end of the hiatus
There hasn’t been an update here for a good while. That’s not totally indicative of a lack of progress on the project. It’s more that I didn’t expect people to be vastly interested in updates along the lines of “we met with the architect and moved the closet wall six inches north in the guest bedroom” or whatever.
But, what you may (rightly) infer from that is that we have finished our plans. [SFX: Hallelujah Chorus]
We have not been hurrying this process along at all, and there are several reasons behind that. I won’t go into all of them right here. But we’ve also started the process of soliciting bids from builders. And miraculously, it seems to be going well.
The other really fantastic thing that happened is the interest rate dropped again. We were able to lock in for 120 days an interest rate of 5.75% for our construction loan, which will convert to a first mortgage at that rate at the end of the construction phase of the project. That quarter-point really added significant buying power.
But the real difference is that I’m in a position now to actually pull the trigger whenever I feel like it. We have at least one builder who will build the house we want at the price we want, so now we’re trying to do due diligence and check out the other options before we commit. One way or the other, expect the updates to resume, and check back often to see how the project is going.

March 18th, 2003 at 8:20 am
Cool, getting to biuld your house is an experience, my parents got to do that when I was young. There are alot of rewards in it, including kicking yourself for not doing this, or getting mad because the construction workers didn’t do this right…
Only the best wishes for you! Looks like it will be a beautiful house