Bob's been gone a little over a year. I'm paying to have about 3 acres surrounding house and barns mowed; new roof, had the house rehabbed for handicap when they told me he would be coming home, new furnace, and today I'm not sure the sewer aeration system is working, a phone call tomorrow. I dread winter, when its likely to be more than rewiring a lamp... it just takes all your time, and from where I'm sitting, people who are slated to be primary care givers need to be in condos or apartment buildings where they can only wear the 2-3 hats required to take care of the patient, communicate with Drs. study what the diagnosis is, and change diet and routines accordingly... No way you can keep up with it all, and in time, your property gradually sinks into disrepair. A lot to be said for keeping folks in their own homes.. A lot to be said for making it easier for caregivers to concentrate on them. s

She's not going to change. Cut your losses ASAP, get her to move out, and then you can move on.

This is an interesting thread. Thought I'd chime in with my experience. We met with only one architect in mid-June 2007 (via referral from a potential builder that we didn't know from Adam and ultimately didn't use) and he was very upfront with his fees. He charged by the square foot but had different rates for different areas. Let me explain... All finished livable space was $3/SF, all areas such as garages were $2/SF, and unfinished space (such as a basement) were $1.50/SF. We are building a house with 3450 finished SF and 1800 SF of unfinished (but walk-out and radiant heated) basement. If we had included the rough-in plumbing for the future bath and wet bar on the plans then we would have been charged $2/SF. We just told our builder where to locate the rough plumbing on our own. That saved about a thousand dollars. You can see current pics in the "where are you at in Sept" thread. (sorry...don't know how to link). I think we paid a total of $13,600 for our very complete set of plans including electrical plans. Our architect is also a structural engineer so that was a great thing too. Our builder is very impressed with how complete our plans were and has since been doing business with our architect. BTW, we did negotiate the price a little. With a two minute conversation, we saved another $1,000. Our architect had our complete set of plans stamped and approved by October 1, 2007 and should be moving in by the end of next month. I was thrilled with how well our architect took our ideas and wants/needs and put them all together on paper to make our house come to life. It was a wonderful and painless process. Hope this helps. Good Luck!

Thank you. We have been so pleased at the traffic and all the offers and the wonderful feedback on our farm, but it has not been a good experience with our agent. She has been dishonest and we don't feel she's been working on our behalf. On this deal, we sent a counter to buyer's agent, our agent called and said they want the contribution to as-built. I told her we will agree to pay half that, but do not want them coming back and picking our counter apart so please check with them to make sure that every thing else in our counter is acceptable if we agreed to half contribution. She called back and said yes they're fine with everything in your counter. Great! So I get their counter yesterday, expecting our last price, half contribution etc. and it came in with lower price. I asked for her advice because this was a lower price than they had agreed, and she told me that they never agreed to our counter, and we had discussed the lower price. Not! GRRR. So we signed at the lower price but needless to say are not happy with our agent. This is not the first time this has happened in our negotiations with three offers and it has made it so much more stressful. We just want to get through this one without giving up too much more, and if it doesn't close we'll be switching agents. I appreciate the opportunity to vent.