Month: July 2024

Lorena thinks she wants a the new house to be yellow. She likes something a little bit on the brighter side of pastel. We have to pick the exterior colors for the house by Monday so our new friend, Larry the house designer, can present them to the Granbury Historic Preservation Commission. God willing, the process has started. My understanding of the way it works is that, as soon as the plans are approved, the construction drawings can start. When the construction drawings are complete, two processes that both take about a month will kick off in parallel. Engineering drawings for the foundation and all adjustments needed for that will start. In addition, a very rigorous costing of the house will be formulated so we will know how much money is needed. There will be a big meeting at the end of that process with spreadsheet in hand to determine what kind of trade-offs are needed to meet budget constraints and/or add some “nice-to-haves” if the money is available. When all this is done and all goes well, the house starts getting built in earnest.

Lorena rented climate-controlled storage space for all our worldly goods today. I worked through the insurance for the things in storage and for Christian’s car which should arrive here, hopefully before the end of the month. He has little use for a car in New York City, so we will keep it here in Texas so we can use it when we come back to check out what is going on with the house as it gets built. I also figured out how to earn some interest on the money we get from the sale of our current house to help us pay for the new house. There are a lot of moving parts in all of this and while we do not feel like we are in control of it all, it seems less harried than in previous moves. Maybe it is because we have been through it so many times before. We will see what happens when it is time to actually start moving things. Lorena has gotten a big jump on packing things, so when the hired packers come, maybe there will be a little less to do.