I always thought that building a home of my own with my choices was a far, FAR off dream. Especially with our cute little family moving around so much.
It appears I was mistaken. Let me explain.
In mid October, Brian and I took a house hunting trip to Texas in the hopes to find us a home to move into. After 3 days of walking through house after house, 40 plus houses, I was becoming very discouraged. Sure there were plenty of homes that would "work" but none that really hit both Brian and I as the home for us. Either there was no yard or the layout wasn't great and most of the time there was and insufficient amount of storage space.
The lack of storage space was a big deal. Our home in Utah had a pantry that was 10 feet long and 4 feet wide, and it was full to the brim with food storage. Not having anywhere to put all the food was proving to be quite a problem.
On Friday afternoon, with frustration running through my head, I had Brian take us to a builder site in the area that we were looking to purchase. The prices were incredibly high and not really what we were looking for, but the gal there was super friendly and talked with me for quite a while about my dream home and possibilities. She then told us that they had a few other locations they were building on and that I might want to check out those.
So on we drove. The second location was closer to what I wanted, but still not great. They had the floor plan I wanted and the price was much better, but they didn't have any lots larger than .15 acres and we just weren't thrilled about that.
At this point Brian was very uninterested in the idea of chasing after a build. He kept telling me that we'd just have to spend more time looking at houses ounce we moved out here at the beginning of November. I was not appeased, but it was now too late to do much and we headed back to the hotel. At that point I called the 3rd location to find out if they had any decent size lots. Brian of course rolled his eyes at me as I made arrangements to meet with the builder rep in the morning. Because our flights were leaving in the morning on Saturday, I had to call and push them back. Brian rolled his eyes but let me hope that my dream might come true.
Saturday morning we headed to the third location and my final hope before we flew back to Utah. Brian was less than interested, but was willingly appeasing me. 30 minutes later he was starting to get excited himself.
We took a look at the different floor plan options and then Brian matched them up with the prices. He nodded and said that the prices looked good, but those were just the base prices. He gave me a price limit and some stipulations before we continued on. In the back of my mind I was thinking that there was no way this was going to work out in my favor, but I pushed that away and prayed my dreams could work out.
When we saw the size of the lot we were both pleased. As I recall, Brian exclaimed "Now this is a yard I could be happy with!". The size of the lot we looked at was just under a third of an acre. Perfect size. Then we sat down with the rep and talked about upgrades and prices. God must have know what I wished for because we were floored with our blessings of hitting the perfect time to sign a contract with these builders. They were offering half price on the lot and $5000 in incentives to go towards upgrades. Brian's smile widened. Then we went through the upgrades that I wanted and they told us what the final price was. My eyes almost burst from my head! The price was less than the stipulated amount Brain set on me! They also added in a few custom changes for us that I was really interested in and it still didn't jump above the price limit. Both Brian and I were thrilled!
So below are some pictures to give you an idea of what our home will look like in 7 months when it's finished.
This is what the front will look like for the most part.
Our lot is circled in red with the number 10 on it. See how big it is in comparison to the others!!
The original plans.
The plans with my changes. The changes are in red.
The ground our house will be on. :)
