Saturday, June 16, 2012

A Place In This World

Last time I posted, I mentioned eating dinner with our friends Sheré and Joseph, but I didn't reveal what we visited about.  I kinda left you hanging...  

Well last year Sheré and Joseph (I really hope I'm spelling my friend's name right), built a brand new house. 

Are you putting two and two together?

We have decided to build a house right where we are next to Lane's parents.  (Some of you may know this cause you have already witnessed the stressing start, ha!)  The decision came after months of looking for land and not finding the right piece.  It was important to us that we remained in the same school district because of our sweet Jude.  We are in a wonderful district and Jude has wonderful teachers.  Sure we can find land for less elsewhere, but private schools very rarely have programs for sweet children like Jude. 

We are actually 99% sure; the 1% being that there are some legalities and processes we have to undertake before we can start. One of those legalities is the redrawing of the property line.  In order for that to happen, we have to build a road that meets specific criteria back to our homestead.  BUT, before we do that, I would at least like to have our house plans finalized and the proposed area of construction kinda planned out so we know where to put the road and driveway.  I'd hate to pay for all that just to redo it shortly.

So here is where the fun begins.  Choosing the perfect house plan.

This was a little discouraging at first, but that's where our dinner with Joseph and Sheré comes in.  We know that the only way we will be able to build our house at a price we are comfortable with, is to subcontract it out and do as much work as possible our self.  Well our friends just did that with there house last year and had a lot of good advice and tips to share.  Sheré actually sent me home with a folder full of distributors, builders, bids, service providers, etc. that she saved from the process.  After talking with them, we are super encouraged that we can do this! It might take us a couple years in all, but nonetheless, we can do it.

Now I'm not going to go into to much more detail now.  Well there's not too much detail to go into yet.  However, I do hope to blog the entire super lengthy process here.  Forgive me.  I just don't have time to keep up with an extra blog.  

As we get into this process, please, please, please feel free to share any experience you have with this.  Any recommendation of builder, electrician, plumber, and so on, is SUPER HIGHLY appreciated.

I'm so excited to share this journey with y'all!
Angel

2 comments:

  1. Hi Angel,

    I don't usually post at this time of night but I'm having trouble sleeping and decided that I might as well catch up on blog reading. I'm having a hysterectomy next Friday, something that I'm VERY apprehensive about. Had my pre-op today and lots to think about.... Enough of that.

    Subcontracting a house is really very easy! My ex-husband and I did it and saved a ton of money. You can get into a much nicer house than you could normally afford that way. I wish the guy we used for frame up/trim out was still in business but he has since retired. The important thing is to line up your workers about three weeks in advance in order to keep the process moving so that you can finish construction within the six months that the bank allows you. Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Angel, it can be a very stressful proces but we did the same thing, all the way down to the road to the back of the property to our build site. Also, make sure you construction loan will be able to be extended to the time you need to be able to do what you want. Our bank let our construction loan go for 12 months but that was 9 years ago.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to share a kind word with me!