The house is coming along surely, but slowly. We started talking to the architect (as opposed to communicating via email) after the craziness of the holidays. He agreed to work on the plans to get them within our budget. It was then a matter of figuring out where to cut corners. His suggestions ranged from practical (changing from a Hebel structure to wood frame) to acceptable (aluminum framed windows, hollow core doors) to ridiculous (leaving half of the house un-gibbed).
At this point, we feel that the house design is finally something that we can work with. It is not the house that we originally planned on, but it is close enough. And we will be able to build it and not go bankrupt. The architect will now re-write the plans, our builder will look things over to give us a rough quote and see if there are any other areas where it would make sense to change things. Then the plans will get re-submitted to council and we should be away and running... er, building. The whole process not quite as exciting as it once was. We just want a house.
If we were to do this again... we would involve a builder throughout the planning process. The architect has a great sense of space and design for our lifestyle, but not such a good handle on building within a tight budget. The builder that we are now working with is someone local that we have known for a number of years (Burgess is quite good friends with his son). Not only was he recommended to us as an excellent builder, but he is honest and trustworthy. We could really use someone honest and trustworthy at this point! He has made a number of suggestions that are practical and easy to implement - without causing us to feel like we are cutting back on quality.
So. No house before winter, but maybe by next spring? Not sure. I sincerely hope so! We are told that the planning process is the most time-consuming. Once they start actually building, things should move along quite quickly. yay.
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