If I were a rich man (or woman) ...

... I could build the house I want without cutting anything out!

But we're not rich.

So we come to decision-making time. Last Friday we met with the team to review the latest version of the plans, which include the things we added last time (when the plans already maxed out the new version of our budget). The plans look great! But they're WAY (as in $60k) out of our budget now, and that is the highest budget we can possibly manage and still pay the mortgage when all is said and done. There are already a few compromises, such as no walk-in closets and no walk-in pantry. I like walk-in closets because they keep the mess of clothes, shoes and accessories contained and out of the main bedroom -- and because when one of us gets dressed while the other is sleeping, we can keep the bedroom dark and quiet. You can't do that when the closet is one wall of the bedroom. However, walk-in closets are more chunky spaces to work with, and when we're trying to minimize the corners in the shell of the house they become very impractical. That was a compromise that hadn't crossed my mind, but I'm okay with it.

I also really wanted a walk-in pantry. I love the idea of having all the kitchen stuff contained in one space, and having a place for our second fridge that isn't in the garage. (With two growing, athletic boys, we go through a lot of food -- and I make several trips a day to the garage fridge to replenish supplies.) However, there is plenty of storage space for anything that would go in a pantry, and we can even build in unobtrusive space for the second fridge. I can live with this.

But these are fairly small compromises compared to what we'll have to do to get within our budget, and this is where we're going to struggle. We can't afford top-of-the-line finishes -- floors, counters, cabinets, fixtures -- which is okay also, as we weren't headed that direction anyway. We renovated our current house when we moved back from Korea in 2006 and we still like the basic fixtures we picked out then. (Thankfully, we're not thrilled with the granite counters and can look for a more reasonable option.) We don't need custom cabinets, but we need strong cabinets. That won't be too much of a sacrifice for us.

But that won't cut it, either. We need large-scale savings to meet our budget, and one option that Sam offered us is to leave some parts of the house unfinished for now, and finish them as our budget allows in the future. That had been the plan for the finishes, too: If we want to upgrade the counters or floors later, we could do that as budget allows. However, the parts left unfinished would be major: the garage would be a carport for now; the patio/deck would be much reduced, as would the outdoor storage under it; and our guest bedroom and bathroom would be a mere shell (no bathroom fixtures at all). The question is, are we willing to do that? Would it be better just to wait another year or so, until we can afford to build the whole house? We could chop off entire rooms, but what would be the point in building a house if it's not the house we actually want?

Today is Christmas Eve, and my parents are in town. Last night we showed them the plans, and today we took them up to the land. I hadn't been up there for a month or so, since we started sweating over the budget. It was a great refresher to wander around on a sunny winter day, listen to the peace and quiet (the neighbor's dogs were suspiciously absent) and remember why we want to build there. It's beautiful! Yes, it will be worth it. It'll be worth the trade-offs, including (I think) one that plagues me: leaving a friendly neighborhood where my kids (and I) can find someone to play with or chat with by simply walking out the door. It'll be worth the budget strain, including the ongoing tighter budget once we have our new mortgage.

Last night, after looking at the plans, my dad got a bit misty thinking about us building a house and reminiscing about when he and my mom built their house. He remembered how stressful it is, and how tense he was over the budget for about five years when there wasn't much breathing room with the new mortgage. And he talked about how happy he still is with their decisions and their house, and his hopes that we will be equally happy. I think I needed to hear that.

But that still leaves us with some hard decisions, unless Santa comes through with some cold, hard cash (or a winning Lottery ticket). I'm trying not to stress about it too much over the holidays, but I'm failing. It's a big deal -- big decisions, big sacrifices. What to do, what to do? 

Plans vs. Budget

Bryan and I have been discussing the layout of the house and the modifications we will have to make to our ideas to make this house affordable for us. I have had to give up on my desire to have both the master bedroom and the guest room on the main floor; that would make the upper floor quite a bit larger than the lower floor. One thing that will have a great impact on our cost is minimizing our roofline (the skin of the house is where the largest expense is), so to minimize our skin we need to make the two floors as similar in size as possible. After some thought, I've come to realize that having the master on the bottom (with the boys' bedrooms and the game room) and the guest room on the top (with the great room, kitchen, office and entries) would have benefits of its own -- if we do it right. For now, we could have our bedroom near the kids' rooms, which would be better for Cole for a couple more years, and when my parents visit they could stay on the main floor and not have to deal with stairs. (To be clear, they can manage stairs, but I don't want them to have to manage stairs.) Then, when Bryan and I are older and less able to get around well (much, much older, of course), we can move upstairs to the guest room and live comfortably on just that one level. However, to make that work we would need the guest room to be essentially a second master -- which makes it bigger. Which adds more square footage.

Last Thursday we met with Sid, Rick and Sam at the Hammer and Hand offices to discuss our plans. We hammered out (ha ha!) some of the basic concepts for our plans: Extra storage space built into the hill (north) side of the downstairs area (we need as much storage as possible, and hate to waste that potential space), bedroom sizes, adding an upstairs powder room, adding a pantry with room for a second fridge (we have hungry, growing boys and athletes in the house!), and the need for a real, actual office, as opposed to a nook. In addition, Bryan had sketched out some thoughts on an entry that's shared by both the front door and the garage access -- a way to access the mudroom from both entries, to minimize our piles of shoes and coats -- and we discussed that at length. All in all, the things we discussed will probably add at least an extra 100 square feet or so to the house, which of course will increase the cost. And this is on top of the fact that, as the plans stood last week, we were at our maximum budget and hadn't included paving the driveway or purchasing the appliances.

As we discussed the plans, we repeatedly mentioned the furniture that some of these rooms will be built around. We spent ten years in Asia, and during our six years in Indonesia we acquired quite a few large, teak pieces of furniture, as well as a few very cool pieces of hanging art. One piece of furniture is a huge desk, which is part of the reason we need an actual office. (But also because: 1. Bryan needs a place for his stuff, too, and therefore the office needs room for two people; and 2. I need to be able to close a door to keep the "Moooommmm!!" at bay while I balance the bank statements and buy Christmas presents online.) Although Sid and Sam have been to our current home and seen this furniture, Rick has not. We realized that it would be helpful if Rick could actually see all this furniture to cement the style and scope of our belongings in his mind. Since he wasn't able to make it out to our home this past week, I sent him photos of many of our furniture pieces (as well as some hanging artwork, for reference) with dimensions. Rick says he hopes they'll look like "little toys" on the plans. I can't wait to see it!

Partway through the meeting Skylar joined us to discuss the computer models of the solar options on our site. His job has been to run our site through his computer modeling and see what our solar gain is as the site stands currently and with various amounts of tree removal. Not surprisingly, our best bet for a low-energy, passive-style, southern-exposure, bright (which I need) house is to remove quite a few trees directly south of our build site. We understand this and even agree with it, but we're also battling our inner tree-hugging tendencies. We hate to take out trees! Thankfully, there are plenty of trees on our land and there's no need for all-out clearing -- but still we struggle with it.

Things are definitely coming together, and I'm getting more and more excited about our potential house. I'm relieved that our furniture and other art will be considered in the plans -- I want to make sure that we have good placement for at least the major items. Of course, the huge consideration now is the budget: We were pretty much over budget at the beginning of the last meeting, and we only added expense at that time. We did agree that we could take space from the really big great room and use that for the office and pantry, because although we want space for the extended family in the great room, we also don't want it to feel cavernous when there are only the four of us. (And, realistically, when the whole family is at our house, chances are good that the kids will be mostly downstairs anyway.) One of my jobs before our next meeting on Friday is to go over the budget again and figure out what is really possible. Naturally, when we returned home from our meeting last week and I looked at my budget notes I couldn't remember what I was doing, so I'll be re-crunching the numbers from the beginning. A call to our lender may be in order ...

Our next meeting is set for Friday the 16th, and I can't wait to see the plans. Of course, my very realistic fear is that our budget won't mesh with new plans -- I just hope the guys have some great ideas to make it work!