Dear family Roesner, you are formally invited to

Pay up! We received the letter today from the notary public. Now that we have completed all the necessary steps, we now have the permission to purchase our building lot. Wow, thanks!
10 days to pay, but we're going to do it much sooner, like this afternoon, or tomorrow.
The good news is of course, that we will officially own, a very small, but very ours, piece of property!
Hooray!
In other news, we stopped by the builder's office today. He wasn't there, but his secretary checked and he has marked in his calendar that we will be meeting with both Mr. Builder and Mr. B tomorrow afternoon :) Yay! I can't wait to hear what news they have for us!

The estimates, the architect, and farming

Yes, they're all related.
As we left the country for our trip, our architect, Mr. B, prepared the 30 page document to send to all potential builders. The document listed all the materials to be used, and the amount. Each builder filled out the document and sent it in to Mr. B. When Mr. B sent out the document, he also explained the location, and the date he wanted it back, which was this past Friday, the 30th of July. The plan was that Mr. B would look over the estimates, and meet with us on Saturday morning. After we returned to Germany, we called Mr. B, who told us that two builders immediately said that they could not do it- we're kind of in the middle of a housing boom here in southern Germany. Mr. Builder was the only builder to get the estimate back on time, and 4 other builders promised to get it back by Monday. This really threw a wrench in the works, as Mr. B left for vacation on Saturday afternoon. Fortunately, Mr. B is seriously, the best, and coolest architect in the world, because he has no problem talking with us while he is on vacation :) Ùnfortunately, yesterday, Mr. B called, but we were not around. This morning, Joern called Mr. Builder to ask. Mr. Builder explained to Joern that Mr. B had discussed the prices with Mr. Builder, and Mr. Builder actually lowered his prices to meet that of the lower priced builders. It pretty much looks like we're going with Mr. Builder. This is most exciting, because Mr. Builder is really, really high quality. Most of the houses being built in Neckartailfingen at the moment are built by Mr. Builder.
The most incredible news? There is a possibilty that Mr. Builder can start the week after next! Possible though because, the operator of the excavator may not be available the week after next. Why? Because he also operates the combine harvester on his father's farm. Something that a Fairfield girl never expected, to lose our excavator to a combine harvester.
Whenever they start, I'm content. I know that they'll start with our house soon. We know the builder and we know the price. All the unknowns are falling into place. Very, very exciting!

Our architect meeting

Well, I first posted about our meeting with the architect and structural engineer in narrative form. It is really long and dry. I've decided to redo the post as a list, to make it quicker and easier. So, here goes.
We met with Joern's cousin, Stephan the structural engineer, and Herr B, our architect on Thursday afternoon. Herr B is now finished with the first set of blueprints, as is Stephan finished with the structural analysis. The meeting was to pull things together.
We moved floor by floor discussing the house. The major discussions focused on the placement of the insulation for the concrete slab, and correcting the uneven planned roof on Joern's garage.
Foundation and cellar:
- choices for insulation for the concrete slab were either underneath the slab and on top, or simply all on top. There are benefits to both, but in the end, we needed to go with insulating on top of the slab. We could not insulate underneath the slab, because there needs to be some elasticity in this procedure, and since we are building on a hill, elasticity is not so ideal.
- the 2 car garage (or Joern's garage,) had a roof that was two different heights. Because German law requires in our situation, that we have a green roof on part of both garages, as we are building our garages directly on the border with our neighbors. There are different types of green roofs, and evidently, the first, and not-so-great, architect planned 25 cm. of grass on the green portion. 25 cm of dirt allows grass to grow, and we would be required then to mow the roof of our garage! Bleh! We chose instead to have a more self-sustaining, less labor intensive roof covering. Plus, this allows for the roof to be evened out, and to Joern's pleasure, to have the height of the ceiling in the garage increased. This is most exciting to Joern who dreams of having a car lift in his garage.
- garages will not be insulated.
- the concrete slab will need to be reinforced against the pressures of the hill.
- the house will be built with Ytong blocks. Ytong's many advantages include ease of use, good insulating properties, sound absorption, and protection against fire. It is a well-used building block here.
- the entry foyer in the cellar continues as a discussion for Joern and myself. The architect suggested a large skylight dome be placed on the front terrace of our house. Doing this would bring tons of natural light into our foyer, as well as prevent us from using this terrace. We're not sure what to do here.
First floor
-we moved the door of the office over a bit. As was planned origianlly, you would have to trip over the sectional to access the office. Glad we moved it!
- electric Rolladen. German houses most often have Rolladen, which are metal roller shutters, simialar to security blinds. Joern likes them because they completely black-out a room, which will be a help when we try to put our kids to bed and the sun is still shining brightly! They are also quite effective against the sun in the summer. Last, I like that the electric ones provide an additional measure of security, as the rolling mechanism in electric Rollanden locks. I am already a little nervous about staying in this big house all by myself if Joern has to travel. Anything to increase the security helps!
- the electric Rolladen will be partially on a central control. I didn't want to control all, because the view from the upstairs bedrooms at night is beautiful, so I don't necessarily want to close all the shutters at once.
- interior doors will be extra high. Normal interior doors here are about 6.5 feet, but we chose doors that are close to 7 ft. high.
- we gave Mr. B the blueprints for the kitchen, which were completed by the kitchen studio. He will work these in to the official blueprints.
Second floor
- Mr. B suggested we visit a bath showroom to select fixtures that we like. This is called "bemusterung." Building companies here have a "Bemusterungscenter," where you go to chose from their options. We love that our "Bemusterungscenter," is every store in Germany, and even outside Germany if we choose!
-Mr. B feels like the children's bathroom is laid out strange. I agree. We will meet with Mr. B again next week, and he'll offer us some suggestions on how to improve the layout of the bathrooms.

The meeting lasted over 2 hours, but we accomplished so much! Next week, we'll meet with Mr. B to finalize the details, so that the official plans can be worked out.