While Don was in China....he got to come home on a family leave in July.  So, I ordered the house plans in time to have them here while he was home for his two weeks.  It was very exciting....we started making notes of a few things that we wanted to change....looking at lighting fixtures.....checking into windows, etc.  We had always said that we wanted to build a "Green" home....we wanted to be as energy efficient as possible.  That was still our plan.....then, we counted the windows in this house plan.....a grand total of 43!!  No....it's not a typo....there were 43 windows in the house plans we had just purchased.  So, we started doing more research on energy efficient windows and found that there are some REALLY good windows out there.  But, there's this little thing called a "budget".  But, we thought, we can still do this.  We put the window issue on the back burner for the time being.

Meanwhile, Don went back to China and I continued my search for lighting, bathroom fixtures, etc.  Time drug on and, finally, on January 7th, 2008, Don came home!

After a couple months of rest and relaxation, we hit the planning at a pretty good pace.  Of course, we are both "information junkies" so, if there's information out there to be found, we want to know about it.  During that time, we started doing research on SIP (Structural Insulated Panel) construction and decided that was the way we wanted to build our house.  We got in touch with a company in Nashville, MM & I Construction & Design, a certified builder for InsulSpan, Inc (a manufacturer of SIP's).  We were impressed with the folks at MM & I but, in order to use this type of construction, our plans would need some modification.  At that point, we were turned on to a local draftsperson.  We took our plans over.....started talking about what we wanted to do and found that there was someone, locally, who was a manufacturer of SIP's.....only better.  This technology used Cement Board, rather than OSB....was supposedly better and less costly.  We start the knowledge search, once again, regarding this company.                   MORE