Week 1: Already over budget by 25%!

For some reason they won't give me the keys...

The title of this post is a wee bit facetious, but only a bit. Though we did our best to research costs prior to starting this project, there are just a lot of things we could only guess at. We knew we were in an expensive part of the country, but most of the bids we've gotten have been in the range of 100-400% more than we guessed they might be. Queue "belt-tightening."

Our grading contractor has been FANTASTIC and is willing to work with us on an hourly basis, which means we carry the risk if something crops up. Cropping began on day one when the soils engineer requested a much pricier building pad technique than had been anticipated. FUN! The good news is that the two days of work the grading crew has done so far on the driveway, basic scraping, and swale has clipped along at quite a good pace, so maybe we've made up for some of the extra cost of the pad work.

John digs in

Well, there is no turning back now! We're still planning to do as much of the work ourselves as possible, and thought it may be rice-and-beans for many dinners to come, if we're eating on our little plot of paradise, that is OK by us.