So now what?

As soon as we were under contract on the original 16 acres, the sellers generously granted us permission to access the land whenever we wished. So from mid July to mid September we would go out there on weekends and just enjoy the peace and quiet.  We would watch the turkeys walk through the fields, pet the neighboring horses and let the boys run around and burn off some energy.  Later, after we closed on the property, we dug a pit in the ground, lined it with rocks and would have fires as the sun set. 


We soon learned how we saw ourselves using the land and which views we liked the best; we started to map out our house in our heads.  It was time to start meeting with builders.  I have had a builder picked out for many years.  I followed his portfolio and even stopped by his booth a few times at our area home shows to talk to him and see more details of his work.  And, as it happens, some friends of ours were in the process of building their dream home with this same builder a stones throw from our property and they had nothing but good things to say about him.  So I asked Aaron to set up a meeting. We needed to see if he was taking new clients and to see how Aaron felt about him. 


We met with our potential builder on Sept 28th, 2016 - Two weeks after we closed on the original 16 acres. At our meeting we showed him a map with our parcels marked out and gave him the heads up that we intended to add on the front 15.  We discussed our style, what we envisioned for our home, our budget and how he handled the process.  I had no doubts going into this meeting that we would walk out with our builder checked off our list.  And sure enough, he and Aaron hit it off and we were good to go! 


We didn't have a floor plan to show him but I explained that I could envision exactly what we wanted it to look like.  He suggested we meet with a draftsman to help us draw our plans.  On January 5 we met with our builder and the draftsman at our property and walked around explaining our vision.  And so began the long process of drafting out the floor plan...