Where did we leave off?

So we are not going to move forward on the service station/restaurant venture. We still believe it was a good idea but the bank wanted to tie up our entire net worth and control everything. It left us feeling a bit vulnerable. We then refocused on building our house but we still have the $$ issue. Our lot can be sub-divided and we thought about selling off the top corner to add to our funds. The problem with that is the real estate market in Englewood is at a stand still. Plus we'd really like to try to hang on to the property as whole as long as we can. Our architect, Tim Snyder at Osborn, Sharp Associates had come up with some other design options. One of the big budget busters is the fact that the house has to be elevated 10 ft. The smaller this elevated slab, the more savings we'd have. He came up with some more compact designs as a compromise when compared to the first design we've really become attached to.