Land

Naturally before you build a house you must get yourself some land. In my case, I didn't really need to find land and place a "Barry" flag on it as much as I had to say "Yeah Bill, I like that lot there."

Thus, I will be living in Elizabeth Park (newer part of the infamous subdivision in Paradise, but off Kenmount) on a small crescent named Aragon. I won't give the exact address at this point as I don't want hate mail from random people in French Indochina but if you stay tuned, I'm sure you'll figure out where it is. All the same, I'm fairly certain I'll take this blog down once I live in the house.

The lots are pretty standard, 15m x 30m. It was initially a decision between being on the main road or moving onto the crescent. After some careful consideration, I equated it to (for those of you reading from Newfoundland and for that matter, West End St. John's) living on Frecker Dr. in Cowan Heights, or moving onto a side street. I know from my search of the real estate market in St. John's that the houses off the main "drag" sell for a fair amount more. So dispite it adding some money to my mortgage I'm fairly certain it will pay off. The second consideration is picking a lot. This is actually a pretty easy process when there are only three lots left. It came down to which lot had the least amount of power line coverage in the backyard. For those of you who don't know, building code in Newfoundland and Labrador specifies that you cannot have a permanent structure built under backyard power lines. Simply put, the lot I settled on gave me more "build-able" room in the backyard. Another consideration was also that neither of the houses on either side of me are close to being finished. I think I'd feel a fair amount of pressure to make my property look "finished" if the guy next to me was fully landscaped the day I moved in. This way, the guys (and girls) next door aren't miles ahead. Who knows, we might be able to get someone to lay backyard sod for us at a discounted rate.

So on Friday I dropped off my down payment on the lot to Remax. When I gave them the cheque I somehow felt I was signing my life away. In a way, I guess I am. This house will own me for a long time before I own it. Trust me, if it were as simple as paying a mortgage each month I'd be in a house now. The startup costs are astronomical. But that should be forgotten about for the time being. So what if I'll have to eat Kraft Dinner with little peices of no-name hot dogs chopped up and stirred in for the next year. I'm on the way to home ownership (in 25 years or so). I have a planning meeting with Bill early this week to settle on the blueprint. Tomorrow I'll upload layout drawings for comments.