Phase 1, The Idea

Kelley and I decided a long time ago to find a house big enough to house 5 kids. We looked in our area and did some comparison shopping, and quickly realized that our house was 1. Worth triple what we paid, 2. Any house we found that was the right size was triple what we could afford. We then looked into expanding our current house, and went about the lengthy process of interviewing architects. During this time, we looked through a ton of magazines and cut out pictures of things we liked about other houses, and wanted to incorperate into our own. During this process Nathaniel (our second) was born.

We also talked to neighbors and friends about their experiences, and reccomendations. As one of our parameters, we decided to keep as much of the money we would spend in our neighborhood, and so, our local economy. We eventually found Yolanda McCausland, who lived about a mile from us. She and I went back and forth on the look and design of the room, using cool new (to me) CAD programs, and good old napkin drawings. After about 9 months of design refining, Kelley and I were comfortable with the plans.