The weekend and plodding along with the house build project

Sunday, we took our neighbors across the street out for dinner as a belated happy birthday to neighbor guy. It was a good dinner. His wife has celiac's so she has to be careful about what she eats, but she said her dinner was good.  She's kind of hard to please, LOL. She doesn't like much of anything - people, places, etc. HAHA! I like her though. Not sure we could be super close friends (but that's probably just me) but easy to talk to and laugh with. We kind of have the same sarcastic sense of humor.


We met with our builder yesterday afternoon to go over his numbers in more detail. I'll get to that in a minute. We went into the city early to pick up my prescriptions and do a little Target shopping first. We still had time to kill, so we drove over to Cabela's to look at their stonework on their building. When we were at the mason place last month he recommended looking at their stone (we liked it). It's a man made stone, but sure can't tell. We also went into a furniture store to just look around and see what we liked. Honestly, I'd rather do that part myself to keep DH's ideas out of decorating LOL, but he also liked what I had in mind, best, too. Anyway, we got ideas and costs, as we will need a new living room set. Even if we weren't moving we would need new living room furniture. Sitting in the recliners made DH realize how crappy his chair has gotten.

Our builder meeting was somewhat as expected. Much higher numbers. Due to several factors. The initial numbers he gave us are nearly two years old now and we added/changed things. The other major factor, was with those initial numbers he gave us almost 2 years ago we never go to the point to sit down and go over in detail, since we decided to postpone the building. Well, he was missing and underestimated some of the items, for sure. That part was disappointing. He did say our bid for our well pump (we've had it drilled, but no pump installed yet) is really high, so let's hope he can get that down.  Add it all up and we are quite a bit higher. With the bank saying we could qualify for a certain amount AND still keep this house, we had hoped to stay under that number, so that we do not have to try and sell this house first. What if we couldn't sell right away? it's not the market here like in the city. If we are waiting to sell to build, we might not even get it done this year. If we did sell, we'd have to find someplace temporary to live, etc. Just not our ideal situation.

We decided to just do the house, for now, and not add the shop. Then we can get started this spring and have the house done (he said 6 months building time). Get this place up for sale as the house gets closer to being done. Once we get this sold, we will be getting some money out of it and then we can use that towards the majority of the shop and get a second loan, if needed for the remainder. Again, not what we were hoping for, but adjustments have to be made and that is how we will make it work. The builder has also worked into this house number doing the excavation and foundation for the shop, so that major cost would already be done.  The bid we got from that H Co guy for the excavation, septic/drainfield and driveways was really good. DH thought so and so did our builder, so I'm sure we will end up using him. Plus DH has seen his work and it's very good.

Because of our good friends referral (he built their house and they did alot of the work themselves) he is basically building our house at cost and charging us a contractor fee that is nowhere near what most charge. We are helping out where we can, like getting all these bids and DH will end up lining up the excavting/septic guy. As he explained yesterday, most contractors will have all these line item costs (and budget over, if they can) and if they come under, that money just stays with the contractor. Ours will not be. He said we will go over all the invoices together and if we are under, we can either just stay under budget or use that money towards another item we want upgraded or that maybe came in a little higher. We are going to end up with a house worth nearly double what it will cost us, according to him. We'll see, but I think it will definitely end up being some extra equity into it, once it's done.

We also showed him some pictures of the rockery wall we had started. He was like OMG - those rocks would normally cost $200-400 each! Once it's done it's really going to add to the value of our home, I think.  Weather has been pretty mild this winter and they are thinking that if the bank moves along according to schedule we should be able to get started in March, putting us in the house around September.

We got done with builder at 4:30 and still had to grocery shop and then a 45 minute drive home. We sure didn't feel much like doing it then, but we were pretty much out of food at home. We each grabbed a cart and DH went off to fill up with water, soda and chips, while I worked on the rest of the list. At least that saved us a little time by splitting up to shop. I really feel like I am spending way more than normal for food/cleaning/healthcare and pets but not sure on what! I think I'm going to track it really close for the next two months and see.  Maybe it's just because we mostly do one big shopping trip and it feels like such a huge amount.....but the little trips to the town store and online orders are adding up more than I thought, too. It doesn't seem like 2 people and 2 dogs should be spending this much.