Dealing with Disappointment

I have found through building our home so far that the process is an exercise in how well one copes with disappointment.  The build starts with a dream, then a plan and finally...the reality.  Now maybe that isn't the lesson for everyone in building when your budget fits your taste.   But for this family, that has been the daily lesson.  What we want isn't what we can afford.  We started by finding our dream house.  Here it is.

We fell in love with this picture.  It is a photo of Randolph Place.  It was the inspiration of our whole project.  We looked at purchasing the plans, but after looking at the basic floor plan, 1) the master was upstairs (pretty much a deal breaker because of growing old and resale value) and 2) the dining area was too small.  We tried drawing plans to fit the shape.  My husband was sure he could draw it.  I was sure it wouldn't look right, since he is good at drawing damaged rooms, which he does for a living, and not necessarily designing spaces.  After much worry and sleepless nights, on my part, we departed from the Randolph Place idea.

Then we started scouring house plans.  My oldest daughter thought Ansley Park had the perfect floor plan.  Here's a link:  http://houseplans.southernliving.com/plans/SL592

I liked the floor plan, but thought the front was too plain.  So we looked at what seemed like a million plans.  Then I found Timothy Bryan through Southern Living builders.  I looked through his floor plans and really liked them.  I called him and he told us to select the floor plan we liked and he could change the face to what we wanted.  We found one that we really liked..... Ansley Park?  My oldest daughter smiled when I realized it was the exact plan she had liked in the beginning.   Here's a photo of Ansley Park:

Now to make the face match what we wanted for the exterior.  After one attempt and some drawing on my husband's part, I might add, Timothy Bryan did an excellent job, we think, of combining our ideas to create this front:

We had a plan!  We sat down with our builder, who is really awesome.  He was perfect for us.  He's very creative and prides himself on building homes for less than they appraise for.  With a family of 11, building on a budget was our top priority.  I started collecting bids from cabinet makers, granite installers, appliance dealers and sat down and created a long spreadsheet on excel detailing everything from light fixtures to countertops, bathtubs, faucets, sinks, etc.,    After sitting down and getting building cost estimates from our builder and combining them with my numbers, we found ourselves 100K over budget!  We were so discouraged and even considered scrapping our plans, but then we started cutting everything.  My cabinet budget went from 35K to 20K.  My 20K appliance budget that had been recommended to me by a local appliance dealer went down to 10K and the list goes on... Hardwood floors would be engineered instead.  More carpet and less wood.  One item at a time, we whittled our dreams into reality.  In the end, our banker said it was the most detailed budget he'd ever seen.  I tend towards being over cautious, I've been told.  So I've oversimplified all of this, because what I'm skipping is the emotion of all of it.  We had started with all of these pinterest pictures and high hopes and ended up nervous about all of the money it was going to cost and how we could make cheaper things look higher end than they were.  So this is where our build began, with disappointment, but also hope.  I still don't sleep well at night.  Always in the back of my mind, I wonder if we're crazy taking this on....or whether I'll have to sell blood plasma before it's all over. Only time will tell.