A wise philosopher once said, "The waaaaaiting is the hardest part..."

Come to think of it, that philosopher may have been Tom Petty, but, regardless of the author, truer words were never garbled.

We're looking at another two weeks before we receive our construction drawings from our designer. Once we have those in hand, we can go to our builder finalists and get them to provide accurate estimates based on real numbers.

We will also take a couple of sets of final drawings to the developer to get
approval.

Until then, we're left with the more mundane task of considering whether we'll put some optional items in now or wait a few years.

One of the final elements we need to hammer out is the planned screened porch off of the eating area.

We have heard several opinions on what would be the most effective plan with this space.

Some have said we would be better off with a four-season sunroom that is fully heated and insulated. It would be a space we could utilize all year, including the chilly winter months.

Other people in the know, including one of our favourite experts (Sarah Susanka of Not So Big House fame) say we should keep things simple. She suggests we go with a very basic screened porch, so we can feel like we are sitting right out in nature.

Because our backyard is enveloped by trees, we can set the screened area right in the middle of the trees, and maximize the back-to-nature feel.

Susanka says it's kind of like walking out your back door and into your summer cottage or retreat.

Considering I loved spending hours inside my parents' screened porch growing up, I could easily picture the effect of lounging in a screened area set in a quiet, treed environment.

Susanka notes if you already have a space that features large windows and a sunroom feel, you'd be making the room redundant if you added a sunroom on
top of that.

Besides, we can always come back in a few years and transform the screened area into a four-season sunroom if we feel like we're missing out.

One of the best bits of advice we received after we built in Calgary was to live in a house for a full year before deciding on any changes or additions to the layout. That way, we would make sure we went through a full cycle of seasons to learn and understand our living patterns. Only then would we know if a change would make sense, or be a waste of time and money.

For that reason, we've chosen to go with the screens-only setup for now. If we lived anywhere other than southern Manitoba, we'd be able to sit out on a regular porch without screens, but we'd be carried away by a swarm of ravenous mosquitoes within seconds if we tried that here.

One small correction from last week¹s column: I inadvertently turned my brain off when talking about roof-slope ratios. I stated that a 6/12 slope is 45 degrees, which of course, is mathematically bogus. It's closer to 26 degrees.

Thanks to all of the sharp-eyed readers who called or e-mailed with the true numbers. I just wanted to make sure you were all paying attention.

This week's test: I hear the resale market is pretty stale these days with homes lingering on the market for months on end...