Happy Wife, Happy Life!

We have told you bits and pieces of this story on different occasions but we wanted to capture on paper and send it to you. We currently live between Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates where our Houston based company currently has us assigned and the new home you built for us in Magnolia. We had sold our home in Katy in 2009 and moved to Bahrain on a company assignment, then transferred to Abu Dhabi in 2011 and currently have been here in Abu Dhabi three years. We have moved a lot over the past 15 years wherever work and the company have sent us and have been planning that “final” place to put our roots down for several years. Each time we moved it literally seemed like the company would put us in contact with a real estate agent, we would tell her what we wanted a couple of months before moving, she would locate a list of houses, we would land and in three days buy a house, move in and go to work. They were all nice houses but this time when we returned to the states we didn’t want just any house, there were certain features it had to have to meet our requirements. Starting in 2011 every time we would go home we would have several houses picked out from HAR.COM to go look at and they were all nice but something always was lacking on our “Must Have” list. We didn’t want to build because “How in the world can you trust someone building you a house when you are half way around the world from where they are spending your money?” On our trip at the beginning of 2011 we had some houses picked out to go look at west of Houston but again they were “Just not quite right”. By accident we found a home in High Meadow Ranch in Magnolia to go look at, a beautiful home but “No back Porch”, one of the “Must Haves”. Ana fell in love with High Meadow Ranch when we were driving through so something made us look again in HAR to see if anything else was available. We found a couple more that semi met our criteria and Ana insisted on seeing them even though I knew we were not going to like them but “Happy Wife, Happy Life”, so here we go. What we did find was a Real Estate agent that was a pretty amazing lady. After talking awhile with her the question came up “Why don’t you build”. Well, we gave her the deeper reason, my grandfather and father were builders, my first job in life was building houses and working around and seeing the quality of some of the work today I just DID NOT trust a builder when we were going to be half way around the world while the home of our dreams was being built. Nothing doing she HAD to introduce us to ya’ll. Something I came find out later and maybe it was just fate on that day she drove us down the road to a house that was being built and both of you were on the job together, something I would come to find out over the next year happened rarely that you two were both in the same place at one time. Jumping to the point, the questions I asked that day and the honesty in which the answers came surprised me greatly. Ana and I talked it over between ourselves, bought a great piece of land, drew a “rough sketch” house plan in our home computer and with no promise of anything other than “If we decided not to use Heartwood to construct that we would pay the Architect” you took our rough drawn plan with a list of ideas and wants to an Architect and she went to work taking our simple plan and turning it into something beautiful to our hearts. About 2 ½ or 3 months after our initial encounter a plan & price was agreed, signed and the road to the end commenced. From that initial “Intent” agreement to 12 months later almost from the exact date from initial intent we slept in our house the first time. The year was a whirlwind. We would fly home for a week, never more than 2 weeks, you would have everything that we needed to accomplish lined out, we would pick, re-pick, and triple pick everything out and disappear on a 16 hour plane ride back to Abu Dhabi with our picked out list, our trust and hearts in your hands. Mr. Freddie, Mr. Terry, you’re some pretty amazing and awesome guys according to Isabella, our five year old. Ana and I tend to agree with her a lot. During that year there were from one to several emails every week, mostly our curious to see how things were going or ya’ll answering a million questions that we had sent. Ya’ll sent us some pretty amazing update pictures each week and neither one of us could sleep on Friday nights waiting on the “End of the Week Friday evening Pictures” (We are 10 hours ahead here in Abu Dhabi so when ya’ll sent them Friday evening we would get them somewhere between 2 and 4 AM in the morning) We were up at the crack of dawn Saturdays wanting to see the weeks pics. You guys did an amazing job, change orders were never an issue. We would come up with some different idea, ya’ll would come back with several alternatives on how what we wanted could be accomplished and here we would go forward. Not one complaint, we have a great home today and you guys are the reason. Quality, can do attitude, meeting the schedule, and always being there when we had a question, concern, or possible issue ready to solve it in the utmost professional manner and go forward. Before it was over with I think my wife and daughter trust ya’lls opinions better than they do mine. Building a home from half way around the world, ya’ll helping us to stick to the planned budget, and turning out with the great home that we have was unbelievable.