Junkbj, It appears that you are getting a turnkey price from a builder. Most builders will quote a project based on a certain number of $ per sq ft based on their experience and the current material pricing. They simply don't do a detailed take-off of the house because they don't have time to do it. If you think about it, a lot of people "toy" around with the idea of building a house and start making phone calls to builders to get prices. If the builder was giving detailed quotes to everyone that called, he would not be making any money. He knows what his cost is and he knows what he can build the house for and make a profit...so to save time, most builders will just give you a cost per sq ft or a lump sum like you got. Here's what I would do... Call the builder that you would like to have build your house. Talk to him and tell him that you want to use him but his price is a little out of your budget. Ask him if he can give you some suggestions as to how you can reduce the price so you are within your budget. You need to make a decision as to what you are willing to give up, what is important to you and what is not. What my wife and I did was to decide what would be easy to upgrade later and what would not. We also decided to go with a little less expensive can light fixtures since they will not be seen anyway. These are just a few examples of what we did. I am building a house right now. We are getting ready to do sheetrock starting next Thursday. I am a contractor but I do industrial construction at manufacturing companies so this is a new experience for me as well. It sounds like you are fairly knowledgeable...why are not considering being the general contractor yourself and saving the mark up? Its all a matter of getting some subcontractors and then managing them. If you'd like I can give you some tips on finding subs if you want to go this direction. Hope my thoughts helped you. Let me know if you have any other questions. Bret

Thank you all, I'm still at work but will give all those a try when I get home. Weird part is sometimes when the screen is trying to load and I click on a 'favorite' it opens the site such as this forum. But I can't navigate away from it. Same thing happens with both browsers. I use Bing as a home page for FF and Google for IE. I don't know what DNS means or what to look for. When looking at the white screen I see that site listed on the bottom tool-bar. All my other machines work fine in the house except this one. I've had connection problems (slow loading) with this machine for a long time. Now its worse. Thank you all again, Jane

Go to View/Toolbars and check Links...Links bar should show up above Address bar...now drag and drop from Favourites.

Its 1 :25 am and I'm with the night owls. I was laid off at 66 and was dispirited. Looked for jobs, not much luck. So I accepted that unemployment was actually early retirement. Less than a year later a friend called about an opening in her agency in my field. It is a great fit: about 10-15 hours a week. I only go into the office (which is 20 minutes away) 1 x 2weeks, nearly everything can be communicated and documented by secure email and text. I miss the chatting life of more collegial time in an office, but I treasure setting my own schedule. As long as my patients get seen on time and my documentation and time sheets are on time no one 'bothers' me. I'm still contributing to society and (modestly) to family income. I have lots of time and flexibility for those ever increasing doctors' and physical therapy appointments. Gotta keep the mojo working if I want to work. My house is still a mess because neither dh nor I are neatniks and actually don't care a lot about "everything in its place". I mean, it would be nice, but it takes so much valuable time! Rouge, your days and nights will take on a shape of their own. You can nudge things however you want. Eventually a routine might emerge. My thoughts are: make new friends, keep up with old ones and participate in some sort of group activity: exercise class, bridge, book group, civic organizations. For me, they are a welcome change from being at home. I came across the seeds you sent months ago. Still in their little envelope, waiting for spring, like me.Marie