June 10, 2023: Our Newest Adventure Begins!

So, this blog has been about Chris and LouAnna sharing their big adventures - well, we are about to embark on another.  Chris and LouAnna are having a home built (in a subdivision) and watching this house be born is something we'd like to document and share with you.

How'd we get here?

Chris and LouAnna sold their house in Brownsburg, Indiana in 2022 and moved into a rental home.  This gave them time to find just the right [next/forever] house.

Why are we building?

After searching online, seeing houses, putting in [very good] offers, and not getting chosen because another buyer had all cash, we had to find a less frustrating (or heartbreaking) way of buying a house.  Also, some of the houses we were making were more than a brand new home and not exactly what we were looking for.  What if we got into an overpriced pre-existing home and then had to replace the roof, HVAC, etc, etc. So, we looked into: 

• custom builders that build on your own property or lot.  They have floor plans to choose from buy you can also edit those or sometimes go off plan altogether and build a custom, original home.
• builders who are building an entirely new neighborhood (you see these signs "Homes starting in the $200Ks") and this house comes with the property, utilities, permits, landscaping the front yard, etc.  Essentially, they build the home for you on one of their available lots within the new neighborhood and after it's all done, you buy the finished house.

We found a great custom builder but finding land that fit our price range was not easy.  When you buy land, you either hope it already has the utilities on site or all that is an additional expense.  You must also pay for clearing and grading of the land so it's ready to be built upon.  When we crunched the numbers, building in a neighborhood was going to get us into a good home within an acceptable timeframe.

We signed the contract and picked out the colors, fixtures, upgrades on June 7th with a target closing/move-in date of December 1, 2023!  Let the countdown begin!  Could we close in December and celebrate the holidays in our new home?

What did we pick?  I'm so glad you asked!

The home will be 3bd/2ba, 1590 sf, 1 story ranch with mud/laundry room and open floor plan.  It will have an attached 2 car garage.  It's on .24 acres in a back corner of the neighborhood.  From what we can tell, we are one of the first 10 houses being built.  Right now, it's just an open field with roads, divided with stakes - roughly showing the property lines.

Exterior: mostly vinyl siding (color: Harbor Blue) with a little bit of brick accents on the façade (color: Jet Black) with white: windows, shutters around the front window, trim, and garage door.  We capped things off with a medium pastel yellow front door.  The roof is brown - we didn't get to pick/edit that.  We decided to have them screen in the back patio (~6'x14) and add an additional 14'x14' concrete slab off the back patio.

Flooring: the bedrooms had to be carpet with this builder (color: Fossil) but the rest of the home we upgraded to a very nice Vinyl Plank (color: Rustic Lodge).

Kitchen and Baths: the cabinets will be a beautiful warm wood cabinet (color: Cafe) with Formica countertops (color: Carrara Blanco) that look a bit like marble without the price tag.  The fixtures that came standard are nickel and chrome and that's fine with us. 

Other upgrades: We both enjoy cooking on a gas stove, so we decided to add natural gas to the home (range, water heater, furnace) and so we were able to add a gas line to the back patio so Chris can connect directly to the grill/smoker he loves.  No propane tanks?  Nice!  They will plumb for a water softener as the water hear is very hard.  They will also pre-wire all the rooms to handle ceiling fans as we are kids of the 80s and fans = comfort.  The house came with 8' ceilings and we changed them to 9' ceilings to open it up even more - and for our tall friends.  The front yard will be landscaped with grass sod, a tree, and plants and the backyard was just going to be seeded.  We'd like to see if they can sod the back, as well, since we have two dogs and would like grass sooner than later.

With this builder, the appliances are additional (and not cheap) so we decided we will shop for those on our own.  We already have a great W/D and Water Softener so we just need to shop for the kitchen appliances and there will be plenty of year-end sales to make that more affordable.  We will also have to add a fence as this builder no longer handles those.  No problem; we hired someone to do the fence at our last house, so we feel competent and comfortable with that.