Meet 'Pickle'

Since we have started this whole building...ehh...pre-building process, friends have been so generous with advice of all kinds from contractors to what material to use for the exterior of the house. We decided that the next step of this process should be interviewing contractors. Lucky us, our first blog entry lead a friend of mine to give me a call and give me the name of a local contractor he knows. After our phone call, however, his contractor buddy actually gave me a call. Now that is service! Contractor number one: we shall call him Pickle (actual names not used to protect the innocent).

We plan to interview about three to four contractors in the area. Yes, you have to do a little prep work to interview a contractor. First you need a heat lamp, a chair, and an empty metal table. A cigar and suspenders are optional for added effect. After composing a list of questions for the contractor (with help from the Dummies book), Noel and I made sure we were on the same page by going over the answers we would like to hear. We needed the intimidation factor on our side since this is contractor interview number one. However, I'm sure that whatever tiny bit of intimidation we brought totally fizzled when I whipped out the 'construction' notebook we created housing my list of interrogation questions. (Our 'construction' notebook contains all of our go-to information -- perk permit, electrical line diagrams, possible house plans, etc. -- and is a must.) Regardless, Pickle was a super nice guy and has been in the business fourteen years. He has experience with green building and energy-efficient design, itemizes charges on his construction sheet (awesome for the A-typer), carries the insurance policy, and provided us with references. Basically, we like him. (Note: the beaming sun proved to be a natural interrogation lamp. I actually saw a little sweat.)

We did discover during this meeting that we are going to need an architect -- a player we thought we might be able to do without. We currently have a couple of pre-fab house plans we like from the internet but nothing we love, and that can make the difference between a house and a home. We discovered that any major alteration we would like to do to either plan such as say...completely revamp the completely hideous exterior...would require an architect. Once we get a finalized house plan, we can begin to take bids from contractors. On to searching for an architect (another story for another blog).

Not all of this project is going to be contracted out. If the weather would cooperate, we could begin fencing. On guard! Dad in his retirement boredom decided to venture down to Tractor Supply and get our first load of fencing supplies. I'm still waiting on a labor bill from him. We are preparing ourselves for 1,200 feet of barb wire fencing to keep the cows and one over-zealous bull off our property. We plan to begin in the next week or so or whenever I can find enough ibuprofen to sustain me. Noel conveniently will be tied up with work during this time. Hummm....wonder how that happened?! So it'll be Mom, Dad, and I on the first leg of this project. (If they didn't know it before, they know now!)