A seriously crazy story that will make your jaw drop

Amazingly, we are taking a crazy situation in stride. I think after all is said and done, I'm grateful for a road block, because I think what is coming to us will be better. Now of course I have to tell you with story from the beginning with ALL of the sorted details.

We are building a home. You've seen it on previous posts. We are very excited about it. We started this whole process not because of our growing family, but because we wanted a bigger yard. Tyler was 2 when we moved in, now he is 9. A 10/11/12 year old needs more space. He just seemed too big for our backyard. Michael wants an acre, its not in the cards right now. We found a floorplan we loved, then needed to find a lot with THAT yard that we love.

Last August, we looked through various neighborhoods in our city and next door city that our builder built. We had options, but we eventually settled on Behrens Ranch, which is still Round Rock. A community just a hop, skip, and a jump from our current subdivision.

There were quite a few options of lots in that neighborhood, but only half of them fit our floorplan--a wider home. We realized, sadly, that the bigger lots have a "lot premium" meaning we have to pay more if we want that bigger lot. We narrowed it down to 2 lots that we liked and fit what we wanted.

Lot A was a $10k premium. It was a decent size, but once our house would be on it, it wouldn't be super deep. Though it was a bigger lot, our bigger home wouldn't make it feel like much of a bigger yard than we have now. Also, it backed to the elementary school playground. At first I thought it would be cool to stand upstairs with my binoculars and spy on my kids at recess. Then I thought I might not want that noise all day long everyday and I wanted a bit more distance. Plus we thought we'd get traffic with drop off and pick up, also not desirable. But the kids thought it would be cool to be by the school. But no backyard neighbors.

Lot B was a $6k premium. It was on a "partial" cul de sac. We originally really wanted that true cul de sac. How ideal is that with kids? But that lot didn't exist. So we settled on the partial. Meaning It is sortof a "V" shaped road and we are at the corner of the V. Not a lot of through traffic, we could do the basketball hoop at the end of the driveway. But because of that cul de sac curve, it was a pie shaped lot. Very narrow in the front, and lets just say "double wide" in the back. It also had a few trees on the lot, I thought a treehouse would be SO cool! Shade is also nice. But 3 backyard neighbors eventually.

We walked the lots with the family, we prayed about it, just couldn't decide, but then we felt good. We chose lot B. This was back in August when we wrote out the contract with our builder guy, Greg. While we went to the design center to pick out countertops and carpet, they did city code stuff, the planning of the house on the lot with a few changes we made. Pretty much all of September, the lot looked the same as we found it, but had a SOLD sign out front. We knew there was a nice big tree dead center that would have to go.

Friday, October 9th (Michael's Birhtday) we had a pre-construction meeting and met Oscar, the guy who would be the general contractor for the house. He was cool, and it was nice to know the ball would finally get rolling and we would see some action! That day we saw the tree in the middle was down, and they put up boards on the lot as guides for the foundation. Oscar mentioned to us that our future neighbor pulled him aside a few days before, concerned about what would happen to a tree that sits on his lot, but streched over to our lot. It was clear a big limb would have to go.

It was raining that day, so we just drove by, but didn't get out to walk the lot to see exactly where the house would sit. 2 days later on a lovely Sunday afternoon, we took a family trip to go check it out. We walked the lot and could see where the foundation would be, so got a better idea of what our yard would look like. I'll admit, I was a bit disheartened. It didn't look as big as it did on the transparency (they have drawings of all the lots and homes). Yes, it was super wide--about 125 feet wide, but the back of the house to the fence looked the same as our current home. Because of that pie shape, it was a bit narrow at the back, but we had 2 corner yards with more space, so I'd be ok. I sortof thought of it as 3 individual "living spaces" in the backyard. On one side we'd have our garden, on the other, the trampoline, and in the middle would be for running and playing catch, etc. I don't know why, but for that month (of no progress) I kept looking at the existing house next to us and was bugged that each time I went, I saw both cars were parked on the driveway. Why did I think that was weird? I don't know. We have always had 1 car parked on our driveway. I also didn't like that being in the "corner" the house across the street was facing our neighbors, and their neighbors wouldn't be facing me. I like looking out my front window and seeing my neighbors facing me--seems so friendly.



Here is a view from the street. House and tree on the right, home almost done building on left.

The tree on our property with weird stone wall recently built around it. I thought we could do a treehouse here.

I peeked through the open window next door just to see progress. Notice the cap and riser stairs? I love them and a month later (after we picked everything out), I changed our stairs to that because I love it so much.


Infamous tree on right by Michael.

Kids are playing on the tree that was dead center and had to be cut down.

I'm standing and one corner of the lot looking at the yard space.

Black line below defines property line and you can see Michael and the kids in the distance. It is pretty wide.

Inside the laundry room:)

They are almost done building a house on one side of us, and I was excited to meet those neighbors, knowing they would be new to the neighborhood like us. While we were looking around the backyard, they drove up to check out their house. We stayed in the back area, thinking they would come back to say hi to us, but maybe they were in a hurry or didn't care, but they were in their house for 5 minutes and went back to their car. They did see us though. Hmm, weird, oh well. We'll meet them later.

Then out came the neighbor with the tree that we had heard about in our meeting with Oscar. The man (Mr. M.) came out with his son, anxious to meet us, but hurrying off to a soccer game. We briefly chatted, he did mention what a "big" house we were building on that lot and said he wanted to talk about the tree and handed Michael his business card and said to email him. He left, but his wife came out to greet us--how friendly. We chatted for a good 20 minutes, she told us all about the people on the street and how many kids everyone had. She also mentioned what a big house we were building on that lot. I thought it odd b/c they have a pretty good size house, is ours really that much bigger? We also found out that they have been in their home for 2 years and moved from Cat Hollow (our current neighborhood) and lived 2 doors down from one of our friends from church--D. We found that the men work for the same company, too. We brifely talked about the tree, but we left feeling excited that we got to meet our future neighbors. I was a bit bummed to find out that she works and she and the kids don't get home until 6pm everyday, so no after school playmates there. Plus, their kids go to a private school.

I reminded Michael to email him the next day, but he wasn't in a hurry to do so. Well Mr. M. was anxious, and visited our mutual friend, D, at work and asked for Michael's info. D was leary, and emailed Michael to see if it was ok, and Michael consented. I think he emailed Michael and asked if he could call that night. That evening, he got a call and I didn't know who he was talking to, but I figured it out eventually. They talked for a good 30 minutes on the phone all jovial. Talked about options. I hear Michael say, "I'll talk to my wife about that idea" and was very curious. When he got off I jokingly said, "what do they want us to do, pick a new floorplan?" He said No, but they wondered if we would consider taking off our front porch. He thought that would make a difference for the tree. What? The nerve...I can't believe that. I will not even consider that! I have been so giddy excited about my front porch. I have plans for that porch, a rocking chair or a bench, to watch my kids play in the front or to decorate on the holidays. Uh uh, no way. Michael actually considered it b/c he wants the porch for shade and THAT TREE will provide shade. But no, no way.

Michael kindly emailed back and said basically "thanks for the suggestion, but we don't want to do that." Then a few days later, I got a call during the day. We don't have caller id, so I just answered as usual, and it was him, Mr. M. He was caught off guard that I answered because he expected to get an answering machine. He briefly ran by his suggested plan B to me, but asked for Michael to call him later. Plan B was to get some city approval to move our house back about 10 feet in order to save the tree. I said, oh, will they let us do that, to push the fence back 10 feet to the lot behind us? He said....no. I said incredulously..."so you are thinking to cut off 10 feet of our backyard?" He didn't seem to think it was that odd of a thing to do. To which I said...."Our backyard is already smaller than we thought it would be, we don't want it any smaller." He caught onto that sentance right away and said, "Maybe you want to think about another lot that is more what you expected." I told Michael he would be very impressed with how I handled myself (I tend to not always think through things when I am mad, but I kept my cool very well) and just simply said I'd have Michael call him. The nerve!

Not surprisingly, Michael kindly told him we weren't interested in cutting off our yard. He then asked if they could have a meeting with the builder and an arborist to talk about all of this. We told our builder sales guy, Greg, what had been going on and he was fuming. On Monday, November 2nd, Michael met up with all of them after work. Greg told Michael he didn't need to come because this really wasn't an issue he needed to be involved in. After all, they still owned the property and this guy should not have been harrassing us in this way. But Michael told Mr. M. he would come and he thought it would be humorous (this is why I love him, takes everything in stride).

So this meeting included Mr. M., Greg, Michael, and a Round Rock city arborist who Michael said spoke with a Russian accent and was a very little man. I could never retell Michael's illustration of that meeting, but he was just laughing as he told me about it. Greg telling Mr. M. that we are nice people and to stop harrassing us and they are building on that lot no matter what, Mr. M. staring somewhat scared as Greg yelled at him, the (short Russian) arborist waving a badge in Gregs face saying he was the one with all the power, Michael staring on trying to contain his laughter, and Mr. M. coming up with all sorts of ideas to save the tree. Not the entire tree, just the big limp that hangs on our property and will probably die as a result of cutting it off. At the end of the meeting, the Russian arborist said in a few years all of the trees with be dead from construction disturbing them.

Mr. M. was being so diligent because they were about to pour the slab. He figured he would fight tooth and nail until then because that meant permanence. After a few days, we heard nothing from him and we figured Greg telling him off on our defence was it. All this time, I got annoyed, but never felt too much of an urge to jump ship. Once we were there, it would all smooth over, no big deal. Although I had my reservations about the yard, didn't love how the house faced, didn't love that we had to be garage left when the model we saw and got used to was garage right, we didn't care for the street name (weird word association thing) and once I realized the numbers were all even (I have a weird love for odd numbers--especially 7's) I was still ok. Although we picked it and felt good about it...something kept nagging me, and I just told myself I needed to get over the number thing, the street name, the yard thing. I just needed to get past it.

Then over the weekend, we got another email. It had been 5 days since we heard from Mr. M. All this time, he took the passive aggressive route. He wasn't mean, but quite pushy with what he wanted. I didn't want the bully to win, so we moved forward. He sent it Saturday, but we didn't see it until Sunday night. It was long (Michael says the longest email he's ever gotten besides the emails I sent when we were dating). Still passive aggressive bordering on nice, but between the lines, so rude and incredulous that he still kept going! He worked long and hard on his presentation. He found 5 other lots in the neighborhood and had digital drawings of our home placed on those lots and showed how much better yard space we would have somewhere else. Is your jaw dropping yet? His whole design was "We don't want you here, build your house somewhere else."

Our lot per Mr. M's drawing below...

Michael said that was it for him. He was done. If this is how he does things, he doesn't want to think about how other future situations might come up. I still didn't want the bully to win. He can't kick us out! We are good people, we are AWESOME--he doesn't know how lucky he would be to have us as neighbors and we are going to show him. I am really good at the "kill 'em with kindness" route. I just kept thinking..."I don't want to have lame neighbors, and right now, they are LAME!"

Fortunately, Mr. M. also forwarded his master plan onto Greg, the builder. We called Greg Monday morning (yesterday) and said we wanted to come in and talk about options. We planned a 5:30 meeting with him. We weren't sure how they would receive us wanting to pick a new lot, or if we would be charged to do so. They had done all the electrical wiring and plumbing, just about to pour the slab. They aren't going to want to do anything else on that because they've spent money on that lot. We prepared a convincing argument.

When we got to the office that night, we were greeted by Oscar, the general construction manager. Greg had forwarded Mr. M's crazy email to him and a bunch of others. He was shocked and mentioned a few comments from the email that he thought sounded criminal, but we hadn't seen it that way. When we got to Greg, we didn't even have to beg to look for a new lot, he was all supportive of it. He said for the sake of "pain and suffering" and because he wanted us to be happy, they were completely fine with it. We found a lot that we originally would have liked, but never seriously considered it (it wasn't even option A, I knew I didn't want to back up to the school). Well, turns out, it is a really big lot, bigger than ours, but the lot premium is $17k!!! Whoa, way out of our range!

Mr. M's drawing of that suggested lot:

I told Greg thats what I wanted and to make it happen. He said they will have sympathy for us, but not sure if they have that much sympathy. I know all the other options and they are not satisfactory to me. The street name is cool, AND it ends in a 7--it is meant to be! It is on a corner and has a huge tree on the side, and easier walking access to the school than the previous, but not too close. We drove by it and I can picture us there.

However, I got a call today from Greg saying we could have the lot if we were willing to pay $8k more (we already gave 'em $6k for our other lot). Thats still a lot more than we can do. Something is going to work out, either they will budge down a bit more, or maybe we'll find another lot. I don't know. I'm frustrated but I feel good something is going to happen. We may threaten to back out completely if they can't go down more. I have a meeting with him this morning.

So even if we find something within the week, we will be about a month further out for our house readiness. We said mid March, now it may be mid April. Sounds fun, doesn't it? Did your jaw drop? Kudos to you for making it through this detailed story.