Just sitting here nodding in agreement with a lot of posts. I think the most important thing at this point is to look at your property and decide the functions you will use it for down the road so you don't ruin the space when you get around to addressing it. Yes, leave access for getting trucks and machinery to various parts of the property, even on three acres. Especially on three acres you plan to fill generously with trees. Yes on considering some groves and avoiding onesie-twosies and when the tree bug bites you, and it will, it's very enticing to want 'one of everything' and three of nothing and the visuals on that can be busy and disjointed. You have a big house, and need to consider proportions so that the trees planted near it don't come off looking dwarfed and the house monstrous. We have an epidemic here of mini-mansions festooned with dwarf weeping cherry trees, the branches pruned abruptly like a bowl haircut. We also found it more logical to start close and move out with our plantings. Although we are not close to any other dwellings, I use plantings as visual blockades to scenes I don't care to see and for privacy, so do look out your windows in the general direction of any tree you consider planting to make sure it DOESN'T block what you want to see, and does what you don't want to see. Yes I do plant trees to block sun for the shading effect. If they are deciduous, blocking sunlight isn't an issue in winter and it has a tremendous impact in summer to keep our stucco over brick house cool. It sort of amazed me to see someone mention leasing solar panels. You lease from them for your power, or they lease from you for the exposure and buy the power you generate? In our neck of the woods, it would be a company wanting to sink an oil well, instead. LOL. I have a perfect south facing roof area, but any solar panels ever getting there would be self-financed and simply supplemental in their efficiency. I don't have central air, and having a boiler heat am not interested in retrofitting ducts to accomodate it. Trees size so much more quickly than you think. I have some aerial shots of our property taken fifteen years apart and it's astounding at the amount of canopy we have now, compared to then. Our annual rainfall is adequate for most of our plantings and we have installed some freeze proof spigots away from the house, but I got a chuckle over the remark of 100 gallon tanks for watering. Tried that one year and .........well....despite how large a tractor you have, you'd better have more than a trailer behind it to pull your water tank. The center of gravity shifts in liquid loads. It ain't purty. Yes on buying small for most trees. They establish more readily and catch up with the bigger, more expensive ones quite quickly. I've had just as good success with B and B, but really the only reason I got the ones I did was I couldn't find them container. This is going to take years and it never really gets done. That's as it should be and part of the adventure. I can honestly say I've never had to rip a tree out because of poor placement. Nobody shares the exact gardening philosophy and what's right for me might not be right for you as far as pleasing to the senses. Over the years I have found I've been much more pleased with a tree whose needs have been met than one unsuitable for the growing conditions. A healthy and robust, easy care tree is often more beautiful than one which you much struggle to keep happy. Remember it's a lot easier to attend to correcting things like improper branch angles than addressing the problems they cause down the road. Have fun with it and enjoy the journey, too.

"A couple of you mentioned skipping houses with few or no pics. That is my instinct too but I can't help wondering/hoping that maybe I'd find a diamond in the rough or get a very good deal on those homes. Perhaps they just have a lazy realtor. The odds are probably against it, but you never know for sure." This is the case with the house we are buying. It's a foreclosure. - Listing description says almost nothing about the house itself, but instead about terms and conditions of the foreclosure. - Pictures look like they were taken with a foggy cell phone camera. - Pictures show house filled with trash. I'm sure most buyers were turned off by this listing, but not us. We discovered an extremely well built, 5 year old house with some incredible features the listing agent was too lazy to describe. Sure it needs some cosmetics, but for a few grand in touchups, we'll have an instant extra 50k in equity.

You will be stuck with this unless, you feel comfortable replacing the finishes after the fact. I have worked with quite a few clients who have ended up under these same circumstances, and we have successfully replaced the contractor's most basic finishes with the same or better products than they had originally wanted at half the price. The high markup that they charge is based on the fact that they know you have little or no choice but to go ahead and upgrade or be faced with tearing it out after you move in. The latter is the option they are banking you wish to avoid. Additionally, most people roll the upgrades into their mortgage, a benefit that costs even more in the long run, but many won't afford to pay cash for those when you complete. The terms of your contract are important, as well. Some contractors will allow you to pull out a percentage or all of your allowance and purchase product on your own to provide. They will likely still charge profit and overhead, but this might help you get away with some upgrades. In spec home communities, this is likely not the case, but it would never hurt to ask or carefully review your contract to see if you can negotiate it.

I often get people using indeterminate or non specific words to indicate their design style, or even, "I don't know". The phrase I most often use when I encounter that is, "Show me a picture that illustrates what you mean." Or, "Show me some pictures that appeal to you." It can mean more expense up front to a customer for me to explore their style together. But I have sat down with clients and created Houzz idea books based on a few key phrases that they have uttered, and then we analyze them together to figure out what they are responding to. That means not overwhelming them with too much at once, and watching their facial expressions and body language. Designing is a lot of psychology, actually! Between that, looking at their existing home, their wardrobe, and their leisure activities, I can usually dial it in close enough to limit 1000 selections to just 3-4. But it takes time to do that up front getting to know you before beginning the actual design work of pulling together selections. The hardest clients are those who don't know what they want, but aren't willing to trust me and let go of some control for me to help them. We both end up frustrated.