England may be out of the football, but WE are just kicking off!

Our initial sift of architects was obviously fairly effective as we felt we could have worked with any of them. Three scored higher than the rest on our weighted criteria list (nobody who knows me will be surprised by this) and so we followed up by speaking to customers of all three. This was at the same time reassuring and unhelpful, as everyone we spoke to was really pleased with their relationship and the result. So, that didn't really help with the selection but encouraged us to go for our first choice who had the most experience of the passivhaus type of modern highly insulated construction. He was very challenging - in a good way - in our first meeting, and innovation is something that really matters to us. While we're not expecting to end up with something whacky or modernist, we don't want someone who will just build what we ask regardless but will suggest things we'd never have thought of and challenge what we think we want. So! Our first proper meeting was on Tuesday afternoon, I was quite nervous going in - it's a big commitment, have we made the right decision? Happily the meeting went very well which was a great relief! We'd done some prep around a loose spec and a scrapbook of like/don't like pictures of houses, features, looks which formed the basis for a wide-ranging discussion about what we're looking for and some really interesting new ideas. Main worry remains - can we afford what we really want? Given that we don't yet actually know what we really want, we can't answer this right now! But it seems likely that all of the things on our wish-list would result in a design exceeding our budget. Peter the architect offered a number of suggestions as to cheaper routes to the same end, and he's off to do some initial concept work before we meet again next Thursday, when we're also going to view some houses he's built recently for ideas. Meanwhile our homework is to go back over our initial spec and decide what rooms we really want and what sizes we think we're after.