We are actively in the process of changing our floor plans. Architect Jason had drawn up a staircase that runs diagonally (45° angle to the walls), and it has proven to impair some of the changes we wanted to do in the second floor layout. It takes up a fair bit of room. So we have decided to do a straight run of stairs with a right angle bend in it, very plain.

But the change was really necessary, the second floor was starting to look like a nightmare, with little two- and one-foot walls cutting it up, it would be a nightmare to frame anyway. So this should get us back to mostly rectangular rooms with fairly long uninterrupted stretches of wall on the second floor.

It's frustrating to have the large scale design stages drag on for so long--fortunately we have very little time pressure on us. I'm a little worried about losing momentum, but things are progressing, I just don't want to post any plans here until they're pretty close to final.

I saw a TV show about a couple who were building a custom home in very similar circumstances to us--fairly large, well out of town, luxury home. They exercised poor change management and spent not only an extra six months but what had to be tens of thousands of dollars extra because of it. I'm very focused on cost control, and change management will be the real key to that. The value of working with an architect is that we can get our changes done on paper where the cost of moving a wall is pretty low.

Not to say that we'll arrive at a 100% perfect solution on paper, but at least we'll be positioned to agressively manage changes. We're looking forward to starting on the details of interior design.