Part 1 - Building a second home

I've been fascinated with houses most of my life. My dad is a Carpenter\Contractor and he has worked on some facinating projects over the years. One of the houses he build was featured in Better Homes and Gardens magazine in the 1980's. At the age of 13 I started working with my father in the summer. It was a great summer job, and I learned many valuable skills. I worked with my Dad for 8 summers until I started working full time as an Electrical\Software Engineer in 1997. Since then I've owned three different homes (2 were new construction) so I've had plenty of opportunities to apply what I learned on various projects around the house.

This summer my dad asked my brother and I if we would be interested in building a small house as an investment. I was immediately interested and I wasn't able to stop thinking about it. We recently started the project, and I'll be documenting the progress in a series of blog posts.