Bumps in the Road

I am feeling a lot more weary about this, this week. We got word that the town charges $6,500 for any new home water hook-up. On top of that I had to deal with a very rude man at the town hall. If the road has been paved within the past 5 years there is a moratorium on the road, meaning if you need to break ground for any reason to access, water, gas or sewer you need to pay a fee. In Scituate that fee is $5000.00. When I called the town hall the man at the DPW asked me if it looks freshly paved. Uh, how am I supposed to know, it could have been done 4 years ago. This is 5,000 we are talking about, I need a clear answer. He then told me " I am not going to check on it just because you are purchasing a piece of land there." Isn't that his job, they are the ones who paved the road. Frankly, I don't care if he needs to go there (he could walk there from the town hall it is so close) or look it up in the computer system where I am sure they keep track of such things.
   This was a really hard week, between the attitude and the possible 11,500 expense, we may not be able to build on this land and I have already fallen in love with it.

Today I am preparing my binder while I wait for some quotes to come in. Nothing is ever as cheap as you think. The labor to frame the house not including the materials is in the $40,000's. That is a good chunk of our budget. I am still holding out hope, because I like to look on the bright side.  Back to picking out light fixtures and appliances I go...

House plans have been purchased

While we still don't know about the kind of basement we will be able to have, we decided to purchase the plans we both loved. Here is the lay out:

Finding Land

Sean and I sold our home in July and have been keeping an eye our for land since. My dream location was old oaken bucket road, whether it be in Scituate or Norwell, I just liked the road. 3 lots were listed a few weeks after we began our search and one was somewhat in our price range of 220. The land was listed for 259,900 and after some negotiating we got them down to 225. We still have a ways to go with the land! We need to make sure the septic design is to our liking, that the foundation can be high enough (we want a walk out basement with high ceilings) and that will depend on the water table. Our percs came back at 222" which is excellent. This means it is deep and mostly gravel so it can hold a septic without having to put a mound (no fill needed means less money spent) basically it's excellent soil.

I have looked at over 15,000 house plans. Things I want: a walk out basement, master bedroom on the second floor, no extra rooms (meaning no living room and family room, one or the other not both), a laundry room with a window, the master bath to have big windows by the tub, a big kitchen. It's actually pretty hard to find a layout you love completely. I found 3, two of them had very difficult roof designs and one we are waiting to hear back on. A risk we will be taking is buying the plans and them getting rejected by the town but its just a risk we have to take because they need the plans. 

Now we will be trying to general contract this ourselves! So it should be interesting but we simply can't afford to pay a middle man. Lets see if we can do this with 275k!