"The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray." Plans are a great thing to make and even better if they actually happen. It is beginning to look as if our plan for a custom built house backing to woods/ravine and river beyond is just not going to happen.

Yesterday Rob and I got in the minivan and drove down to Cincinnati to look at a house with Denise, our ever patient real estate agent and Douglas. The house has a lot of great features. The basement is about twice the size of our basement and half of it is finished. I would have a great room for sewing with room for a nice sewing machine table, my cutting table and fabric storage, oh yeah and a futon. There is a full bath in the basment. The main room has a sliding glass door and window with enough room for my floor looms and most of the yarn storage. There is another finished room that does not have a window. The guys decided that this would make a great media room. OK, fine, but one floor loom might migrate into there and there might be a little yarn storage. There is a train room, yes, you read that correctly, a train room. There is a huge plywood platform with a train track on it with scenery painted on one wall. Douglas suggested that this would be a good holiday/food storage room. There is another unfinished room that the owner used for what looks like wood working. Then ther is another large unfinished room with a laundry tub. This would be for the dyeing/silk screen area. There are built in sturdy shelves and room for my table and a washer/dryer. We would have to have the washer/dryer hook up installed. OK, so why am I not jumping up and down. I had set in my mind that walkout to the woods. There are a could of trees in the back, but there are also neighbors not woods. I am wondering what landscaping could be done to make some sort of zen garden retreat.

Upstairs is pretty good. The front door is ho hum, but Rob assures me that he has budgeted to replace with a nice door. You walk in the front door and it opens to different areas. To the right is the laundry/mud room. Washer/dryer included and a few built ins. I have other ideas for those built ins. Just have to see what is possible. Then you can go into the dining room, which is not directly connected to the kitchen, but is an extension of the living room. We would be able to extend the dining room table into the living room. The living room windows go out to the covered deck. The owner has huge shades installed on the west side of the deck to block the sun. I suppose that those might come in handy. It looks as if there was one on the northside that blew down, there are a bunch of little broken slats ont he grass. There is a family room, which is something that we were going to eliminate. It isn't a large family room and Douglas was trying to figure out if he could mount the TV over the fireplace. The kitchen and family room are in one large area so instead of an eat in kitchen we would extend the family room into that area. The family room is carpeted and the kitchen has hardwood, which unfortunately is narrrow. I do love our wide plank. The kitchen cabinets are nothing that I would choose, I like simple clean lines. There is a huge island with a granite top and the overhang is large enough that you cna sit at it comfortably. The owner has two tables in the eating area. Not sure why. The eating area has a little bay window, which I think would make a great spot for a window seat. We will have to see on that one.

The rest of the countertops in the kitchen are white Corrian with an integrated sink. At one point that was the bomb, now I just want to bomb it. Oh yeah, and the sink is one of those with the little sink on one side. Not sure how long I can listen to "someone" bitch about that. The question is do we go with a quartz countertop that coordinates with the granite or get the whole thing replaced? The cabinets are very tall. I will need a stepstool to reach the top two shelves. There is an appliance garage, but pretty sure that I cannot get the Kitchenaide mixer in there. I found where I can have one of the lift shelves installed. I forgot to check to see if there is an outlet on the island. The pantry is disapoointing. It isn't a walk in, but maybe we can cut back on the amount of food that we keep on hand. The pantry would be a good spot to keep a skinny stepstool like I have for shows. There is an electric stove. Anyone have any idea how much it costs to have a gas line run? At least now I would not be limited to Whirlpool.

The office is right off of the kitchen. There are glass French doors leading to the office which has built in shelves and is painted RED! The guys measured and figured that they could put the desk into a U formation and it would fit. Not sure right now where the bookcase would go. The guest bath is OK, gold trim - ugh, dated, but is nice. The guest room is painted a sage green. Will have to see how the current comforter goes with that. I suppose that since we bought that in 1999 we could maybe get a new one. There is plenty of room for the queen bed, dresser and two side tables. Nice spot for company.

The master suite is very nice. Two walk-in closets which have wire shelves in and we would change that. The bedroom itself has enough room for our furniture, but two wall mounted lights would have to go. The bath has a corner tub and it fits my requirements of I can get my knees and shoulders under water at the same time. The shower has the dreaded gold trim and Rob would have to duck to get into it. There isn't a build in stool, but there is a little stool in there. We will have to look into how much it would cost to install a glass shower. I don't remember if there are two sinks in there. Not a huge deal, but would be nice.

There is a screened porch off of the family room with a deck beyond. Neither are large. I am not sure if we could get our current table and chairs would fit there. On the patio below there is a natural gas grill. We would rather have the grill upstairs. Douglas doesn't think that it would be a major issue to bring the gas line up to the deck. We can't really extend the deck because there is a great tree right there. The patio is just standard. I looked at a neighbor's house. they have the same configuration and have added the stairs down and have extended the patio. Something to consider.

So basically what is holding me back is the location of the house. The deck does face west and doesn't face trees.

We are going to wait to see what Drees Homes will do for us, hoping that this can be used as leverage. If they don't come down we will buy this house. Rob wants them to go back to the previous price on the base model and to come down on a couple of the DCR's (customer design review) in order for us to go with building. Um, maybe we should ask for a unicorn in the backyard. This is just not going to happen. I need to come to grips with the fact that I will not have my dream house, but I can make any house a home. I have to admit that I am tired of Drees jerking us around. Denise explained that ususally when people build they don't question prices. I guess that we are just cheap.

Stay tuned.