If you're following my posts you'll know that my wife and I encountered a few speed bumps when it came to our house design and finding a reliable architect that wouldn't vanish at the start of the project. We honestly weren't expecting to end up needing to hire a firm from the USA but, that's how the cookie crumbled and at the end of the day, maybe there is some truth to the old saying that everything happens for a reason. Our architects @EmporiumDesign did a great job putting our vision onto paper, and now the next step was the daunting task of finding and choosing a reputable builder to get this thing going. Now, keep in mind that my wife and I have never built a home before...ever...so why not start by building our first home in Central America, about 6,900km from our current home in Calgary, Canada. Seems like a good idea, right? Hmmf...We started by reaching out to the developer that was on site in our community to give them a chance to bid for the job, and then we also reached out to our legal team in Costa Rica to help refer us to some reputable builders. In Costa Rica a Lawyer is much more than just a Lawyer, they seem to be the people that you contact for just about anything, big or small. The problem with this is that they will have the tendency to reach out to the more "local" builders and people they know (which is all fine and dandy), but with this you can also expect to encounter a lot more issues with the ole' language barrier...Try deciphering a quote for a construction project - predominantly in Spanish...you learn to use any available translation app just to try to figure out what you're reading. While we appreciated everyone's willingness to submit quotes (I think we ended up receiving 4 different quotes), we could only choose one lucky builder. Choosing a builder was a bit of a painstaking process to go through, but was an important one, as we were putting our trust in someone to build the home of our dreams while we were sitting in a snow bank in Canada yearning for warm weather, sandy beaches, and swimming in our pool...
Ya, that's me..."swimming" where our pool would be. Yes! we found a builder - let's get started.