstairs. Our square footage has again ballooned, and is now over 1900 sq. ft. So much for our humble 1300 sq. ft. cottage.

Houston, we have a lot!

Finally. Today we officially have struck a deal with the owners of the 1114 Upper Reach lot and are giving them the contract and earnest money tomorrow. It is a much better place for us, really. We've come to terms with the fact that the Master's Lane was probably wrong for us. This lot will age much better, the house should appreciate much better... yada yada yada.

We are so excited we can't stand it. We've been living with my parents since July of last year and are really ready to be back on our own again. My parents have been incredibly gracious lending us half their house and lives for the past 9 months. I can't wait to give it back to them.

I'll post some pictures of the place tomorrow, but we've been sitting around like giddy school girls talking about what we're most excited about... Our own kitchen? Sitting on the back porch? Leaving the living room messy? We just can't decide where to start.

Anyhoos... We're finally on our way. It's scheduled to close on May 5 I believe. We'll have to get our house plans turned into final construction drawings (about a week I think), and have a couple of builders bid them out (3 weeks I think) and have the bank do an appraisal on the lot and house (who knows???) before then. Should be fun.

House with Shakes

I've always liked those Martha's Vineyard/Nantucket style coastal cottages with cedar shakes and thought I'd give our elevation a try with that look. It makes the window trim look too small, but I do like the way it looks. It's not as whimsical as the other version, but it does have some charm. Not sure what LeAnne will think.

Offer in on Upper Reach

We submitted an offer yesterday afternoon on the Upper Reach lot, but haven't yet heard back from the realtor. We're beginning to see why building houses takes so long. I'm not sure if it's a Wilmington thing, or just a builder/realtor/banker thing, but everything takes 2 days here. LeAnne got the first offer on our house while she was in the dressing room at Kohl's. We were finished, 2 counter offers later before the end of the day- our house sold, 15 days on the market.

We started thinking about the Master's Lane lot in terms of Halloween and Christmas... It would not be a very pretty street to live on during those times. There are 3 houses there, and I don't get the feeling they would really go nuts for either of those holidays. At least Upper Reach is a real neighborhood and should be some fun for the kids and tacky dads like me during Christmas. I'm really convinced we made the right decision pulling out of the Master's Lane deal.

Hopefully we'll know something by tomorrow about the Upper Reach offer- I'm really getting sick of waiting for everyone all the time.

The lot thickens.

We were really having an incredibly difficult time getting any response from the Master's Lane owner. We sent him our final counter offer Saturday night, something we thought he couldn't refuse and as of lunch today (1 and a half days later) we still hadn't heard anything.

Meanwhile, LeAnne was visiting her sister in Concord, N.C. I got an email that a lot I had taken a look at 2 weeks ago had dropped in price from $153,000 to $125,000. That's a $28,000 drop. I drove back over to the lot, walked the lot, spoke to one of the neighbors, and really liked the lot a bunch. The one biggie (or so I thought)- it's in the wrong school district. A school that is ranked 10 out of 10 on greatschools.net, but for some reason LeAnne didn't like because the playground didn't have any shade. No comment. We went over there this evening and I did everything in my power to convince her this was a better lot for us: Good neigborhood (which the Master's Lane doesn't have), a kid from Maverick's class lives on the same street, about 8 houses away, and the lot has plenty of woods around for our kid(s) to play in.

We drove to the school and looked in all the classroom windows. Everything seemed to be OK. We walked all the way around the school and saw a shaded playground in the back. That made LeAnne feel better. We then drove back to the new lot and talked about being able to walk in a neighborhood and let Maverick run wild.

As of now, I had our realtor withdraw our offer from the Master's Lane lot. I just can't the thought of paying that much for a lot with no neighborhood. LeAnne's still mulling it over, probably secretly hating me for complicating our life. The lot will require a crawlspace- which will cause some plan changes. The cheaper lot will probably allow us to build a detached garage and studio for me, which will mean some additional time.

I spoke at length with one of the builders we've been considering, David James. He's a real easy going guy who has built a lot of nice houses. I quizzed him a little about how he builds rafter tails and if he knew about SIP's and how one might use them to show the rafters in a 2nd story room. He knew about the technique and that made me feel like he knows what he's doing.

Landscape ideas

Among the many things I am not, one of them is a landscape architect. Regardless, I couldn't help but to do a preliminary plot of how the house might sit on the Masters Lane lot (should we end up with it). There is a really pretty live oak towards the left side of the lot that we can do something behind.
One of things I'm thinking of planting is a couple of rows of peanuts. I grew about 5 peanut plants a few years ago. LeAnne and I love boiled peanuts and they were out of the ground, salted, boiled and in our bellies within 3 hours. They were delicious but it was too much work on our .08 acres to grow 5 peanut plants out of buckets.
This is what I call "low yield farming". That is a very happy man who grew about 12 peanuts for about 6 months of work. LeAnne's dad, farms in town on a much larger scale. He's my hero:

Final offer put in on Masters Lane

We've come up again on our offer for Masters Lane. We searched and searched and couldn't find anything that we thought would be somewhere we could live forever. I'm 37 years old and have never thought about living anywhere for more than 5 years, but we like the lot enough that I could see hanging out there for good long while.

We dropped $200 on a land appraisal, which came in at $150,000. Our offer is really close to that now, and who know where the bank's appraiser will come in. The owner of the land is difficult to get in touch with (no cel phone, no email, and I don't think he has an answering machine), but I'm hoping to have it under contract by the middle of the week.

We're going to go ahead and get our final construction drawings done, which will cost another $1500 I believe. I'm wishing I would have gone ahead and finished our 2008 tax returns at this point- I know we're do some money that would have helped pay for that.

Final Elevation Rendering

I spent some time this evening and worked up a rendering of our elevation. I'm really excited at this point. It feels so real I can almost touch it. I added the street number of the Master Lane lot just for some added realism. LeAnne got mad at me because she's afraid that something is going to fall through and we're not going to be able to make this happen. I tried to assure her that I think it's going to happen and that we really will be able to live in this house:


I love the Port de Cochere or whatever it's called on the side. We're probably not going to have enough money to build the detached garage and studio at this point so we'll be happy to have something to park under.

Anyway, it's over. I finally know now what our house is going to look at. We're halfway there (yeah right).

Plans received and are perfect.

We got the plans from John this morning and they are perfect. It is so strange for the phase of this to finally be over. We are happy beyond belief to have them done. LeAnne is really pissed at me for asking for more room on the second floor for some reason- she thought it was fine as is, but the space is so cheap up there now that we're going to rafter the roof.

Here they are in all there glory:


And the elevation:
I'm going to work on the elevation tonight. Our previous house had clapboard siding and shakes on the top so I'll probably want to do something different. I'm real partial to board and batten siding now.

This afternoon, I took one more look at a couple of our 3 favorite lots, and think I've decided to press on with the Masters Lane lot, no matter the price. The Warlick lot is actually more expensive per acre than the Masters Lane so that made me decide to go ahead an try to make something work on the Masters Lane property.

Plans nearly done

We met with John Croom, the designer, today and made a couple of tiny changes to the plans. We didn't really like the bump out on the front because we felt like it made the front look to fancy. We decided to go ahead and make the plans with a rafter'ed roof for a couple of reasons- more room, more storage, and perhaps even a little bit cheaper than trussed. I talked to a builder today and he told me on a simple gabled roof like ours that it make come out cheaper to cut the rafters because it is basically the same cut over and over.

He's supposed to give us our new drawings in the morning and I hope that we will be done after that. This afternoon, I drove around and looked at the "not for sale" lot on Warlick and discovered that the front is about an 8 foot dropoff to the road. We would have to clearcut the land to be able to grade it down to a more gently slope on the front.

I made a call to the owner in hopes of talking him into selling the lot... the call went well. As it turns out, he knows my parents and we are hopeful that might get him to sell us the lot. It is definitely an inferior lot to the Masters Lane lot, but could be significantly cheaper (probably around $125,000).

Lender bad. Designer good.

Still no word from the lender today- email or phone call. Amazing someone can be that busy. I'm working on three separate projects today (a new logo for Coldwell Banker, some tags for a Travelocity spot, and a new Qwest spot) and can find time to play with my son. What's up with that lender?

Anyways, the bright spot for today: We got plans from the designer based on our meeting and they are completely awesome! LeAnne and I can't stop looking at them. Every little detail is there and it came in under 1700 sq. ft. I can't believe he was able to figure out the puzze of how to make it work but somehow he did. My absolute favorite detail is there- the stairs with the wraparound return that becomes a bench in a mudroom kind of thing:
It's funny... Designing this whole house for me has started from this picture. I wanted a side door that looked exactly like this picture. I didn't care about much else, as long as I could get this one detail in there. John Croom is the man, though- somehow he was able to get every single thing in there- We are in awe right now.

We had been saying that we would sacrifice parts of the house so that we could have the lot on Master's Lane, but now after looking at this plan and seeing how perfect it is- I think we're going to reconsider the lot. This is a delicate puzzle, and I feel like the whole thing will come crashing down if you move but one little piece. We're having a meeting with him tomorrow to discuss the plans- there's one little elevation thing I want to change, but overall we are so happy. It's so odd to look at a plan and not have little things here and there that you want to move and flip.

Because of the slowness today on the lender side of things, I drove around Wilmington and looked at some lots that we had considered out of our price range the first time around. There are some really beautiful lots around and I think we might be able to find something cheaper after all. I drove down a little gravel street off Masonboro Sound Road and it opened up into one of the most beautiful pieces of land I have ever seen in Wilmington. HUGE live oaks everywhere... A beautiful view of Masonboro Island (I think). It literally took my breath away. I got back and checked out the lot on line. $1,079,000. I'm really curious what the $79,000 is for, but I suppose it's to give some haggle room to keep the price high. I'm going to drive LeAnne down there to take some pictures to show how incredible this place is.

Anyway, here are our plans for now (check out those stairs/mudroom):

Counter comes back at the same price

Rats! The counter came back and he wouldn't budge on the price. Still stuck at $158,000. Kind of disheartening at this point. That means a really not so small house... perhaps more than we would like, but who knows. We're trying to get in touch with our lender at BB&T to ask her what the implications are of a $158,000 lot- We had planned on $125,000 and ran some worst case scenario numbers at $145,000.

I'm trying to understand how construction loan appraisals work when there is no house yet to appraise. We're really not interested in a lot of the high dollar items like Granite countertops and Tile floors- I'm curious as to how they will affect our appraisal. Also, there's a bunch of money going towards landscaping and irrigation that I'd like to cut out for now and do myself as we have time and money, but I'm not sure the land/home will aprraise high enough without those things.

We're anxious to get something definite going on the lot but are going to have to sit on it for now until we can get in touch with the lender. Evidently, BB&T is very popular right now. They are giving out the best rates around and are slammed with refinances. The first slow-down is evidenced. Things aren't moving as fast as we would like and we haven't even bought a lot or finished the plans yet.

Counter offer from Land Owner!!!

Finally, after nearly a week of waiting, we got a counter offer from the land owner. And it hurts bad. He came down $12,000 from his original asking price of $170,000. We had offered him $118,000- something that may seem like a lowball offer, but remember there are banks that are not loaning money on land period right now- they consider land essentially worthless. We are going to counter offer at $138,000 with $5,000 in closing costs. We know that he had balked on two $135,000 offers a year ago back when the market was much stronger so perhaps seeing that $138,000 number will make him feel he needs to take the money while he can.

I hope that he can come down a good bit more, as we currently would have to spend over half our budget on the lot, something I'm not sure we're prepared to do. The realtor has said we can move into a verbal conversation at this point, rather than revising and countering via fax and email for the next few days. We'll see how he responds to the $138,000 number.

Photoshopped Lot + House pics

I photoshopped two Ross Chapin cottages onto our lot just to get an idea how it might look landscaped and all. I don't ever imagine I'll get grass that looks like this, and think it looks a little over-manicured for our tastes anyways, but you get the gist of what we're going for with the lot.

I love how it could look. We'll have to chop those pine trees down in the front- something I swore I'd never do (chop down a tree), but we've both been through enough hurricanes that we've seen the damage pine trees can cause (they also fall over fairly easily).

Is this our future house?

Or will it be more something like this?

Elevation not working.

We decided against the side door thing. The elevation sketches I did convinced us it was going to look too much like a Cape Cod turned on its end. I emailed the two designers on the house and told them that we were going to have to have a front door. It was a pain, but I'm glad I did the elevations- it convinced us that was the wrong direction to go.

Everytime we see a cottage, it has a nice front door with a little porch, and we can't imagine it any other way. I'm going to do some studies with the lot pictures I took to see how a cottage might look on the lot.

Lot Pictures

I drove out to the lot and took some pictures. It's looking pretty ragged but you can get an idea of what we (hopefully) will have to work with.

Home Sweet Lot.

My favorite view- the left side of the lot, with a medium sized Live Oak.

Looking towards the back of the lot. Barely a house in sight.

Looking towards the front right of the lot. Again- total woods.

Side elevation looking good

I think we finally figured out how to turn the house and get the entrance on the side without it feeling like you were staring at the nake side of the house. LeAnne suggested we put a kickout on the end to give it more weight, and it really seemed to help. We're still playing with colors and trim work (this version doesn't have my Argyle motif), but I'm liking the white Batten and Board version:

The plain version:

"Hired" designer today. Got surprise plans.

I was up in Durham working today so LeAnne dropped by the designer's office today and gave him a check for $1,000. He will deposit this immediately I'm assuming, unlike the $1,000 check we gave as earnest money for the lot. The builder's wife had come up with some ideas and got John to draw up some plans based on those ideas. LeAnne went to pay John and pick up the plans- they were rolled up Mike Brady style and were not really like what we were looking for.

I think everyone is kind of slow right now (imagine that) and happy to help out on something that's a little different than what they've been doing. But it was kind of weird to get these big plans that seems totally fleshed out and a major investment of time from a few people we hadn't even paid or had an official "let's get started" conversation with.

As a commercial artist, I'm used to iterating things a million times and having some of my precious work stomped on and thrown in the trash. LeAnne's not used to that concept and is reluctant to go into our Friday meeting and let them know the plan is not right for us. I'll help her out with that part.

Here's the floorplan as conceived by the builder's wife and John:
It's got some really nice things going on- and has a couple of the little details that I really want in my house, but it's not quite there. Here's the surprise front elevation:

Met with the Designer today

We finally met John Croom today and had a really good meeting with him. He is much cheaper than Scott Sullivan and is really sensitive to what we're hoping to do. He showed us a plan he's done with a builder across the hall from his office and mentioned they could probably come up with a fairly accurate building price for that plan. It's 1700 sq. ft. and probably too big for our budget but I'm definitely curious how much that house would run.

The builder (Hagood Homes) has built a couple of really nice looking coastal cottages in a tiny development called Southern Oaks. We really like these houses a lot (much too expensive for us, though).

Offer submitted on Masters Lane lot.

We have officially put in an offer on the Master's Lane lot. We can breathe a deep sigh of relief that we are now in the queue for purchasing the lot.

$1,000 dollars in earnest money (check only) and we have "spent" our first of what will be very few dollars on this project. The realtor has warned us the owner is difficult to get in touch with and slow to respond, but as long as the offer is in, we're fine. The asking price was $170,000- YIKES! I can't believe a piece of land can cost that much. We offered him $118,000. The realtor told us that the owner had gotten two other offers of $135,000 that he refused but that was a year ago and the markets were optimistic and looking up then. Wish us luck. We're really starting to fall in love with the property.

Architect Proposal = $$$$ :((((((

I'd heard that architects were expensive. I chose not to believe it. We met with an architect last week and discussed all of our wants and needs. We got a proposal of $14,000 today. YIKES!!! I've been playing with the demo of the $2500 Chief Architect (www.chiefarchitect.com) application and am thinking perhaps we can just design the house ourselves. We've gotten in touch with two draftsmen (designers as they like to be called) and are going to meet with them in the next few days.

One of them, Scott Sullivan, is kind of a big time guy and designs plans we've seen before on the Southern Living and Coastal Living websites. We figure he can't be as expensive as the architect. The other draftsmen is John Croom and we'll probably meet with him next week.

The search for a lot

In Wilmington, there are very few buildable lots. Most are fairly expensive (+$200,000), especially the closer you get to the beach. We are trying to build within a certain school district and between our parents houses, so that limits our lot choices a bunch. What we do have in our favor is we don't want a huge house, so out of an initial budget of $300,000 we can spend much more on a lot than the average person would be willing to.

Today we drove around and looked at about 14 lots that either met or nearly met our criteria. There were two or three that we could live with and one that LeAnne found while driving around that is absolutely perfect. At .56 acres, it's definitely big enough. It's listed at $170,000 and that is way up there obviously, but it's at the end of a Cul-de-sac, has no HOA and is bordered by two unbuildable common areas of two neighboring developments. It feels like we're living out in the boonies- something we've always aspired to, though after living in Santa Monica for awhile we still have some city living in us. This lot feels like the best of both worlds- we can't for the life of us figure out why no one has built on this lot yet. I'm going to have to revise our initial 1800 sq ft. house down to 1300 sq. ft and see if we could make it work with this lot.

House Hunting = :(

We spent the day looking at some open houses and are thoroughly depressed. Every house we look at is hideous. There was one house in our ideal neighborhood at a reasonable price (reasonable in Wilmington = $279,000) but it looked like something we would have made (which is not pretty). It had 4 different kinds of flooring, Pergo upstairs- probably laid down directly over the carpet, a really nice backyard, and 2 sailboats in the sideyard which the realtor said could convey (I've always dreamt of having a secret ship cabin getaway in my house). It would take so much to get this house happy and it had a formal dining room- the kinds with two openings that you can basically do nothing with other than stash some furniture in there or use it as a playroom that is always messy and on display for anyone who comes over.

We are hopeless today that we can find a house that will make us happy. Next Sunday, we will spend the afternoon looking at infill lots- something there are not a lot of around town.

Why Build a House

We are in the middle of the worst economic times in our lifetime. Many people ask me, why build a house now. There are plenty of houses available- they are priced lower than usual. Why in the world would you want to build a house now?

Because... I care about my house. It means something to me. It defines me in a way that clothes and cars can't. And nearly every house my wife and I have looked at over the past 2-3 months depress me in a way that clothes and cars can't. So, I will press on, and try to fight the good fight and figure out a way to build my family a house that I'm proud of and that will be a happy place to live.

Yah! Our house has gone under contract!

I'm not sure how you spell Yay! or Yah! Anyways... our house went under contract in just 15 days, and the first showing. We still can't believe it. I credit my decision to remove everything from the house (going against those staging experts who recommend you leave your house lightly furnished). Our furnishings have come from Craiglist, Flea Markets and other sordid places and they are not something most people would aspire to have in their home.

My wife credits it to her flowers and candles she put everywhere, but nevertheless, the house has gone under contract and we can now look realistically into building/buying a house.