Lake Project - 2003/2006
(click here to go to thumbnails)


In March of 2003, my wife signed up for something at the mall - it was a chance to win an SUV or something like that. I'll leave out all the gory details but, after a couple of phone calls from these people, they somehow persuaded us to come look at some lake property. We always ignore these kinds of pitches. I don't know why we agreed to follow up on this one - maybe it was just fate!

Anyway, on the 22nd of March, we drove up to this place called "Wildwood Shores" at the very north end of Lake Conroe (Texas) to "take our punishment" -- do the obligatory tour and listen to the high pressure sales pitch. Well, first of all, we were impressed by the isolation of this development. This was in contrast to the developments toward the south end of the lake, where there are bustling marinas, wall-to-wall lake houses (basically, upper-middleclass suburban homes with a boat dock or pier), and more boats, yachts and jet skis than you can shake a stick at! Wildwood Shores, on the other hand is surrounded on three sides by the Sam Houston National Forest and on the remaining side by Lake Conroe. In other words, there will never be any other development within sight of this area.

There was no pressure of any kind as our salesman, a very likeable young man named Chris, drove us around the development. He told us the basic facts and answered our questions but never really had to deliver a sales pitch - the place sells itself! We picked out a lake-view lot which backed up to the national forest and bought it on the spot. We weren't sure what we were going to do with it, but we would be "property owners" which would give us certain privileges without even having a requirement to build.

Over the next several months, we discussed the possibility of building a house on our lot but didn't set a target date or even look at any house plans. Then, late in July, we got a mailing from the developer that said that current property owners would have first choice of the lots in a new section they were opening. We decided to go up to the lake and take a look. Well, most of the "prime" lakefront lots (which we couldn't afford anyway) were already sold by the time we got there. However, there was one lakefront lot left that looked pretty good to us and was not priced too high. Our salesman, Chris, showed us this lot and we decided to do the "trade up" (we returned our other lot to the developer and they applied the equity that we had in that lot toward the price of the new one). This took place on August 2, 2003.

After the first of the year, my wife and I again started discussing the possibility of building something on the lot. We made some inquiries and found a builder, named Rick Stayner, who lived at the development and was currently working on a couple of new houses there. We got to know Rick and let him know what we wanted to build, based on what we had seen of his work and on several house plans we had found on the internet. Rick drew up some basic plans on his computer and we were off and running.

Then, we ran into a major problem. The first guy we went to for funding dropped the ball. We went to his office and did the loan application on March 16, 2004, but, as it turned out, he chose a lender who didn't do new construction loans. So, about a month had gone by and we were once again looking for a lender. This time, we chose someone who was referred by a realtor we knew. We did the loan application with him on April 27th and finally went through a closing on June 9th.

After several weather-related delays, Rick finally got the concrete piers poured on June 22nd and the project was underway.

Here are some pictures, starting with the first lot. After we bought the second lot but before we started building, we bought a pontoon boat. There are also some pictures of the boat as well as pictures that show the progress of the house construction. Click on each set of pictures to see larger ones. There are navigation links at the bottom of each set of pictures.



3/23/03

9/6/03
3/17/04


3/27/04

4/5/04, 4/9/04

5/25/04, 5/28/04

6/21/04
6/24/04

7/2/04


7/8/04

7/8/04

7/9/04

7/10/04

7/13/04

7/20/04


7/22/04

7/24/04

7/28/04


8/4/04

8/7/04

8/12/04


8/18/04

8/26/04

9/4/04


9/13/04, 9/17/04

10/27/04

11/2/04


11/11/04

11/24/04 (1)

11/24/04 (2)


11/29/04, 12/6/04

1/8/05

1/14/05


1/20/05, 1/29/05

3/8/05

5/26/06, 6/16/06, 6/29/06

8/22/06

8/22/06, 9/1/06, 9/4/06

9/5/06, 9/8/06, 9/13/06


9/19/06

11/7/06

Last update: 11/19/2006