The fun begins!

April 25, 2010

We met with Don at his Parade of Homes open house to sign our contract. Meeting in that home confirmed our decision to go with Don Mills Builders. It was beautiful and had the same solid feel of our house. The pride that he and his wife Annette had when showing us the home got us even more excited about our upcoming construction. That meeting was on a Sunday. The following morning Don was already at our house before setting off to get the needed permits. Surveyors, utility companies marking their lines and packing up the rooms affected seem a blur as they all happened so quickly.

Most of the changes will be visible from the back of our house. This is what it looked like before.

May 7 Don pulls his backhoe into our yard and it all became real!

New to North Carolina

We moved from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in January 2009. Leaving behind our two sons and their families, we spent many hours looking for our new home for "just us." After looking at 75 homes with our terrific realtor, Betty Hill, we found a house meeting just about everything on our wish list. Immediately we were impressed not only by the layout and design of the house but also by the quality of the construction. The house was 6 years old and there was not one squeek or rattle ANYWHERE. That was very different from the house we had built twenty years earlier.

When our life situation took a complete change a year later we knew we had to find the builder to help us with our need for more room.

The thought of hiring a contractor frightened us. As an HGTV junkie, I had watched many episodes of Holmes on Homes. The last thing we wanted was to fall victim to a dishonest or inept contractor. We also had few contacts in the Greensboro area so felt as if our hunt for a contractor was really being done with our eyes closed. After searching local contractors we decided that the best referral we had was our own home. We loved it and it had lived six years without any squeeks or problems. That man was Don Mills. From our first meeting we knew that we had the perfect fit. Don referred us to Patti McLemore of On Eagle's Wings to draw the design for our addition.

Patti met with the three of us and came up with a design that would give mom a large bedroom, a HUGE walk in closet and bathroom. She designed mom's spaces so that she could "age in place." In addition, we would expand our living room, basement family room and relocate our deck and patio. We were excited!