Hey all! 

As many of you know we are moving to Sealy, Texas, within the year. Our ideal is to get a few (2-4) acres of land and build a house on it. We generally know what we want but we need some help in getting some of the specifics. (We’re actually looking at the possibility of a simple barndominium. If you’re not familiar with that you might want to look it up. It’s an interesting concept and usually cheaper than some of the other ones out there.)

I met with one builder in the Sealy area but it seems that building even something like a barndominium is still more expensive for a fairly base model than we were expecting. 

I don’t think that what we’re looking at is expensive or complicated. In fact it’s a pretty simple design in my head. But that’s where some of the problem lies. A lot of things are in Jen’s and my heads, but we’re having trouble getting things down in a way that makes sense for both of us. 

In short, we need the help of someone who is trained in this area like an architect!

The problem is our budget is very tight and limited. Especially when we’re looking at land and building a custom home (even something simple). It seems like what we want (at least to the one builder that we met with) doesn’t make sense for the time that he’s looking at and the budget is too low for what would make sense for him.

I really think that if we met with someone who knew what they were doing we could come up with something fairly simple, easy, and that would be relatively inexpensive. But coming to that conclusion, again, is in our heads and may not be based in reality. The problem is a chicken/egg issue. We can’t seem to get an understanding of an estimate of how much something cost without having something down, and we can’t get something down without having an estimate of cost and looking at architects because they want to know the general overall cost of a project and we don’t know what that’s going to be unless we sit down and talk with them. 

So we’re asking for your help. 

Does anyone know of someone who has some training in architecture for homes (or barndominiums in the area that we could talk to (in an inexpensive way as our budget is tight) and give some semblance of what we’re looking at? 

We know that is a tough set of circumstances and criteria and that we’re asking a lot, but we trust God in our asking! (Luke 11:9) 

We look forward to any direction and help that you can offer. 

Thank you so much and God bless your day.