Plans are changing as fast as the weather. We are no longer going to Cincinnati after my next show. There really isn't a whole lot that we could have done, except maybe see where the trees have been cleared. Mary the sales lady has a mandatory training session that day. Robert had suggested that we go down a day early and do this before the show. Um, give up a day of prep before a major show? Yeah, I don't think so. Not happening. We will be going the 3rd weekend of January. That is a weekend tha we have nothing scheduled and Robert has that Monday off. Hopefully we will be able to choose our lot and start on the design choices. We have been promised first choice on the lots. Until then we will be getting price quotes on our upgrades and then deciding which ones we really want. Last week I stopped in Home Depot for floor samples. We are trying to decide which one matches our dining table the best. This way we can take the sample with us for choosing cabinets and floors. I feel as if I have made some progress. Now we just need a sunny day to choose which one matches best. I have been looking at the cabinet company website. I have chosen a few things that I would like. Maybe I should see if they can send me a catalouge. Stay tuned, plans change daily

I guess the fact that there isn't any new news is a good thing. Rob is trying to dive right in and Mary the sales lady has to keep explaining that there are some things that we can't decide on right now. They will be using the main Drees design center for all design choices. However this won't start until after the 1st of the year. We will still go there after my show in Columbus, but probably finish by noon and head home. Now the question is the financing. We need to find out when they need to have the financing assured. We will put the house on the market 3-4 months before the house should be done then keep our fingers crossed. Good news on the selling out house part, I checked Zillow last week and our house is up to $269K and the house across the street is $288K. It is the same floorplan, but we have a sliding glass door in the kitchen, and updated kitchen and a huge deck. We have the commons on the side, they have it behind them. Trade offs.

It seems that there are changes daily now after being stalled for so long. I just talked to the sales person. We wanted to make sure that we were looking at the right cabinets and paint. We had planned to go to Pontiac this weekend to look at both. Turns out that they are changing cabinet companies; instead of Aristokraft they will have Merillat. I like that and while we had Porter Paints correct we only get a choice of four colors for the interior. OK, we might be doing a little repainting there, but that can't be done until after the closing. They might also be moving their design center out of the model and to the big design center. That means that we get more choices. I do want a lot of interesting upgrades in the cabinets, like a built in knife block and a spice rack. I have seen some that really make great use of storage. Oh well. Mary did say that they had not started to clear trees yet, but she would drive past later and check it out. She is hoping that something will be done by the time we are there in a few weeks.

Last night we got back the list of prices for upgrades/changes that we want to make. Not horrible, well that is until we realized that this did not include the $25K lot upgrade, the stairs from the deck to the ground level, the ceramic tile in the bathrooms and backhall or upgrading the bathroom cabinets. Negotiations could get sticky, but that is why we have a real estate agent. Denise did suggest that we ask for everything then decide what can be added later. Get the cabinets that we want but maybe wait for the counter tops then see what we can work for a deal on that later. I do think that their countertop prices are a little steep. I have a show in Columbus, OH on December 6 - 8 so Rob will come along with me and we will go to Cincinnat from there. Hopefully we will at least be able to see where the lots will be. We are also going to hopefully take care of some of the design choices. This Saturday we are going to a cabinet store to look at color/styles/upgrades. We are going to take a dining room chair with us to match. We will also go to a store that sells the paint that the builder uses. Pillow and a sample of the living room paint goes with us. We can't be the only people who have ever done this.

Ah, now we are discussing cabinet colors, cabinet options, what to paint what room and what flooring we want where. Keep breathing deeply, we will get through this. We have found two places that carry the cabinets and the paint that the builder uses. The bad news is that they are both in Pontiac. We are going to make this trip Saturday morning. The Badgers are on at noon so this may help me make choices fast. I want cabinet colors that match our dining set. I think that we might be brining a chair with us. I want to match one of the colors in our bedspread, well not those colors but a paler hue of one of those colors. I wanted to choose one of the lavendars. Rob is not that happy about lavendar for the bedroom. I want the same blue that we have in our living room for our family room. Rob thought that we could use that same color. I tried to point out to him that the blues are different. Sigh, this oculd be interesting. For some reason he wants only 3 colors in the entire house. Yeah, this could be intereesting.

Ah, a little progress. We found out yesterday that they are going to start clearing trees next week and we know where the lots will be cleared. We will be living on the end of Calm Stream, kind of an ironic street name for the two of us. Here is a map of the current lots and if you scroll down you will see the proposed lot. We aren't exactly sure of the lots but here goes: http://documents.dreesteam.com/jsp/marketdocsAction.jsp?action=marketdocsGet&requestId=1&mddId=198517 We have typed up our list of changes and updates and sent them on to the builder. Our hope is that we can make the majority of our decisions before the lots are ready so that once they can build we have our part all done. I am going to apply to my regular shows and hope that the move in occurs sometime between them. We are also hoping that the move is done before September 1 since Douglas will be on campus fulltime after that.

First, let me go back to the beginning. February 24: We are in Cincinnati visity our son and daughter-in-law for our son's birthday. After several computer searches we find that there is indeed a 55+ community in the Cincinnati area. Since our son Douglas had a study group that day we go exploring. The community is located on the far east side of Cincinnati. After driving around we stop and the model home. Surprise, it was open. We told the woman that we were looking to build sometime in the next 2 - 6 years. I thought that the woman would give us some brochures and tell us to come back when we were ready to build. Nope, she showed us around the model, showed us where we would choose our options, explained the lot choices, showed us different plans and took us to a new house that was for sale. We left all excited, even if they didn't have an indoor pool there were a lot of good points here. The sales person told us that new designs would be coming out sometime in the spring. After we got home Rob started to do some searches and found two houses that were for sale. One looked promising. It had a full walkout finished basement, still had an unfinished part for my dyeing work. It had a very nice deck and backed to woods. I was a little concerned about how close it was to a nearby road, it had laminate counter tops and had an eat in kitchen which we did not want. The other house was way overpriced and was a possible lease option. Our daughter-in-law refered us to her real estate agent who set up viewings for us. We went down the last weekend of April and Douglas and Michelle came with us to look at the houses. We walked into the first one and while its pictures online were awesome it was not in person. Everything was just a little off. We went out on the wonderful deck and could hear the traffic on the nearby road. Scratch that house. Then we went to the other house. Oh wow, I was home. They had put in so many upgrades. There was very little that we would have to do to it, except repaint a few rooms. The countertops were Correan, not granite, but we could deal with that in the future. There was a swing under the deck facing the woods and ravine behind the house. I sat in it and could feel all of the stress leaving me. I told the rest of them to go on I was staying here. We went to the sales office. They showed us the new house plans, I mean straight off the presses. We looked them over each of us liking a different one, but we had time to sort that out. Then they took us out to choose our lot. We were shown one lot. It would have one lot backing up to it and two backing to the side. Um, no, not what we wanted. Well, that was the only lot available for the house we wanted. What king of choice is this? We were told that there would be new lots being developed but it could be a few years. We discussed everything and put in a kind of feeler on the 2nd house that we looked at. We felt that it was way overpriced and would they come down. Our real estate agent contacted theirs and she was glad that someone said that it was overpriced. We would have to wait a week because the owners were traveling. Well, the man wanted to come down, but his wife wants what they paid for it. OK, back to building. We kept looking a the plans and switched who liked what. There was a $20,000.00 price difference so we decided on the cheaper one and started making the changes that we would like as we waited for the new lots, and waited and waited. We went to Home Depot to checkout different cabinet, carpeting and counter top styles so that we got an idea of what we wanted. Denise, our real estate agent would call every few weeks and the answer was the same; no plat map yet. Rob got more frustrated and produced a power point presentation showing why they should develope the new lots. At last we were told that the new map would be ready sometime in August. We made plans to go down Labor Day weekend to choose our lot. We went right to Mainville on our way down and went tramping through the weeds and seeds where we thought that the new lots would be developed. I found a sewer main which told us that this could be it. We got back to the car and I checked my email. I had received and email from the sales person that the plat map was not ready and did we want to cancel our appointment. After a quick call to Denise we decided that we would keep the appointment because we had several questions and could look at some of our design choices. After consulting with different people we had decided which plan we wanted: http://documents.dreesteam.com/jsp/marketdocsAction.jsp?action=marketdocsGet&requestId=1&mddId=206403 now there is only a $2,500.00 difference. They answered our questions, Douglas asked about being able to get in to run cables when the walls were open and we went downstairs to look at choices. Basically we had a few of our questions answered, but felt unsatisfied. We were assured that we would be in by late summer. I forgot to ask what year. Denise was back to calling every few weeks and we kept getting the same no new news. On Wednesday the news finally changed. They were going to start clearing trees in the next week or so and would be staking the new lots after the first of the year. The lots will carry a premium of $25,000.00 and we have been promised first choice. So that is where we are at. I will post everytime there is something new. I am still doubting that we will be in by the end of August 2014.