Like many people during the first year of the pandemic, I wanted to get out of my apartment building and get some more space.  I was one of the hoards of people going to open houses in the Fall of 2020.  I almost bought a couple of places, but they all fell through for one reason or another and I was discouraged.  

I had stayed with friends in Dallas who had built their own house, and I had an idea that it's something that I might want to do someday.  One day I was driving around the part of Fairfax County in Virginia just south of Burke Lake just looking at these neighborhoods and being awed by the trees, the quiet, and the peacefulness.  

I remember the first time I drove past the 5 acre lot that I would eventually buy and saw a sign out front - Land for Sale.  The real estate agent that I had been working with didn't do land purchases, and I soon found out why -- they are much more complicated.  Instead of a week or two, you have a couple months to gather all the necessary information to decide if you want to buy it.  

Eventually, after conducting a feasibility study, making sure a septic field could be put on the land, getting an exception letter from Fairfax County that it is a "buildable lot", and finding a bank that would give me a lot loan, I purchased the land on February 9, 2021.  Then came the fun, designing the house.

There's not a picture for what happened next.  It was a very low point in the process.  The builder took the plans and got bids for all the parts of building the house - from foundation to roof to exterior materials to the pool.  And when it was all put together it was over twice the amount of the construction loan to build the house. 

I tried to think of the path forward.  With the end of the one year lot loan quickly approaching and the Fed saying that interest rates were about to start increasing, I made the hard decision to give up this design and start work with a different residential architect.  I was able to keep most of the internal structure, but had to rethink the materials, style, and site plan configuration.  To make the timing work, we needed to have new plans and pricing ready for the bank in 2 months.  We ultimately came up with a house I absolutely love.

In the late spring of 2022, we finally began.  The site company cleared nearly an acre of trees, put down gravel for a construction driveway, and the all important port-a-potty was delivered.  

It is not an overstatement to say that I freaked out when I saw the land without the trees.  I would understand later when all the pieces of the project were in place and after speaking with the builder and county arborist, that it was very reasonable, and there is still four acres of trees on the lot.