Our First Lesson in Home Building

Last Monday we met with the architect.  We were excited because we had picked out a plan that we really liked and thought with minor tweaks we could make it right for us.  The main change we wanted to make was the square footage.  In fact, here is the exterior of the plan we started with:

Some of the things we love about the exterior is the symmetry and front facade.  A couple of things we do not like - the brick extensions and the pitch of the roof.  The architect told us no big deal, we can fix that.  We were on a roll so we moved on to the first floor.  Here is a pic of the plan on the first floor:

We liked the flow of the rooms, but the main selling point on this plan is that it would allow us to have a side entry garage.  The changes on this floor included:

• Removing the sunken living room
• Making the wall between the dining room straight
• Removing the curved wall in the back of the house
• Taking the bump out in the kitchen and moving it to the rear of the house
• Changing the full bath to a half bathroom
• Making the fireplace double-sided
• Extending the garage

Whew, that seems like a lot looking at it now, but we still felt like we were in a good place and on our way to making it perfect.  We moved on to the second floor and came up with the solution to possibly remove the third bathroom to add square footage to the bedrooms.  Here is the second floor in all of its glory:

So where exactly did we learn a lesson?  We learned that house plans online do not have accurate square footage.  Instead of the 3,073 that we originally thought this plan was, it ended up being over 3,600.  We were not surprised that the square footage was not correct because our realtor and the architect told us they thought it was bigger.  That being said....we did not expect 500 square feet bigger.  

With this new development, we are busy trying to figure out how to make this work.  We feel like we have a great support team.  Our realtor know his stuff when it comes to building and has worked with our architect on many plans.  Between us and them we will make it work!