Here today...gone tomorrow

As suspected the decision was to go ahead and bulldoze our house. This was actually the decision we were hoping for - let's face it, the place was a wreck. Starting over just seemed like the better thing for all involved. Once that decision was made we had to spend many evenings at the house going through things to make sure that everything was out that we wanted to try to salvage. First off, it was FREEZING cold. Second, it smelled AWFUL. There was nothing fun about these trips to the house. Well, I suppose if someone were to have seen Tommy and I before going in they might have gotten a good laugh...

Don't be jealous of our head lights. Those things were extremely handy! Wonder if I can make that a fashion trend...hmm....anyway. I digress. We had to kick it into high gear once we found out that we were tearing down. We had to start interviewing builders, searching for a great house plan, etc. A lot of late, stressful nights trying to figure out all of these decisions. Many long meetings with builders and meetings with our floor plan guy trying to get everything just perfect. It was exhausting. I keep telling myself at some point this will all be fun - we are getting a new house after all!

Finding the house that we wanted to build was a pretty easy decision. We have drooled over a certain house by Garrell Associates for years. We didn't want to build quite as large as their plan, so we found a floor plan that would match up to the exterior of the house that we were in love with. So basically we will be using the same style as the Garrell house with the modified floor plan.

The outside will be similar to this:

The floor plan is similar to this plus a basement:

The amount of custom work we are going to put into this is kind of crazy but we will be doing a lot of the work ourselves. We figure we might as well have everything exactly how we want it. I think we deserve it after this whole fiasco!

Tomorrow is the day when they are finally coming to tear down the burnt house. I have some mixed emotions about it but luckily we had only lived in the house a year so we aren't SUPER attached to it. It will still be very strange though that after tomorrow the lot will just be empty until we begin the new house. Also very strange that there is a giant track hoe parked in the parking lot of the club ready to head down there tomorrow morning....Tommy is quite excited about the big toy. :)

Stay tuned for house tearing down pics and video!!!