After spending the weekend trying to come up with a house plan that my wife and I can both agree on, I've decided that starting from scratch to design your home isn't always the best answer. I always thought I had the advantage because I design homes for a living. Problem is, I have designed a lot of home plans, each with neat features of their own. So when I start working on a home for myself, I try to incorporate all the neat stuff in one house plan. Can't be done. You will never have the perfect house. There are somethings you'll just have to settle for and no matter what... when you move into the home, there will always be something that you wished was a little different, a little bigger, etc.

Anyway, after starting from scratch about 10 times, we have revolved back to pretty much the house plan we live in and neither one of us necessarily want to do the same home plan again. It took me six months to get that one all figured out to how I wanted it, but we'd both prefer to do something a little different. I have to admit, part of the problem here is that budget restraints are on my mind, and not so much on my wife's. So I keep trying to reduce the size, but she figures [if we're building again] she wants some things a little different. Anyway, we're still on the drawing board, hopefully we'll get something figured out.