It eventually became obvious that we weren't going to find a house that suited us. The newer houses all had very livable floor plans, but they were just not attractive structures. Plus, they were mostly built on tiny lots. The older houses, well, they were old, and had various problems that come with age. For example, one 200 year old farmhouse we looked at had huge beams holding up the ground floor. Each beam was half of an 18 to 24 inch tree trunk, and they were spaced about every 3 feet. But they were all termite damaged. The house was beautiful, but the cost of fixing the structure boggled our minds.

Since we weren't going to be able to buy the right house, we knew we'd have to build it. We started haunting (and watching) home shows, looking in the phone book for custom home builders, and downloading reams of home plans from the Internet. At the same time, we changed our focus with our buyer's agent from finding a house to finding a nice piece of ground. And so we began more months of searching. And the months turned into years, and the years turned into decades, and our beards grew until they hung down to our knees… Oh, sorry, I got carried away.

Actually, finding a lot took us a year, once we decided that we absolutely wanted to build. That decision came when we found a builder that we got a warm fuzzy from, Luxor Homes. They specialize in scattered site building. Before that, we were looking at lots, but we were also still looking at houses. By the time we found Luxor, we knew that we would be building a truly custom home, so once we'd checked Luxor's references, we didn't hesitate to put down the money to get into their design/build program.