The Waiting Game

Eric and I are currently in the biting-our-nails part of this adventure: the plans have been sent out and in about a week the bids from the potential builders should start rolling in! I have already met with two out of the four potential builders at the house this week. I've liked both so far, so I guess in some ways it will come down to the $$.

Pretty soon we will find out if our last minute add-ons pushed us into the "what were we thinking?!" category, or if it will be more like "oh, we can SO do this!" Fingers crossed!

It's been really nice being back in the house this week. We have had a tenant in there for almost a year, so it has been quite some time since we got to see the inside. I still do dreamy drive-bys about twice a month, so it's a real treat to go inside. Luckily, I still love the place even on the inside. The only worry routing around in my head is the mosquitoes! Oh man, they are so bad!! Thank goodness we decided to go ahead with the screened-in porch (rather than adding it later) because we are going to need it! Hopefully we figure out some kind of solution for the kids so they don't get eaten alive when they are playing outside.

While we wait to hear back from the builders we are also waiting to hear from the City of Austin regarding the demolition and building permits. Our architect was able to submit everything last week- hopefully all of the horror stories we have heard of 4-6 month waiting periods won't apply to us!

Here's to waiting and hoping!

First Official Delay?

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we are in the midst of our very first delay! 

One of the items that I felt very strongly about that we addressed recently with our architect was regarding a step out of our back door on to the patio. As drawn, there would be one step out of the back door down to the patio. I am really hoping that we use the patio and outdoor space as an extension of the living area of our home, so that step was majorly worrying me. It was so easy for me to picture people tripping going in and out of the house. So, I asked our architect to raise the patio to get rid of the step. We were ok with that making the ceiling a little lower- to us, it was worth it to remove the fall risk.

What we didn't realize was that changing the height on that patio meant contacting the structural engineer again. We are currently waiting to hear back from him, and our original hope of sending out the plans for bidding April 1st has obviously been put on hold. 

So, we wait!