Now The Real Work Begins!

When you design your dream house with your wish list in front of you, it gets very hard to then go back and have to cut or settle for less.  And believe me when I tell you that all on my wish list was not in the original estimate!  There never was radiant heat in the bathrooms!  Since we are over budget at this point and I haven't price appliances, sound systems or furnishings, we are having to revisit many things on my list. 
Already gone are the cedar shake roof, all of the built-in with the exception of the fireplace and surrounding bookcases, the Ipe decking, and most disturbing, the fabulous Ultimate windows and doors. 
Today we spent the morning looking at other window options and there are many.  As of this moment we are getting prices on the Anderson "A" Series to see what the savings would be.  The nice feature of this series is that they come in black and since we are not having shutters on the new cottage, this might be a beautiful architectural feature.  The best part is that the black is no more expensive than white!
Then it was a stop at the kitchen and bath shop.  I had originally wanted vanities in all the bathrooms but that too is not cost effective.  So, guests, you will have to deal with pedestal sinks in the guest bath and the powder room.  Then we get to the hardware.  Thank goodness I love the look of chrome as it is the least expensive finish you can buy.  Having this vision of wanting the cottage to look vintage only adds to the cost of everything.  We picked out fixtures for the baths and the kitchen sink that hopefully will be under the allotment bid and one thing can be checked off.
So we now have Phase I and Phase II for the building of "The Cottage".  When the dust settles - both literally and figuratively -  and the condo gets sold, I will see what monies are left to revisit the built-ins. 
An another topic entirely, I want to mention the difficulty I have had in trying to get a home equity line of credit on the condo my mother and I own.  I thought it would make a lot of sense to use the banks money to build the cottage and then when the cottage was almost finished I could sell the condo.  NOOOO!  Even though we own the condo outright, have what I consider a substantial amount of money in investments, have a balloon payment coming from the sale of the Blue Anchor in December 2012, and both my mother and I have good credit ratings, the bank will not give us a line of credit.  Now I ask you, if I cannot get a line of credit who can?  
 Needless to say it makes me very nervous to be spending my money during this financial downturn, but I am going on the old adage that you only go around once so for now we are moving forward.  Wish me luck!