Last night our friend and our new home designer came over to go over the plans he came up with for our new home. I had given him a great floor plan of how I wanted it be. It was within our budgeted square footage - 1750sqft. It was perfect, I thought. Now we did make a couple of adjustments the first time we met because I had to compromise to accommodate some of my hubby's wants, but all in all still a good plan.
PROBLEM - since I know nothing about actually building a house, when i drew my plan I didn't account for the width of interior and exterior walls. So by the time he did up our plans, the house was at almost 1950sqft. Yikes! My husband almost had a coronary. That was 200sqft over budget (about $30,000 over!)  So needless to say we had to rethink our plan. For the 3 hours last night we poured over different house plans online and finally found one that we can work with. It still needs a few tweeks here and there. I am still not sure about it. I am a visual person. I need to be able to make sense of what I'm looking at. I need to be able to picture where I am going to place my furniture, and make sure it works.

This is the original plan. 1928sqft in total. I like it, pocket book however, doesn't like it as much.



This is the plan we are working with right now. It is a 1732sqft plan but we are making adjustments and it will probably end up closer to 1800sqft. Still some rejigging that needs to happen but it gives our designer a good starting point.

The plan is to have a pool in the back corner of the property, which is why we have the covered porch where it is. Further to the left of the property, next to the garage - at some point we will be building a shed/workshop/pool house??? Something - that is the hubby's space. To the right of the property we should still have about 70-80ft of yard if not a bit more. There are some very nice maples at the very end of the property which I'd like to keep. I often tell my kids that when I was a kid we had giant maple trees that we used to climb  - ok I didn't - but my siblings did. When you live in these cookie-cutter subdivisions you don't get nice mature trees. I want my kids to have fun climbing the trees, maybe put a tree swing on one...

Well anyway, today is the day. We take possession of the property today. Hopefully the owners have cleaned up the yard and removed everything. Time to go and really explore the property.
Stay tuned!