A New Day Finally Dawns in Our Remodel Saga

The past 2.5 years have been quite the ride for our family. We moved into the remodeled 5206 on May 17, 2014, exactly 20 years to the day after we purchased it as our first home in 1994. We have loved living in the home we always knew it had the potential to be.

It's comfortable, and we've been happy here, but, it doesn't have the Endless Pool.

In June 2015, we celebrated our 25th anniversary with a trip to Alaska, followed within weeks by Roy's layoff from Bluware in July after more than 25 years with them. That fall, we both found new jobs. Roy has loved his, I have hated mine.

In August 2016, with my job again in limbo, we finally decided to just sell 5127 (the 1/3 acre property) as-is and walk away. The foundation of 5127 is very bad and the structures both sit below the surrounding grade on all sides (imagine living in the middle of a pond when it rains hard - where the water has no path to drain as it is in a bowl!). Even the garage takes on water.

However, the market isn't really moving any homes at all right now, and we didn't try very hard to sell....

After some discussion over the Christmas holidays, we decided to resurrect our idea of building a new home at 5127. It has way more land than we currently have - 75% more, to be exact. That allows us ample room for additional fruit trees and larger gardens (both flower and vegetable) as well as a comfortable space for an Endless Pool, and we can have some fun with the home's design.

5127 is an opportunity that is unlikely to come our way again given the scarcity of parcels of land that size in our area. The 1/3 acre to the east of 5127 has never gone on the market in 60 years, as the same family has owned it the entire time. The 1/3 acre to the west has changed hands once.

Which brings you up to current day, February 2017, where we just put the design for our new, two-story home with natatorium up for competition on Arcbazar. We used the crowd-sourcing architecture design website back in 2013 for the potential remodel of 5127 and had fun with it - our previous competition is how we learned about the cat doors that read their microchips, allowing only them into the house and not every cat and possum in the area to come inside. We're hoping for some similar fun and inspiration this time around.

You can watch the 4-week competition as it evolves, but you do have to either sign up for a free Arcbazar account or login via Facebook or LinkedIn.

This is our competition page at Arcbazar: Two-story home with Natatorium in Houston, Texas. 

So buckle your seat-belts, everyone, we're in for a ride for the next couple of years. Once this competition for a design ends, we will likely have to modify the design elements somewhat and take it to an architect/designer locally for all of the actual blueprints needed to build - structural, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, product selection, etc.

We've been through the electrical in detail on 5206, so we're comfortable there, plus the plumbing and HVAC spec will largely be a familiar process to us as well. Whoever we select as the architect in Houston will likely find us with firm opinions on where things get placed-and what those things are. The structural is the biggest unknown, as that plat needs to have its grade corrected and a firm foundation created. We will be heavily relying on experts there.

If you have personal experience with a custom builder in Houston, let us know. There's a custom home going up just two blocks away and we liked our previous builder for 5206. With a project this size, we're definitely putting it out for several bids.