Housebuilding

I’m having trouble sleeping again tonight, likely at least in part due to this persistent cough that’s leftover from my cold. *sigh*

I played in an Unhinged booster draft at Wedge gaming tonight. It was much fun. I came in 2nd place, and got most of the rest of what I need to have a complete set. All that’s left for me to collect is Staying Power, Super Secret Tech, and ideally a completely-blank-with-silver-border filler card that I saw existed when someone opened one at the tournament I ran last week.

We got an estimate today from a real estate person about the value of our land and the value of our house once it was built. So, we brought it to the bank and signed oodles and oodles of forms, occasionally with inaccurate information that the manager promised to correct later. (Apparently, they missed a decimal point somewhere and had down my bank account assets as being ten times what they actually were. Also, the form saying how much we needed to pay back eventually was blank, indicating that we wouldn’t need to pay anything. They didn’t want us to sign that one yet.)

So, I got good news from the bank yesterday: They’ll be happy to give us a loan. In fact, they’d be okay with loaning $100,000 more than we think we need right now. They just need two things from us before we sign:

1. The value of the land. This may be difficult to know for sure, since the land was a gift and not sold. We may just give them a random guess and hope that they’re happy with it.
2. How much the house will cost. We’re currently anxiously awaiting word from our builder on that (as well as when he’ll start drilling the well).

So, things are going quite well. We got blueprints a few weeks back, but I didn’t post them since we don’t have them in digital form since we don’t have a scanner and they’re on much-larger-than-normal sheets of paper. Does anyone have a scanner that could scan tabloid-sized-or-larger sheets of paper? (At the moment, the bank has our copy, but we should be getting them back at some point… And there are more copies at my parents’ house.)

I received good news last night regarding our house-building project:

• Many trees have been cut down.
• These trees will likely get removed this weekend.
• Today, the architect should have everything to make our final house plans.
• The well is currently expected to be drilled sometime next week.

Much happiness and excitement!

On a whim, I headed over to the Worcester Registry of Deeds site today and searched to see if the land transfer from my parents had become official. Amazingly enough, it had, as of yesterday. I downloaded the Official Registered Plans marking the lot as well as the Official Deed saying that the land has become ours. It’s kinda neat—Jessi and I are landowners now.

Rather than put you though needing to use their horrible searching interface, I put the Official Images up on my computer for people who are interested (and so I have a copy). Warning: they’re in TIFF format.

So, yesterday, Jessi, my parents, and I chatted with a Builder person. We chatted over the possibilities, and we’re now planning on having a built-there house instead of a built-off-site-and-shipped-there house. We think that building it there reduces the risk of damage during shipment and increases our options and customizability.

This week, we should be getting approval from the Board of Health and Conservation Commission. After that, we just need to get a loan, clear the land, put down hay bales, dig a well, get utility poles put in, get a building permit, and build a house.

Received good news this morning!

Dear Pete and Jessi,
The planning board signed the plans for creating your lot. One step closer!
Love,
Mom