18 months later, we now know better. In October 2007, we thought you could build a custom home for around $125/ sq ft. That's what the web resources said. That's what the Architects said. The "devil in in the details", however is very true in home building. While I have no doubt that the spartan little homes on flat downtown 'in-fill' lots that are the prototypical "green" home can be built for that, we were clearly naive to plan on it for our home. The cost of site work and all the unfinished spaces don't fit into tidy calculations like 2290 sqft x $125 = ~ $300,000. Boy, did we miss the mark!
In all honesty, we DID know there would be extra costs associated with our lot: gently sloping vs. flat; a new development vs. in-fill; 3+ acres, off the road vs. 1/2 acre in town. We knew all that, but didn't fully appreciate the magnitude of the cost impact of those details. Soooo.. we naively pressed on thinking that we could build this house, lot and all for around $420,000.
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John just informed me that his vision for this blog is for me is to comment on the blog and to provide my prospective of our project. Even though my livelihood is in the interactive world, blogging has never really interested me. I love to read others, but participating is not my cup of tea. However, this is a team effort and I will participate, who knows, maybe I have a hidden passion for writing. Sometimes I dread the discussions about our house, there are so many details, and other times I love talking about our dream of a house. Frankly I wish someone would just make the decisions for me:) I'm sure John would be more than willing but we both know that I'm a little opinionated and probably wouldn't agree with all his decisions. I'm a Pisces which means I have a hard time making up my mind, I see both sides to everything which always leaves me in the middle. It drives my very analytical husband crazy.
ReplyDeleteBack to the subject at hand, as I am digging in the garden of our current house, planting lettuce and spinach, I am looking forward to a larger scale garden and orchard on our property. John has designed a great little garden house for me and I'd have to say it's one of the things I'm most looking forward to.
I get my gardening passion from my dad. Growing up in Pittsburgh, my dad would had a great garden in our backyard. While I never really helped him in it, I grew up learning to appreciate the treat of homegrown veggies. I hope that I can pass this on to my grand-daughters. In and effort to learn more about gardening on a larger scale, I'm hoping to attend, at least part of the weekend, a gardening workshop the weekend of March 22 Organic Growers School - for more information - http://www.organicgrowersschool.org/
I'm interested in the propagating culinary & medicinal herbs, kitchen herb garden basics as well as composting. Stay tuned . . .
I can't wait to see what you all do with your garden. I'd love to help as much as I can!!!! I'm starting to plan mine up in Chi-town also. But our growing season isn't for another couple months... sad.
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