Selected a home plan

Just recently, I started looking at house plans again; I'd stopped maybe a year ago. I think it was my visit with Dr. Martin that sort of jogged things. She asked how things were coming along and I responded that I hadn't really been thinking about designs. She asked whether I'd given up on the idea. I responded that I just hadn't been able to focus on it for more than a few minutes at a time.

I'd google some likely candidate like Pacific northwest log cabin kit and visit  a couple links, but wouldn't find anything that seemed like a good fit, and I'd give up pretty quickly. So...I decided to give it another go.

I found a couple designs that I really liked from PrecisionCraft, but they turned out to be way over my budget - about $750K each, so I gave up on that and turned the page. I found a design I liked at Riverbend Custom Timber Homes, and on 07/17/2020, I signed a contract to build a house on Vashon Island.

All this is new to me, but it sounds like Riverbend's role is to prepare a design that the builder can use to actually construct the home you're looking for. The home I selected is about 1,450 square feet. It's only one bedroom, so of course the bedroom's quite spacious. There's an optional 1,450 square foot open basement (displayed in the image below) that I'd originally thought I'd go for. I don't need all that room, but I figured I could leave the basement largely unfinished but that the space would be ready for the next owners if they wanted it. I've reconsidered. The 2,900 S/F house would've come in at an estimated $600K, which is right at the threshold of my discomfort level.

As the stock market is now, I could, if I wanted to, withdraw $75K annually without worrying about ever running out of money. As a matter of fact, I could probably safely withdraw over $85K annually. I currently withdraw $60K. I figure I'll be $300K for the construction up front and will finance the rest, so it's a levy against my retirement funds. That $300K would put me RIGHT at the outer edge of my comfort level to be able to withdraw $75K annually if I needed to.

Current balance: $2.5 million (including $300K taken as an advance on the Concord house). Less $600K ($300K up front and $300K financed) would leave me with $1.9 million unencumbered.

4% annual withdrawal: $76K
Annual earnings (projected at 8%): $152K

But my nest egg is at an all-time high. It could easily drop 20% or even 30%. If that happened, I wouldn't have enough to live on. That makes me anxious. Omitting the basement saves me $100K.

The design I selected:

Floor plan:


Oh - and here's the front elevation: