After about a month of doing some sketching and talking about pricing and what was included or not included, we signed our contract with Meridian. Whew, we were moving forward. Finally progress!
We spent a great deal of time with Chris after work and on Saturday mornings further perfecting the plan. He brought in Phil who is their in-house architect top put the plans and ideas to paper. Well, OK, so they were on a computer screen first.
Speaking of computers, one of the things that made the process so much easier was actually sitting with Phil and moving walls and roof lines and what not on his computer screen using his house building software (I have the homeowner version. Talk about being dangerous.). He would then render a 3-D view which enabled us to look at it from many different angles. That visual gave us the effect of being in the room and being able to look around from all sides. While we realize that it was only a rough idea, it gave us a good idea on what the various rooms and house was going to look like.
They both (Chris & Phil) had more patience then I could have ever had. What also added to the positive work relationship was when we asked Chris if we could add “this”, he would say “sure, that will probably add x dollars to the cost”. That alone helped keep us close to original budget. Knowing how much we strayed with the rehab, we learned to prioritize what things were important and what their costs were.
I’m fast forwarding here, but by December, we had a set of plans that were about 98% complete. And they were what we wanted.
We couldn’t have been more pleased.
