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Monday, January 26, 2009

Chapter Two - Signing on the Dotted Line

After finding the property, our next step was to close on the land. After what felt like months of negotiation and research into what all it was going to take to build on the land (e.g. water well, elecric, etc) we finally signed the dotted line on July 25, 2008. We were now proud owner's of 20 acres in Gunter! Immediately, we began making renovations to our current home so that we could prepare it to put on the market for sale. Luckily, within the last year, Casey had made large improvements to the house (all new hardware, light fixtures, etc) so there was not much we had to do besides a good deep clean. On September 1, we put a For Sale By Owner sign in the yard and began the tedious process of trying to sale the house! After a month of hardly any interest and just a few showings (probably because the only advertising was the sign in the yard), we decided to list with a realtor. October 1 marked the first official day on the market. We had 13 showings in October alone, but then November and December came. Nothing. Notta. Zilch. From the week of elections through the week of Christmas, we had no new showings and only one 2nd.

On the land/new home front, in late September, Casey and I sat down with graph paper and drew up the floor plans of our new home. Casey had a lot of great ideas and I had always kept a list of things I wanted in the layout of a house. It didn't take long and we sent the plans away to our architect for official drawing. After a few week process of her sending us sketches and us making redlines, we created our future dream home! It is neat to look back at the original plan on graph paper (and the original sketch I drew of the exterior of the house) and to compare that to our final product. Many things are the same, but we have made a lot of improvements also. Next steps... selections and bids....