Change of Plans, House Plans that is..........

I realize I have not fully updated my blogger friends. The construction project Justin and I are about to jump into has changed slightly........

We are no longer officially building a house. We have decided to remodel and add on to the one we are already in. Now I say we aren't "officially building" because we are not starting from scratch. However we are changing our house by such extreme it mine as well be a "new" house.

We are completely taking off the carport, breeze way and utility room. We are replacing it with a garage, a mud room (for Justin's tools, remote control cars and many pairs of muddy work boots to live) and there will be a bonus room above the garage (that will be finished later). The wall between our two tinny living rooms will come down to show case a larger more roomy living room. The doorway between the kitchen and the living room will be widened to give that more "open" feel.  A breakfast nook and a pantry will be added to the kitchen. The room off the back of the house will be a bedroom. The current extra bedroom will be the new laundry room (finally a laundry room that I don't have to go outside to get to). A screen room and a deck will be added to the back of the house. Last but defiantly not least.......A master suite will be added to the right side of the house (looking at it from the road). We will have a master bedroom, his and her walk in closets, tile shower, garden tub and his and her sinks.

Oh I forgot to mention, ALL of that awful paneling will be replaced by sheet rock!!!

I know I know, you are all wondering if this is really what I want. I have wondered that too. However when we were "building" a "new" house we could not get over the overwhelming urge to breath into a paper sack. Now we feel much more at piece. Its not that we didn't have enough down payment. Between our savings and the value of our land we had well over the 20% down payment that is suggested. The problem lays with the appraisal.

See we could get a construction loan for whatever we needed. However mortgage companies will only roll 80% of the appraisal value into a mortgage. So if it appraises for too much less than what it costs to build then you may have to come up with more than what was expected. In our case 80% of the appraisal value plus our savings was exactly what our contractor "said" it would cost. That's good right? Yea if nothing happens to raise the price and we all know it never costs what they say it will. That would of left us with an additional loan for the difference. We just aren't prepared to take that risk, not in this economy anyway.

That's enough of that..........I hope to post the "before" pics soon.