The Contract is Signed!

Had another meeting yesterday and it was a big day. We officially signed the building contract! I went into the meeting prepared to try my best to get Bob to lower his commission percent since we are allowing him to put the house in the parade of homes. But lo and behold he had already done that in the contract. That felt good.

In order to get under our target budget, we did have to drop out the hot tub (which was expected), the coffer ceilings downstairs (understandable), and the big AV wall cabinet in the family room (audible gasp from Pat). We may be able to squeeze some of those in toward the end if we have the cash to do it, but we will see. We'll get a big tax credit for the geothermal install (we did decide to leave that in) but I don't know if we'd get that cash back before the house is done. I told Christina its OK if we drop the AV cabinet, we still have the beautiful 2x4 and plywood rolling TV carts to hold all the TVs! No comment from her on this proposal yet.

Bob is raring to go on the project. He's going to have MN Power trench and run the power to the site under his name, since he still technically owns the land. That way we don't have to wait for us to officially close on the mortgage. The bank got all the documentation yesterday but it takes up to 10 business days to actually get the mortgage officially in place. He also wants to start clearing land ASAP, probably early next week. We still haven't checked out the spot that he picked to place the house, so I will be meeting him out there at 8:30 Monday morning to check it out.

We had to commit to a few things yesterday, basically anything that has to do with the basic outside structure that would be needed to get it built and sealed up. That was placement, size, material, and color of: windows, soffits, fascia, and shingles. windows are a bronze color. I cant remember the soffits and fascia, I think they are a bronze as well. Shingles are your standard grayish/multicolor.

We also made a reconnaissance mission stop to Johnson-Mertz appliances yesterday just to get the lay of the land as far as what we can get for our appliance budget. Our conclusion is: appliances are freakin' expensive.

More pictures and updated plans coming shortly!