Foundation

We are building a house. Starting over, four miles from the house we built fifteen years ago when we moved to Texas. The last house was for a family of four that included two very active boys, aged nine & ten. Over the years it included two cats, a rabbit & two dogs. Now, there are two of us and one cat left behind several years ago when Sean left for college.

We have been looking for land to purchase in our adopted hometown for a couple of years. Fifteen years ago, that was a pretty easy thing to do. Now, the city is almost built out. It was a combination of good luck & tenacity that allowed us to find this land. We wanted to move further away from traffic. The area we live in has become congested (as congested as an area can be with a population of less than 40,000). We lived virtually at the crossroads of the two main streets in town.

For a couple of years we have driven around, looking for land, looking at models. We have searched plans online, read magazine articles & started to become informed on 'being green' when building a house.

Last May we found our land. We knew when we saw it that it was in a neighborhood we would like, in a good location & the adventure had begun! We started interviewing realtors, speaking with their clients. We started interviewing builders, looked at many of the houses & made some decisions. We started organizing & cleaning out the house in preparation for putting it on the market & moving.

In June, 2007 the land became ours. During the summer of 2007 the land was surveyed & platted with the final approval taking over 6 months, countless calls to the surveying company, the city, a couple of trips to city hall and one memorable trip to downtown Ft. Worth. That trip included picking up a receipt to show that we had paid the taxes on the land (although it was posted online that they were paid) & walking to another line, 5 feet away to have an official stamp put on the receipt. Then back to city hall in Keller to turn in the receipt.

Once we had picked our builder we had several meetings over the summer with him, continued to look at plans & fine tune them.

Fast forward to December 15, 2007 when we put our house in the market in what the media called one of the worst housing markets in history. We were fortunate. We had maintained the house, including updating it. We had almost an acre of land in an area that is all but built out. We had a lot of beautiful fully grown trees. And for some, we had location, location, location. Four months later we closed escrow having received 98% of our asking price, no concessions for repairs & the appraisal that the buyer was looking to receive. Once the sale of the house was confirmed we started to meet with the builder & architect on a regular basis to fine tune the house plans.

We moved into an interim rental house about twenty minutes away from our land and are eagerly awaiting the groundbreaking. We have started looking at flooring, granite, lighting, siding, all on a high level. The time to start making some decisions is fast approaching. We have approved final plans. They have gone back to the architect for printing. We will meet with our builder this week for final contract discussions & a revised time line. Hope to see dirt moving soon!