Building 6610

When I started this blog I said I may not be posting regularly, but oops. I didn't mean to go two months with radio silence. Silence on the blog doesn't means silence in real life, though...on the contrary! Scott and I have been so busy with work and life and perhaps we've been the busiest with just waiting for our first HOME to be built!  I thought I'd share a few pictures of the process before doing our big reveal once we close... which is happening in NINE days!

Scott has lived in our apartment since before we started dating, and when we began our relationship & I moved in and started helping out with the bills... woah, did the price of rent smack me in the face. I had previously paid a mortgage that was much less than what we've been paying monthly and Scott longed to have a home that was really his. So, rather quickly, we started looking into real estate in our area. We went "neighborhood shopping" for a few weeks before realizing how affordable building a house is in our area right now. Where I'm from, neighborhoods don't just pop up all the time so building typically requires purchasing land and then hiring a contractor to build the home. Here, though, real estate is exploding and there are tons of neighborhoods in development. We visited probably one million model homes which was really fun at first but then became incredibly exhausting. We finally found the perfect one & in June of this year, we signed our names on the line and began the tedious process of hurry up & wait.

I'd like to tell you that the whole process was just plain exciting & fun and that there were no fights that lasted through the night about what color granite would go in the kitchen and whether or not the fireplace would go in the middle of the wall or the corner or if we'd even have one at all, but I'm an honest girl. I'm incredibly grateful that Scott really puts me first and that at 1am when I'm almost in tears over a fireplace (in retrospect, I may have been PMSing at the time), he simply took my hand and said, "Baby, call the builder first thing. Let's add the fireplace. And let's go to bed."

Overall, after one or two bouts of doubting all the choices we made, though, the process was incredibly easy. Scott & I both have very similar tastes and we had a long list of "musts" and "wants" and "we can live withouts" that made narrowing down the floor plan & choices rather easy. We ended up going with Ryland homes in the floor plan Landrum - D. Thankfully, we were able to visit a few homes in this floor plan, so we weren't going in too blindly. It blows my mind how some people are able to look at a paper and decide on a plan...I'm way too visual for that.

We pretty randomly picked out our lot without thinking much about it. In fact, this was the first lot the sales person showed us and we loved that it was near a cul-de-sac and also had a protected tree line. We knew we didn't want a large yard but needed enough for our dogs to run and play once we built a fence and lot 128 fit our needs nicely!

Once we picked out our lot, we scheduled a trip to the design center where we'd pick out the details of our home:

And after that, we did lots & lots of waiting until they were ready to begin. We spent lots of miles just driving past "our dirt" to remind ourselves of what we were working towards. It was tough being on a really tight budget for seven long months and not being able to always "see" what we were saving for. There were some really frustrating days when we wanted to go do things or buy certain things and the money was right there in our account but we couldn't touch it because of this seemingly mythical house we were "supposedly" going to be moving into "eventually."

I remember this day so clearly... we drove by the lot and we finally saw a little progress! They were getting ready to pour the foundation and we had been told that once the foundation was poured, it would go by really fast. 

 

After we saw that work was starting, we began driving by ALL the time. I really think this kept me sane... I loved watching our hard work come to life and we used it as motivation to keep saving & waiting patiently. Here you can see the foundation begin! 

A few days later, the sales rep for the development sent us this picture of the frame work going up and it went up fast.

By the time we got by to see it in person, it already looked like a house and the second floor was constructed!

This is an important picture that really brought me to tears when I saw it in person. Originally, to save money, I compromised and didn't get a fireplace so we could get the upstairs balcony that Scott really loved. We looked at re-sale value and the cost of gas and agreed that the fireplace was going to be more costly in the long run and that (to my surprise) most people opt out of a fireplace now when they build, so it wouldn't be a big deal when we decided to sell down the road. After a few restless nights and Scott knowing it was on my mind, well, you already know the rest of the story (see above):

The roof was finished & siding started to go up:

It looked so good once it was all on!

I have tons  of pictures of inside framework & drywall that I won't bore you with, but here are a few that will serve as good "before" pictures of the inside: 

Then our stone was completed and our driveway was poured. We were incredibly happy that the driveway was poured because that meant we didn't have to walk across dirt and mud every time we wanted to go inside:

From here, it was lots of detail-oriented work and sometimes when we'd visit it didn't look like a lot had happened day-to-day, but we were excited for cabinets, stair rails, and the mantel. It started to look like a real home, not just a house:

Paint really made it come together in our minds even though there was a lot left to be done:

 

Flooring was next, even though they keep the wood covered to protect it. Tile was laid in our bathrooms & carpet on the steps & upstairs:

    

Y'all don't even know how exciting sod is until you build a house: 

Or how exciting appliances & countertops can be: 

 

And finally, the most recent shot of the outside with our columns painted!

We cannot wait until we close on the 22nd! We do our final walk-through on Tuesday and then, once we sign on the dotted line (for what seems like the zillionth time), we can start moving in. At first we planned to move in slowly through mid-february when our lease is up in our apartment, but we're just too dang excited now, so expect lots of pictures & home decor updates between now and then!

Would anyone be interested in youtube videos of our house projects & progress? Scott & I have been tossing the idea around and it sounds kind of fun. Let me know!