A big redirection - we bought another home instead

I'll spare you most of the details but Jen and I decided to buy the home we were renting.  So, we won't be building our "CasaArey dream home" but will instead be settling into the house that has been our home for the past year.

Why the change...big(gest?) reason was financial.  The cost estimates came in for this house and it was more that we wanted to be financially tied up into at this point in my life.  When all was said and done, the estimate was for $450-$550k and with my eventual transition from the Army, now just was not the time to get locked into a large payment.  Patience is a virtue.

But I really like the house I'm in now.  After living here for a year, I realized that it had everything I was looking for in a home.  It's about five hundred yards from where CasaArey was going to be built.  A really wonderful, private backyard, a great long driveway for our boat trailer, and we're still only 5 minutes to the boat ramp on Stillhouse Hollow Lake.

Let the renovations and energy improvements begin.  The hot water heater insulation blanket was an easy $23.  We just has more insulation blown into the ceiling (we found some poor insulation when we had a home inspection performed...never, never scrimp on a home inspection!).  I may install some solar screens over a front window that catches the rising sun.  Other improvements to come.

So for those of you that followed this for the last year, I'm sorry for any disappointment.  But I'm a big believer that everything turns out for the best and this is likely right in line with this!

Scot

Builders are estimating and bidding!

Standing by for some quotes from some of the local builders.  

House plans are complete!

Finally!  It's been a great experience with Curtis Cook of Salado.  Jen and I are thrilled to have the finished plans and ready to start the building process.  A copy of this was sent to my past mortgage broker/banker...same person who financed (and refinanced) my last home in Harker Heights.

So what do we have??  An open floor plan designed for our family.  A small craft room for Jen (she deserves it after years of boxes), an innovative home gym (garage doors are the vogue!) and very important for my own professional future...a solar ready roof over the garage, free of all panel obstacles, at the right pitch for optimum solar gain.  On that, I learned that there are many different "optimum models" for best solar angle.  We settled for a 7/12 pitch which is about 30 degrees.  The roof orientation is approx due south and while I would have preferred a slightly west of due south orientation for max gain during peak load periods, one quickly finds out that compromises and economic value decisions are a fact of life.

I'm sure this won't be the first compromise.  Now we get to the "wants versus needs" stage combined with our own personal "1 to n" list.  As always, I'll keep you informed.

We're back in business! New designer and a great meeting with an innovator.

As you can tell by my sparse writing, I was in a bit of a lull and that really was mostly to do with changing designers...

Jen and I are now with Curtis Cook Residential Designs from Salado (http://curtiscookdesigns.com/) and all we can say is that working with Curtis has been marvelous.  Jen is especially happy with the back and forth dialogue that has made our plan right for us.  The layout is very much like we set in an earlier post.

Timing on construction will now be difficult and it's hard to see how building by this summer is feasible.  So many pros and cons: take time and do right...risk of interest rate rising.  More to follow on this.

Now the innovator...I attended the ImagineSolar open house yesterday.  Many of you know that I desire to get into the renewable energy field after my military career is over.  So, I always wanted our home to have some renewable and energy efficiency features that could help me learn and demonstrate to others.

The open house was enjoyable and I sat next to Shey Sabripour, who is the president and CEO of Altumaxis Technologies (altum- latin for sustain; axis - point of pivot...nice).  A 24 year veteran of the Space Systems industry, he has now innovated his own company dedicated to smart home design using demonstrated technologies from the space industry.  I love to meet entrepreneurs.

Now a consultant to many of Austin's renowned designers and architects, I see a bright future for Altumaxis.  America's strength is innovation and application of technologies for the next level of energy efficiency will be important.

My chance meeting with Shey was a good reminder for me that I wanted to incorporate solar PV and other technologies with best rate of return on investment to achieve lowest possible cost of ownership.  So maybe my project delay is going to give Jen and me the time to find the highest value innovations and get them built during construction.

Check out Altumaxis at http://altumaxis.com/