Third meeting

In this meeting, Rich laid out the budget.

Just to give you an idea, in the area, a typical remodel starts at $250/sq ft. An unfinished basement costs $150-175/sq ft. So with our "grandiose" plans, we need to stretch for a bigger budget than originally anticipated. Since we are definitely going through with the basement, this means no more birthday or Christmas presents from us for the next few years. haha! j/k :p

[ The sad thing is according to a general contractor in Michigan, a high-end remodel costs $160/sq ft while a type remodel is more like $110/sq ft...in Michigan. ]

We continued our tweaking of the house plan, focusing more details rather than the general layout. So we updated the types of doors and how they swing out. We decided to get rid of the office/bedroom and just made it an office. (A bedroom requires a closet.) Since we removed the closet from the office, which is what we were going to double duty as a coat closet for guests, we changed the first floor full bath to a half bath and added a closet in the bathroom space we cleared up. We trimmed the closet length in the upstairs bedrooms - they were originally 10+ feet wide (yes, quite generous) and have now been scaled down to ~6 feet.

An interesting observation from Rich about doors: if the door swings out, you're more likely to close it since it'll be in the way. This is good for pantry doors where the doors should be closed most of the time anyway. (Our pantry swings out.)

Homework: none! Since it was supposed to be electrical and we had already done it for this week's meeting. :)