After 2 builder consultations, 6 phone calls, 18 trees saved, 1000′s of design choices, 9 design choice changes, 30 site visits to the model home and our lot, and 3 months of waiting patiently for something to emerge from the dirt pad…..it happened!  The foundation was poured, wood was delivered and construction has begun!

Ok, I made up most of those statistics, and in reality, the process has been painless so far…..but we were just soooo anxious for it actually to begin!  We are trying to take pictures throughout the building, so bear with our ton of pictures from now until mid-September when we are slated to close!

View from the median…watch the progress on our neighbor’s house too!

Pad was completed on June 20th

June 25th

Front of house with foundation poured: July 1st

Garage view: July 1st

Stay tuned!

If you have lost track of our housing journey, here is the synopsis:

Our house hunt began about a year ago.  Sure, we have been obsesssive about www.agentowned.com’s interactive map of properties for years, but our serious hunt began last summer.  We tried out a couple of agents, and finally settled on our favorite, Susan.  We listed our house in early fall, and have had TONS of action on it.  It’s sporadic, but we’ve averaged about a showing a week since we listed it, which is awesome.  We’ve also gotten really great feedback….our only negative comments have been things we can’t change, like the size of our spare rooms, how our development doesn’t have a pool, etc.  So it’s been pretty frustrating that we’ve had roughly 40 showings (give or take), and everyone liked our house.  Emphasis on “liked.”  As in, “not loved.”  Or at least, “not loved” enough to buy it!  We haven’t had a single offer put down!  Grrr!  But….its ok, because we feel like we will ultimately lose money by selling it, and the rental market is still pretty hot in our area.  So, we are kind of leaning toward renting it by the end of the summer, if we don’t sell it by then.

In the meantime, we have looked at 6,325 houses in our town.  We love our town, and know the neighborhoods inside and out and know exactly where we want and don’t want to live.  Yes, we are picky!  We found a blue house in the newer part of an old, but very good neighborhood that was on .60 acres (which was huge for that neighborhood), and a corner lot.  We put our hearts and an offer down, but it got vetoed.  Then, we found an older, smaller blue house on a bigger lot out in the country (think: pond and separate garage with living space above on the river!).  We put our hearts and an offer down, but it got vetoed.  Then, we found an awesome newer house in a really desirable newer neighborhood, on the golf course.  It also was blue, with double front porches, a huge spiral staircase and ginormous kitchen.  I mean, my DREAM kitchen!!!  I LOVED IT!  Here’s a terrible picture.

We were completely in love with this house.  We put an offer in on it in January….it was a short sale, so we expected it to take awhile to go through.  After many hoops and loops, and still no word by March whether we had gotten it or not, we decided to move on and keep looking.  We also had just about had our fill of blue houses and heartbreak!  So we started looking in a newer neighborhood a little closer to our current house.  It’s a great neighborhood that has quality houses, lots of sidewalks and paths, a saltwater pool (which is FREE with our HOA dues-no membership required!), a 1800′s farmhouse that doubles as the community center and event area, 3 giant ponds, an outdoor ampitheater, a community vegetable garden and orchards, a playground, and about a million old oak trees throughout the entire community.  It’s in the first phase of development, but that’s almost complete, so Phase 2 will be developing soon.  It also has its own firehouse, YMCA and will soon have it’s own K-8 school.

We had looked at this community back when we first started house hunting, but were a little unsure about how few houses were being built back there because of the recession.  BUT….upon second look in the past few months, business is booming and there were hardly any lots left!  We were able to snag a custom .26 acre lot and found a floorplan that would work perfectly with the lot.  We are just a couple of blocks away from the playground and pool/community center and have a small field across from our house that will be a great additional play space to our yard.

Soooo, we put an offer down……and it was accepted!  I think it was because the house ISN’T blue!!! =) And ironically, the day we got the contract ratified, the previous blue house came back to us and the bank accepted our offer.  Too bad we had already moved on…..you snooze, you lose!

   Here’s what our floorplan will look like:

The flex room at the front will have double french doors, and will serve as our playroom while our kids are young….we’ll probably turn it into Dave’s office when we don’t need a playroom downstairs anymore.

On the second floor, Bedroom 2 will be Jayna’s room, and Bedroom 3 will be our nursery.  The studio loft above the garage (the stairs to it are on the opposite side of the house, off of the garage and kitchen), will be Loo Loo’s room while she lives with us, and then be our main guest suite later.  The loft area at the top of the stairs will be an additional family room for us for now…housing the Wii and our board games and such.  Later, when the girls are older, it will be their space for entertaining friends and doing homework (we are ALL ABOUT the open door policy….and the “open wall” of the loft will give them space, but allow is to know exactly what is going on up there!!)

The third floor, is Dave’s Man-Cave.  The only difference between the above picture and the plan we chose is that we opted not to have a bathroom up there, so the bathroom area is all part of the walk in closet.  Unfortunately, there is a ton of space in this house, but not a ton of storage.  So the closet on the third floor will be our primary storage closet for all of our various holiday decor and such.

Here are a couple of pictures that I took of the model home that is already built in the neighborhood (and a couple of pictures are from the builder’s website, but they were closer matches to the elevation we chose).  Their floorplan is flipped, so it’s a bit misleading, but hopefully it will give you an idea of some of the details that we chose in our home as well.

Our backyard will look similar to this (but flipped), but our actual yard will be about twice this size.

This is the Flex room, which will be our playroom….don’t you just love the little bench seat?!?!

Dining Room…ours won’t have the tray ceiling though.

These pics are of the model, but the kitchen finishes we chose (cabinets, counters and floors) look more like this:

Ok, back to the model:

This is the entryway from the garage into the kitchen nook.  The stairs to go up to the FROG (finished room over the garage) are directly opposite the bench.

And here is the FROG (and Loo Loo and Dave checking it out!)…does it meet your approval Loo?

Master Bedroom and bath from the builder website…we opted for no tray ceiling though.  But we’ll have all the tile and the dark cabinets.

I took pictures of the other bedrooms, but wasn’t able to capture the true feel of each of those rooms…the pictures ended up being mostly of the designer’s decor….which we didn’t really like anyway.  Sooooo….if you want to see the rest of the house, you’ll just have to visit come September!