All About Our New Home {Lot and Floorplan}

Thank you for all your kind comments on my first post about how we’d moved, and today as promised, I am back with more details about our next home. Construction hasn’t started so I don’t have much I can actually show you at this point, but I thought I would at least share a little more about where we are going and what we’re building.

I think I covered the ‘why’ we decided to move in the first post, so check that out if you missed it. It seems like it was ages ago that we first began talking to the builders in our new neighborhood, though it was just about a year ago. Over the last year we’ve thoughtfully and really, prayerfully, made many of these decisions which definitely gives me a comfort level with the building and moving process.

I should probably start by saying that we are not building a custom home, instead, we are working with a very large production home builder. One that is large, and so generic (for lack of a better word) even I am a little surprised that this is the route we are going at this stage in our lives. In fact, I think I even told my realtor that I DID NOT want to build with this company due mostly to its lack of available customization but of course famous last words, here we are with contracts signed. It came down to simple economics as they offered the most for our money, but maybe even more importantly, they owned the lot we wanted to build on, more on that in a minute.

I think that, despite the prevalence of seemingly perfect custom homes with all the bells and whistles popping up on Instagram right now, this route will provide better and more relatable blogging material. It’s much more common to build (especially in suburban areas) with a production builder than to design and contract construction of a home independently.  Since I have worked in both new home sales and online marketing for a (different) national home builder at various stages of my life, this route feels comfortable to me. I’ll be sharing the entire building journey here on the blog this spring so hopefully, this will be helpful to others of you who might be considering building a home in a similar fashion.

 

Now, back to the lot we selected. We looked at several sections that offered different lots over the last year but again, thanks to the delay in selling our house, we lucked into getting the first pick of lots in a new section that was released for sale this fall. While my husband gives me pretty much free reign of the house and decorating, he did feel strongly about having privacy and backing to woods so that was a priority. We were finding the lot options early in our search to be a fairly limited with so much of the neighborhood already built.

When our contact at the builder told us she could get a lot that backed to a large lake opened up for us, I practically forced my husband into the car to drive over with me and take a look. Here’s where it gets interesting– a God wink right?– as we drove up to look at the lot and there were five deer standing on the lot, just staring at us. Not on the lot next to it, not down the street, but on the precise spot where our house would be built. Five of them. Mid-afternoon, with the comings and goings of a pretty busy neighborhood down the street. Now, I know most of you don’t know my husband, but I assure you that there could not be a more clear sign that God was telling him this lot was meant to be ours!  I remember him turning and looking at me and saying, “Go tell her we’ll take it” :), done and done.

 

 

I just took the picture above last week, I think the view of the lake is even prettier now that all the leaves have fallen. Even though the water view wasn’t a priority to us, we’d lived on a lake previously when we lived in this home here, and nice as that was, you could say that bucket list item was checked on our end. We just like the privacy that having the water behind us offers, though the view is nice too.

 

Builder Photo: Our home will look similar to this, but will be smaller as the garage will fill the space where the three windows are to the right of the porch, without the extra single garage on the side. 

I mentioned in our first post that we really wanted a home with a master bedroom on the first floor, but in the end that is not the route we went. Much as we wanted it, we just couldn’t justify the costs that come with having the main bedroom on the first level due to the larger footprint.  We would be paying the same amount for a home with a downstairs master than we are for the home we selected, which is almost 1500 square feet larger. Coming out of selling a home and price per square foot calculations dictating value, and knowing that this was a neighborhood filled with younger families, we made the decision to forego the main floor master keeping future resale in mind.

The floorplan we selected is a little larger than we wanted initially, but it comes without the wasted formal rooms yet has all those modern must-haves like a mudroom and a large pantry. We think it will work well for us as our kids become teenagers as it has a finished basement (boy space) as well an upstairs loft (girl space), therefore plenty of hang out space for everyone.

 

Builder photo: They say kitchens sell houses right? This is the kitchen that sold me on this plan, though we’ve made modifications to reduce the size of this island (like this was seriously massive!) so we can include a kitchen table, and we want to customize the desk area cabinets (to not be a desk) so we’ll do that cabinetry ourselves after we move in.

So just one more outstanding item–  Christy has christened her little rental home in North Carolina the Mint Chocolate Chip house, or on social media we tag it as the #mcchouse, so I think I now need a way to refer to this new home. Thoughts? It will have a great deal of craftsman style so maybe I’ll incorporate that, I am sure something will come to me this spring as we watch it come to life!

Thanks for following along on this journey. My next post about our home will be all about the interior selections for the home–the colors, the flooring etc. I think that’s the really fun part 🙂

XO,

 

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