In other news, the cotton looks like it's getting ready for picking. Looking out our front and back windows, you would think we had flurries as it looks so white.
The farmers came and sprayed it a couple of weeks ago to kill all of the foliage, and now that it has died off, it's picking time. Some neighboring fields have already been picked so it shouldn't be long now. I don't know who the farmer is that takes care of the fields around our house, but he's got the tallest and best looking cotton of anyone in the surrounding area.
On to our TOP STORY...
We've been talking to home builders! That's right, we've taken that step in the process. Between friends and family we managed to pare down to a list of 3 builders. We've met with all of them so far, presented our designs (hand-drawn expertly by Neta) and now we're waiting for some estimates to come back. We have made some changes to our housing plans as we've gathered additional information, based on feedback from the builders and (very) ballpark costs.
By the way, as it pertains to those designs I mentioned that Neta drew up, well... We found some plans (drawings and designs) on line that we felt came the closest to what we wanted. Neta worked on them for a couple of nights, swapped a few rooms around, changed some room sizes here and there and came up with something that we hope we can make happen. We'll see once the estimates come back.
Not to confuse housing plans (where we'll build) with house plans (what we'll build), in this paragraph we'll be talking about the "where". We mentioned our housing plans in the blog entry from June 27th where we talked about fixing up the existing house for Neta's Dad and building our own place down by the pond. That was Plan A. When we got a ballpark estimate for how much it would cost to fix up the existing house, we had to consider Plan B (a house for all of us, Neta's Dad too, down by the pond) or Plan C (a house for all of us on the current site, demo'ing the existing house). We chose Plan C...version 1.a. This plan, if we can make it work, will consist of fixing up a small, existing, two-room house up the lane for Neta's Dad, and tearing down the existing (main) house to build a new one for ourselves. Despite our promises to be good housemates, Neta's Dad would still like a place of his own. We weren't going to argue. He's always said that he could live in a tiny trailer as long as he had a place to keep his boat and go fishing. This house will meet all of those requirements and still give him the privacy that he wants. And besides, it'll only be a 3 minute walk or a 30 second drive to join us for dinner.
So...that's where we are. We hope to have more news in the coming days once we hear back from the builders. Until then...Bye ya'll!
