| My first designs started back in 2005 when we were thinking of adding on. The idea back
      then was to excavate the driveway down to the basement level and put a 2 car garage underneath
      a family room. The design hadn't really matured. I got really concerned about being able to
      afford paying for it. I decided we needed to live a year as if we were making that kind of
      payment. Home equity had really been going up at this time before the 2008 realestate bubble
      burst. Also, in June 2006 Stanford was diagnosed with cancer. He died in January 2007. I also
      lost my job in 2006 and found a new job with Technical Communications Corp. All those life
      events put the addition on indefinit hold. In 2008 we were able to pay off our mortgage and
      started saving a lot more in our 401k. Fast forward to 2022 and the time was finally right to add on to the house. I spent close to 18 months working on design after design. I submitted design 34 to several contractors for bids. It came in quite a bit more than expected. I reworked the design removing the proposed 2nd floor. The design evolved into version 36. We then signed on with Rich Metivier, owner of RPM Builders, to do the job. The design went through several tweaks and ended up with Design 36. |