Origins of a Lawsuit 1.

In 2004 I brought a lot in the town I live and built a house. My objective was to sell the when I had completed it.
I got into the building trades in 1987 when we brought our first house. At the time I was a journeyman clerk in a supermarket. There were some problems with the house and rather than call someone else to fix them I decided to fix them myself. I realized I had an aptitude for so when the supermarket chain I worked for closed I decided to try my hand at working as a Handyman. I put an add in the local paper and started doing small jobs.
In 1989 I inherited some money. It was enough to buy a fixer upper in the neighborhood we lived. It was one of the oldest houses in our town. We were told by the people we brought the house from the original deed was in fact a land grant and was signed by Andrew Johnson in 1866.
It was exciting and ultimately profitable fixing up the house. I loved the discovering what was behind the old walls and designing a more modern living space. We were told by the agent that the other people who had looked at the house were contractors and had planned to level the structure. We thought the cottage style was charming and wanted to do what ever we could to restore and preserve it.
The first thing we did was put a new foundation under the house. I found a contractor that would hire me as a laborer and I that way I learned and earned at the same time. After that I hired a good carpenter and worked with him during the rest of the project. By the time we were finished we had put about $40 dollars into it and it had increased in value by about $80, the historic preservation group in town gave us an award for our work and I was hooked.
I got a more permanent job with the contractor that I had worked putting the foundation under the the house. Then worked with a couple of others; in all I worked for about 4 contractors until I decided to apply for my own license. In April 1991 I got my contractor's license just in time for the big housing market slowdown of the 90's. My father had died a month before and I knew he was proud of me. I named my company and designed a logo. I brought a good used truck and had the logo painted on it. We scraped by for about five years, mostly loosing net worth, but gaining experience. In 1996 we found we could no longer hold on to the house we had fixed up and decided to sell. Everyone had told us the market was bad an to lower our expectations so naturally we were surprised when after only a week on the market we received a call from our real estate agent.
The house sold at our asking price and with money in our pocket and the inside information that things weren't as bad as "they" were saying we decided to buy another fixer upper.