Intimidation makes me grumpy.

The architect I mentioned before came by today. I had a big realization:  

Oh, hai, we don't know what the hell we are doing. 

I have heard from friends that if you design and build your own house, you have regrets. You will wish you had done many things differently, but you would have had to live in the space to realize it, and now it's too late. This was one of the 852 reasons we didn't build a custom home. But then we went and bought a project.

The unfulfilled potential idea haunts me as we try to make plans for the ballroom. Anecdotal evidence and my curmudgeony attitude say it is inevitable that we're going to have serious issues with whatever decisions we make, implement, pay for. Maybe the trick is to out-think the part of my brain that keeps firing the message "You can't use an iron to web-fuse burlap for drapes, so just how are you going to plan a major renovation" by accepting that truth and moving forward anyway. Worst-case scenario is that we end up with rooms that have funny proportions and feel like add-ons. If we can avoid that--no *invokes positive thinking* when we avoid that--we will consider our reno'd ballroom a success. 

But I am getting way ahead of myself. The next step in the process, because I know you're curious, is that the architect is going to give us a quote for his interpretation of the wish list we discussed this afternoon. We thought we were getting that today, but apparently I threw a lot at him, and he needs to digest the info. If the price is right, it's pencil to paper AutoCad to printer, and we start saving our pennies for the work. Very, very many pennies.