I have had tomatoes, basil etc for many years. The year before last, we took out a grassy area in the "courtyard", rented a tiller, bought lots of topsoil and compost and put in a garden. Everyone laughed, as I drew up a "to scale" drawing and layed out the garden in anticipation of the spring planting. When I planted last year, I probably changed things 5 times. Again, this winter, I layed out a "to scale" drawing, and again, I changed things 5 times. It's coming along. The herbs are starting to look like an English cottage garden. The vegetables are at home. It is a happy place. Will it ever be finished? No way!!

Joy: The seller's name on the LA is Wormman20030, his actual name is Marvin Wilkins and he is from Falkner, Mississippi. I bought from two different vendors in February and March. Remember, I am in Texas and in February I am out in the garden while some of the rest of y'all are looking at snow. I knew they could not dig daylilies in snow and asked when they did ship, and they told me mid April which was fine with me. The other vendor send a beautiful shipment in April but I heard nothing from Marvin. I believe is was the beginning of May I sent him and email and he replied that he was a one man operation and would try to get to it the next week. Weeks went by, and nothing. I sent another email which was ignored. I finally got fed up, left negative feedback, and later took advantage of the mediating service at LA to request a refund. It is extremely hot here in Texas, too hot to plant. I continued to hear nothing from Marvin and wrote again to the LA. They said that Marvin had written them (but not me) and told them he was going to process a refund and all I had to do is provide a Paypal address. (Let me put in a plug for the LA mediating service here, I was upset, they were patient and understanding) I sent him my Paypal address and again, heard nothing. No emails, no explanation, no refund. I feel that from February to June is an unconscionable wait without explanation. If something was wrong, he could have emailed, he was well enough to email the LA, but has ignored me. The money is not a lot to some people, I understand that some people spend thousands on daylilies and I wish I could, but it is enough that I can't afford to buy more daylilies this year and of course even if I could, it is too hot to plant. I felt that since I have been talking about this incident it is only fair to mention the vendor's name. I would more than welcome him to come here and offer an explanation; as of now I have no explanation, no daylilies, and no refund. Some very nice people have taken their time to email me with the names of vendors who they feel have integrity; after getting over my initial hurt I think I will use the DA again but under the guidance of some of those more experienced. Some points were made that there are good, hardworking vendors that sell quality plants and I agree because the other vendor was like that, so my beef is not with the LA, it is with Marvin.

Emmachas is right--a successful plan is a series of compromises. It also requires the future homeowners to plan their home within the real world and not the dream world many of us find ourselves in. Like the other posters above, it took years. -6 months to to find the plan. -8 years working on the changes we wanted to make to it off and on whenever we had some time. -Another year working with a designer that charged us an arm and a leg to redraw in the computer what I had drawn to scale at home. Did I mention that half of her submissions to us had changes in them that weren't on the drawings I gave her but they were ones that she thought would work nicely and then she'd charge us a second time for the time it took her to delete what she had put in & replace it with what we originally asked for. In the end between her ineptness (the plans were not structurally sound) and the turn in the housing/banking market we had to start over--but not with her again! -We scoured the online houseplan sites for 6-9 months to no avail. -We finally lucked out on a referral to another designer that actually builds custom houses on the side. We started over with a set budget in mind and planned the house size accordingly. We were able to salvage our original first floor layout and shrink some of the rooms, reconfigure the master bath & closet, change the living room to a bedroom and add another bath and the layout was done. Maximizing efficiency of space was key. Summerfield on GW came up with the elevations for us and they were awesome! The new designer was FAST. We had plans to review approximately every 3 days. I think it took 6-7 weeks from start to finish. -We broke ground 2 weeks after the final set of plans was in our hands and the house was 98% finished (enough for a CO & move-in) 4 months later. I wish you lots of luck, patience--lots and lots of patience--, creativity & the ability to know when the plans are crossing the line into the dream zone vs. the reality zone.

We interviewed 5 GCs. First was sort of interested, but our job on an older home was different from the usual work he did building new and/or remodeling newer homes, and it didn't "feel" like a good fit, so we didn't pursue it, even though he seemed like a decent guy and his portfolio of work looked like quality. Second came to look, but when he saw significant structural work he wasn't interested - he was more a cabinet installer/internal design kind of GC than somebody to handle this project. Next one came HIGHLY recommended from a friend who had just done some similar work a few months prior. He came round and gave us some quite attractive rough figures compared to the previous and we wanted some time to think about his suggestions; called him a couple of weeks later to come back, we talked further and asked him for a written bid. Never heard back from him, although we continued to call him to try and get a formal bid. #4 was referred to us via a very bizarre chain of events: even though we got the feeling the project was stalled since we couldn't find a builder, we decided to close on the equity loan anyway since it was all ready to go. At the closing, the title agent started chatting to us, noted that we lived in the same neighbourhood as her family including her brother who oh-by-the-way was a contractor and did we have one yet? I took the number partly to be polite and partly because he was (literally) around the corner, but didn't hold out much hope. In the meantime, I already had an appointment scheduled with a fairly glossy design-build firm so I kept it - they said that we would need at a MINIMUM double our budget, so that was a short meeting! So... feeling somewhat trepidatious I called the guy around the corner that had been recc'd at the bank. He was out of town but we scheduled a meeting for a few days later. He spent 2 hrs at the house, and drove me to see some work he was doing on another property (beautiful work - sealed the deal from my point of view). He came back a few days later with his associate to have another look to see how they could manage the structural stuff, and emailed me a basic proposal a few days after that. We hashed out the remaining details by email and he started 3 weeks later. He CLEARLY wanted the job - he was interested in the house, he (as I later learned) was fascinated by the books on our shelves many of which reflected his own interests and he definitely wanted the gig and he just liked us as much as we did him - it was clearly a "good fit". I had seen his work, his licence and checked his insurance was ok (they all were, of course!), but other than the title agent had no personal references. The day we started work I was PANIC STRICKEN with "what if's?" - I was letting a perfect stranger cut my house in half, I had no human references and aaaaaakkkkkkkk... what was I doing! A neighbour reassured me that she'd seen his work in the neighbourhood and, that in fact, he'd turned DOWN a job she'd asked him to do, but even so - I didn't necessarily do this "by the book"! As those who have been following my renovation know, this guy has been AMAZING, transforming our ideas into reality at a more than fair price (in fact, I truly believe he undercharged us somewhat given the numbers I see other people throwing around for their work). And he, his wife and kids have become friends in the course of it all, so it has truly been "win win" even if we DIDN'T find him via a "conventional" route. Anyway, long answer. I guess the short version is if they follow through, they want the job... !