Plans, plans, plans, and more plans! From mid-June through mid-October we worked with Dan T. and Riverbend to fine tune the design of the house.  We worked our way through four phases:
Phase one - Schematic drawings: scaled floor plans, scaled elevations, building cross-section and initial frame and pannel diagrams.
Phase two - Design Development (DD's) Drawings: scaled floor plans with room dimensions, additional elevations, limited building sections and details, a preliminary foundation plan, and more detailed frame diagrams and profiles. 
Phase three - Construction Document (CD's) Drawings: these drawings provide sufficient detail to enable actual construction to take place.  In addition, they included the window and door schedule which are being provided by Riverbend. These drawings are used by Metzler Builders to finalize the plot plan, foundation design, electrical, plumbing and mechanical systems and the interior finish schedule.
Phase four - Shop Drawings: these are used by Riverbend to produce the timber frame and panels (SIP's).

We lost track of how many drawings Riverbend created for us.  Suffice to say, we have enough paper to cover all the walls and ceilings of our new house!  I need to figure out something creative to do with them that won't take up a lot of space!

A good part of this time was spent finalizing the floor plan and the windows.  It was after a visit to a stunning Riverbend home in Sommerset, PA that the design for the great room came together.  Finalizing the windows seemed to take forever!  Did I mention choices?  Each window has three component pieces, each of which can be one of fifty color choices!  And then there are the type of mullions, screens, and handles to choose.  Definite overload! 

We also worked with Mary Dresser, our Landscape Architect, to finalize the position of the house and the RV garage, how the driveway will be positioned and the proposed landscaping. 

We worked with our Designer to finalize the layout of the kitchen, baths and bedrooms.  We drove all over Lancaster looking at cabinets, counter tops, appliances, flooring, plumbing fixtures, lighting etc.  And we spent hours on the Internet narrowing our options or just getting more confused!! We really struggled with the siding for the outside of the house and still haven't made that decision. At this point the process seems so theoretical and hard to imagine what it will look like when it all comes together. 

Most of the time it has been meeting after meeting, discussion upon discussion but with little or no outcome.   We talk, look at paper plans and write checks!  This is so contrary to the Payroll business which might be why we are struggling!  It would be so nice to see a hole in the ground or some other concrete evidence that this whole thing isn't just a figment of our imagination!

On the advice of so many others, we are trying to be patient because we know in the end it will be worth our efforts!

What a fun day!  Today Dan T (Riverbend Timber Frame) and Dan M (Metzler Home Builders), Ralph, Lauren and I went down to the property to "stake out" the house.  This is a process Dan T does to help us get a feel for where the house will sit and what the footprint will be.  Earlier today Dan M had a backhoe brought in to clear the area where the house will go.  The property was so overgrown and thick with deep brush and fallen trees we wouldn't have been able to even walk through it.  Fortunately, he didn't have to remove any trees; we were able to work around them for this process.  We plan to remove as few trees as possible to maintain the natural setting.  With an electronic surveyor's transit  tool Dan T established the height where the property is level with the road.  The property slopes from the north to the south so there will definitely need to be some grading done but it will nicely accommodate our floor plan which includes a walk out basement.  Dan M and Ralph used our preliminary design drawings to measure out the perimeter of the house, placing surveyor flags at all corners.  Lauren and I followed behind placing 8 foot stakes by each flag.  Dan T followed behind us with his ladder and sledge hammer, pounding each stake into the ground.  With a bit of instruction, Lauren and I used the receiver 'gun' of the surveyor tool to measure and mark each post.  Boy did we feel important!!  Dan grabbed his roll of fluorescent pink tape which he strung from stake to stake by the point of our marks.   The tape outlined the shape of the house and the level of the first floor.  How exciting!  After so many months of researching, talking and imagining, something real and concrete was finally happening!  I wandered around the living room while Lauren stood in (below) her bedroom.  We all examined the placement of the house and agreed it needed to be angled a bit more towards the north.  Once we finalize our floor plan a landscape designer will finalize the location of the house and Metzler will develop the final plans for the excavation and the foundation.  Although this staking process was nothing formal it was a wonderful opportunity to visual the house - a process that is almost impossible for me to do by looking at black and white drawings and a tree covered piece of land!  We are very grateful to both Dan's for their participation in this fun exercise!  Take a look at the pictures in the Staking the House page and all of this will make a lot more sense!

From early February through mid-May we did our homework.  The offer we made on the land was contingent on our ability to build a home we could afford - a novel concept the big banks seemed to ignore for so long!!.  To do that we needed to create a budget!  So my question is, how do you develop a budget if you don't know what things cost?  This question was compounded for us because building a timber frame house adds an additional level of complexity.  If we were building standard 'stick' construction we would go to our builder, review his available house plans, make modifications, spec out the level of fit and finish and, voila, the builder would give us a price.  Not so much with Timber Frame construction.  We needed to do three things: 1) design a basic floor plan, 2) find a Timber Frame company to give us a price on the timber, and 3) get a price from our builder for the rest of the contstruction. Wow - and we had a deadline of May 31!  So, while I researched Timber Frame companies, Ralph bought and learned a CAD program called Chief Architect - no small task!  We quickly learned why Architects exist!  Ralph did a great job and was even able to generate a 3D version we could "walk through".  One of his challenges was to get the steps to connect to the second floor!  He never did quite figure out how to create a roof!

After much trial and error, we had enough of a design to give to the six timber frame companies I had chosen.  Unfortunately, most of the companies are located in either Vermont or out west.  We did find one company in York (called Lancaster County Timberframe!) and one in Coatesville.  The company in Coatesville never even bothered to return my email - I guess they were too busy!  Another company in Montana wanted to charge us $1 a square foot just to give us a basic estimate.  We crossed both off our short list!

We quickly learned that there are three types of timber frame companies: those who design and build just the timber, those that create the overall house plans, build the timber and assist with the "raising" of the timber, and those who do everything "turnkey" - from drawing the plans through the finished construction.  In late March we met with a designer from Lancaster County Timberframe and took a tour of a magnificent house they built in York County.  We also met with Dan, a designer from Riverbend Timberframe, who came to Lancaster to meet us and look at our property.  After another visit with Dan and a trip to Maryland to see a Riverbend house under construction, we realized two things. First, the plan we developed just didn't work; rather than relying on our design we need to start all over with a house plan that was designed as a Timber Frame house and then do modifications.  Second, we needed a company that could do more than just build the timberframe and ship it to us.  With our inexperience, we needed a company that could create the plan, design and build the timber and work with our builder to complete the project.  As we reviewed the four estimates we received it became very clear that the only choice was Dan and Riverbend, who could do just what we needed!  On May 13 we signed an agreement with Riverbend.  In retrospect, it was kind of odd to sign the agreement when we didn't technically own the land and didn't have the rest of the pricing from our builder!  This entire process has all felt a bit like the chicken and the egg dilema! 

We forwarded our revised Riverbend plans to our builder, Metzler Builders, for the third and final step in our budgeting process - the cost to do everything else!  We got their proposal back in late May and although many costs were far from final, there was no turning back at this point!  With a lot of good faith in our two newly chosen partners in this adventure, we settled on the land on May 27th.  It was a tremendous amount of work to get this far and yet we knew it was just the beginning!

We took the first step - signed an agreement to purchase land!  After looking at property for almost 18 months we found a three acre lot located in Strasburg, PA high atop Bunker Hill.  The official address is 20 Glenwood Drive.  Now the task before us is to choose a timberframe company and develop a budget to determine if we can actually afford to do this!