Building A Farmhouse - Our Custom Home Construction

 One of the things I really want is a big, open garage. We planned it all out in the drawings but recently we heard back from the structural engineer that they will have to put a post/column in the middle of the garage. We talked with our builder about what could be done. She asked about a bigger truss but the truss guy says that they can't build a bigger truss.  We decided to pay the engineer to do the math and see if a large steel beam could be used because according to our builder she doesn't expect the beam to add that much cost, if its possible.  The engineer is currently working on seeing if its possible. If it is possible they will likely have to make the footings bigger and that would add concrete cost but overall the cost can't be predicted until the engineer updates his plans. Once the plans are updated our builder can let us know about costs and at that point we can decide if the increase cost is worth it or not.  I feel that paying an engineer a little mo...

 Well, the appraisal came back but it came back a little lower than we had expected. This is a small bump in the road and I'll try to explain why.  The bank can only give up to 80% of the appraised value of the finished home/project. This total includes land and the home so even though we own the land outright its not like they can take the purchase price of the home and deduct it from the total cost.  So, for easiness lets say the land costs $80,000 and the cost of the build is estimated to be around $500,000 for a total cost to us of $580,000. We would hope the appraisal would come in at $580,000 and then the bank could loan us up to 80% of $580,000 or about a $465,000 loan and that would cover most of the cost of construction and the land would essentially count as our down payment. We'd have to put down about $35,000 to make up the difference of what the bank could loan us ($465K) and what construction would cost ($500K) but we just sold our house so that wouldn't be ...