Okay, so I think you guys remember a couple months ago that Denis and I were fiddling around with floorplans and that I had dummied up a plan that we both liked. Then via email I was put in touch with one of the reps of the homebuilder who said she’d be happy to help us tweak the floorplan in her spare time over the next year or two until we get the final floorplan we like. Then we could just sit on the plan until we were ready to build and she’d price it out for us.
The original floorplan was something like 2,900 sq ft. Today she sent me the mockup of our first round of drafts, and it is now 3,770 sq ft. Uh. There’s no way I want to build a 3,770 sq ft house!! So atrimmin’ we must do! At least get it down to 3,400 or something like that, which is “only” 500 sq ft more than we have now.
I’m hoping it will be relatively easy to do. We can skip the bumpout on the left side of the house and shave off about 75 sq ft. And I’m thinking that if we shave off 2 feet from the entire back of the house on both floors we’ll save another 155 sq ft, that takes us down to 3,540 sq ft right there. Based on the pricing they list on their website, if we go with all their STANDARD features, then at TODAY’S pricing we’d come in right at what we’re thinking we’d like to spend on a house. Ouch. Knowing we’re not going to build for 3-5 years means the price will only go up – but the problem is our ability to pay more may not!!!
Either way, I’ll be taking the plans home to show Denis and see where we can make some reductions to get the sq footage down another 100 sq ft or so. I still think even 3,400 sq ft is more house than we would ever need, but it’s a great floorplan that has everything we want, a nice layout, and a fantastic front elevation. So it’s hard to say “can’t do it” and much better to say “Let’s tweak it more.”