Some impressive homes here! My parents are building on a much smaller, simpler scale than most of those shown in this thread. They elected to go with a builder that will do most of the work himself vs one that subbed everything out. Upside is that it will save them money and the GC is always on-site and giving his full attention to this project. Downside is that it will take a while to complete many of the stages. At the same time, going slowly, we have been able to make many changes and really think things over where it might have been too late with a quick build (or too late to do it without incurring an additional cost). I am going out about twice a week now to take pictures and keeping them in an online album. My parents live on the land and see it everyday, so they didn't see any reason to take any pictures, but now they are seeing how it is nice to have a record of it and to be able to share the progress with the family. A lot of the pictures don't really mean anything unless you know exactly what you are looking at, but hopefully they are almost to the stage where things will really start coming together. I have floor plans in the slide show, but they are not exact. The plans were drawn off my plans but I never bothered to have the builder send me an electronic copy. To make an easy to read version, I had done it up in 6" blocks. Easy to read, but obviously not to scale as our interior wall are not 6" thick, etc. However, it should be close enough for people to get a general idea of the layout. The link below takes you to the album. Or you can copy/paste this URL into your browser for the slideshow version. http://outdoors.webshots.com/slideshow/579912333NLBTfE Here is a link that might be useful: Link to Album

After lurking around here for almost two years, I can finally say we are starting our new house! In December of '07, we decided to build. Getting our property ready to build on was a challenge, to say the least. My husband's dad and aunt owned land that was inherited by his grandparents. We decided to buy my father-in-law's half of this property. My husband and his grandparents were extremely close, so this whole process has been very sentimental for him. Anyway, when his grandmother passed away in 2000, his dad and aunt did absolutely nothing with her home and property. The house finally deteriorated to the point where it was beyond repair, so it had to be torn down. His grandfather was a hoarder, but hoarded things like old cars, tires, equipment, small outbuildings--you name it, he dragged it home and dumped it. We took it upon ourselves to clean everything up by ourselves and it took about a year and a half of weekends to demolish the house and have all the junk hauled off. It was a huge, frustrating mess. People thought we were crazy for taking on the job. Finally, the property was ready to build on and turned out beautiful. We still needed to have it surveyed and split in half, so we hired a surveyor. Turns out, the last time the property was surveyed (in 1942), it was done wrong. The surveyor could not get the boundaries to line up correctly with our neighbors, and it took him 4 months to figure everything out. In the meantime, we drew up our house plans and found a builder. Finally, everything was done, the property was split and put in our name, and we were ready to build. We went ahead and paid to have all the dirt work done so the pad could settle for a few weeks. We were literally 2 days away from starting the house when we found out we were in the planning zone for our nearest big city (Fort Worth, Tx). We were 10-15 miles outside the Ft. Worth city limits, and not even in the same county, but we were in their planning district. As such, we had to follow the rules of the Ft. Worth zoning commission, who required us to plat the property and dedicate the first 30 feet of our entire piece of property for future expansion of the road. Essentially, we had to give them a total of a quarter of an acre! Had my husband's family acted upon a exemption clause a few years ago, we would not have had to do this. However, their procrastination and laziness got the best of them and the clause expired. Back to the surveyors office! It took him another month to plat the property and we submitted it to the city offices. They took another month and a half to approve it. Two weeks ago, everything was finally signed, stamped, and filed. Our dirt pad has settled VERY WELL by now! While all this was going on, our lumber estimate decreased by over $7000, the fabulous framer and foundation guy who were previously unavailable are now available and scheduled, so I have to believe that the timing just wasn't right back then. Everything happens for a reason, no? Anyway, our builder delivered our temporary electric pole yesterday, we're meeting with the bank this week, and we couldn't be happier for everything to finally begin! Our builder says we will be moved in by the time school starts in late August, if not a few weeks earlier. SO EXCITED!!

We are almost done. My lot was graded this weekend but I haven't gone out to check it yet... Tomorrow my wood floors will be stained so I won't be able to enter house for several days. Every entrance into home is on wood floors. I can go in a window I guess, lol. Friday, March 27th my carpet will be installed in the bedrooms and play room. Still need landscaping, exterior trim paint, and mirrors in bathrooms. Other than that, it is just the punch list items and then we are done. Hope to move in on April 10th. I have pics on photo bucket.

Wow! The last few days have been a roller coaster ride. First, on Monday, we got another draft of the plans. While I still really like our architect -- the revisions are one step forward and two steps back. I've calmed down now over that and will address the problems when he gets back into town next week. I think it will be an easy fix. Then, yesterday, we had a call from our RE agent and due to market conditions -- extremely low inventory in our price range and the fact that many agents have commented that they potential buyers looking in that range -- she thinks we need to go ahead and list now instead of waiting for spring. From past experience we have a lot of faith in her instincts and signed the listing agreement last night. It isn't even officially on the MLS yet, but we've already got a showing on Saturday! Cross your fingers for us! Maybe we will get lucky, but we are trying to stay realistic.