One of my trips was to the cabinet place to meet with Ann. I was lucky enough to catch my mom while she had some free time and she came with me. There were a couple things Brad and I knew we wanted: use the “dead space” in the lower corner cabinets, refrigerator depth cabinets over the fridge, pull out garbage cabinet…
Ann also showed us soft close doors and drawers. Well it turns out the doors are affordable while the drawers are not, plus the drawers are kinda annoying to open. So we are going with only soft close doors.
What we didn’t know was if we wanted a built in cook top with an oven in the island or just a 36” slide/drop in stove. I think we have settled on the drop in. Our last decision is if we want 2 drawers in the island on one side instead of doors.
I think we have settled on a color. It is Espresso, which makes up both a little nervous, but I LOVE it! It is very modern and I can’t wait to see it in my new kitchen. Also it means that I get granite that is NOT black. Brad on the other hand is sad to lose the idea of his black granite. And truth be told I am a little sad that he is losing something that he fell in love with the first time he saw the 1st Genick house, but I am not sad to see the option “fall” off the table.
As far as doors go , we knew we wanted something simple. Either completely flat or just an outline of wood. None of that beveled edges or fancy stuff. Brad and I agreed on that from day one. And apparently completely flat is a huge upgrade because when you use real wood (not IKEA composite) it can warp. Needless to say we went with the plain door with just an outline of wood around it. Now we had to decide if we want the smaller or larger border. We went with larger. I guess people are right, there are LOTS of decisions to be made.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
She Says
Ok where to start? It seems as if Brad has gone over everything so far. But now for the girl’s point of view.
Like Brad said we didn’t intentionally start looking for houses, it just happened. Once we started leaning to building our own, I got to go around work asking everyone who had a similar square footage what their utility bills were. Everyone was very helpful and once we did the math we realized we could do it.
Speaking of advice, everyone likes to share their thoughts on building a house. At first I got really nervous after many people said “yea, I built a house, and I would never do it again,” “It’s a true test of a relationship,” or “lots of decisions to be made.” Well people were right, but it’s all been good so far. (yes, yes I know they haven’t even dug the hole yet, but we have made a lot of decisions).
I am proud to report that surprising as it may be, Brad and I agreeing on pretty much everything. We spend our weekends wondering around the tile shop (pretty sure they think we are moving in to their store), the cabinet shop, granite, paint, home depot….. We have also been researching during the week. Because I am off work (for one more day) I have been doing most of the driving around during the week and meeting with the different consultants, while Brad does what he is best at….surfing the web. I cannot believe how helpful “Google Search Images” has been. We have been collecting lots of pictures of things that we love and using them to find exactly what we want. Brad spends countless hours doing his searches, and then he sends me his top ones. Saves me a lot of time (seeing as I have a short attention span foe some things).
So it has been over a month since we signed and I think it is just starting to sink in that we are building a house. And every day I love it more and I am confident that we have made the right decision!
Like Brad said we didn’t intentionally start looking for houses, it just happened. Once we started leaning to building our own, I got to go around work asking everyone who had a similar square footage what their utility bills were. Everyone was very helpful and once we did the math we realized we could do it.
Speaking of advice, everyone likes to share their thoughts on building a house. At first I got really nervous after many people said “yea, I built a house, and I would never do it again,” “It’s a true test of a relationship,” or “lots of decisions to be made.” Well people were right, but it’s all been good so far. (yes, yes I know they haven’t even dug the hole yet, but we have made a lot of decisions).
I am proud to report that surprising as it may be, Brad and I agreeing on pretty much everything. We spend our weekends wondering around the tile shop (pretty sure they think we are moving in to their store), the cabinet shop, granite, paint, home depot….. We have also been researching during the week. Because I am off work (for one more day) I have been doing most of the driving around during the week and meeting with the different consultants, while Brad does what he is best at….surfing the web. I cannot believe how helpful “Google Search Images” has been. We have been collecting lots of pictures of things that we love and using them to find exactly what we want. Brad spends countless hours doing his searches, and then he sends me his top ones. Saves me a lot of time (seeing as I have a short attention span foe some things).
So it has been over a month since we signed and I think it is just starting to sink in that we are building a house. And every day I love it more and I am confident that we have made the right decision!
Permit Progress
It's been a little over a month since we signed our contract and we do not yet have a permit. This isn't suprising, I originally made a semi-educated guess of about 6 weeks before construction would begin. There's a *lot* of work that has to go into planning a house before construction can begin, plans have to be made and submitted to the city, utilities have to be re-located, etc... but there is very little tangible progress which can get discouraging if you let it.
But you have to remember that this is the calm before the storm. Once construction starts things will move pretty quickly and we'll have to be careful not to get left behind or worse, start making decisions in a panic that we will regret later.
In an attempt to prevent that from happening, we've definitely taken advantage of this "slow" time by doing a lot of research and making a lot of decisions about design and upgrade choices, so hopefully we'll know exactly what we want when it comes time to make those decisions and hopefully that will make the process go that much smoother and result in us having a house we're that much more happy with.
And from the discussions we've had with our realtor, it sounds like the wheels have been turning and we're getting pretty close to getting started. I'm excited for that phase, once the house starts going up and I can see the tangible progress and actually get in a walk around a bit, I think I'll start enjoying this a lot more.
Brick
One of the design choices we were least interested in is the exterior brick. Initially we just asked for the same brick that was on the existing house, however it is no longer available, so we had to pick something else. My taste in brick is pretty broad, anything "dark redish" seems to look ok to me, but Theresa has some more defined opinions, so I think she was pretty happy to have the opportunity to look into some other choices.
Once again, Theresa did the legwork in talking to the brick yard and got some addresses of recently built houses that had some different brick styles and we took a look at a few of them this weekend. True to form, I liked almost all of them, but Theresa found a few styles that had some darker elements mixed in with the red brick that she really liked a lot that looked a little like this:
After she pointed those out I quickly saw how right she was. So we narrowed it down to two or three options we like and I think we're happy with any of those. So yet another design decision hurdle cleared
Once again, Theresa did the legwork in talking to the brick yard and got some addresses of recently built houses that had some different brick styles and we took a look at a few of them this weekend. True to form, I liked almost all of them, but Theresa found a few styles that had some darker elements mixed in with the red brick that she really liked a lot that looked a little like this:
After she pointed those out I quickly saw how right she was. So we narrowed it down to two or three options we like and I think we're happy with any of those. So yet another design decision hurdle cleared
The Kitchen
I think we've finally nailed down our kitchen design.
We both liked the kitchen in the existing house. It was by no means "gourmet" or special really in any way. It was pretty standard, medium sized with an average level of finish, but we both liked the amount of cabinet and counter space and the overall u shaped design layout, the staggered 36 and 42 inch upper cabinets and I in particular loved the look the light floor tile, cherry cabinets and black granite and thought that they played off of each other really well.
One of the things that was initially changed when the architect re-imagined the plans was the layout of the kitchen. The architect initially suggested that we spin the island 90 degrees so that the counter overhang was facing the family room instead of the refrigerator. I was completely on board with that change, because it addressed my one complaint with the existing house's kitchen. The architect also suggested that we move the sink to the corner and add in a 2nd window. We both loved the idea of having a 2nd window, however we weren't in love with the corner sink idea. We didn't like the fact that it remove some of our upper cabinet space and overall we thought that it would look a little janky, so we vetoed that change and decided to keep the layout essentially the same.
Our builder uses a local custom cabinet shop instead of providing off the rack stock cabinets (yay) so, armed with a good idea of the basic layout, Theresa took a visit to our cabinet shop to investigate any additional options we might want. We decided to go with a few upgraded options, like deeper corner cabinets, soft closing drawers, deeper cabinets above the refrigerator space and a mircowave shelf, a few frosted glass doors. It all added up to a few hundred $$, but we feel it's worth it.
We were still unsure about our appliance choices however. We knew we were doing a stainless steel look, and we definitely want a range hood instead of an over the range microwave, but we weren't sure if we wanted to do a built in oven + cooktop, or go with a traditional standalone range. We loved the integrated look of built ins, but our kitchen layout didn't really lend itself to them. We kicked around a few ideas, but in the end we decided to do a36 inch free standing range. 36 inch is a rare range size and generally comes with a higher price tag. We a have a few options well within our budget, but Theresa also has a friend who can possibly get us a good deal on a little higher end model, so we'll see how that shakes out.
Finding the door style was easy. We knew we wanted to do a contemporary kitchen with sleek clean lines and our cabinet shop seems to do mostly more traditional stuff, so they only really had 2 or 3 door styles that could be considered "modern" and we agreed on a basic framed flat panel door right away.
That left us with overall color scheme... as I mentioned, I really loved the color scheme in the existing house and initially I just wanted to copy the light floor, cherry cabinets and black granite scheme. However, Theresa eventually convinced me that doing continuous wood flooring instead breaking up the flow of the house by transitioning into tile for the kitchen and casual dining area would be a better option so all of that tile we loved so much was suddenly out (we later found a home for some of it in the laundry room and mud room) We're going with a stain a little on the darker side for our flooring, so after we decided to with with wood, the black granite was simply too much "dark" and had to go (very sad for me, very happy for Theresa... she did not share my granite enthusiasm) We still considered the cherry cabinets, but we didn't feel they looked quite right our color of wood floor either, so after examining 100's of pictures of "contemporary" or "modern" kitchen's online, and another trip to the cabinet shop we decided on an "expresso" finish. In all honesty, it's a very weird stain. It's very dark, most of the time it looks almost black, but depending on what angle you're looking at, how close you are or how the light is hitting it, it can appear to be a deep brown, or even have a strong hint of red in it. I'm honestly not sure I'm in love with it, but Theresa ***really*** likes it which is surprising because it's pretty masculine. But I definitely don't have a better idea, and it is definitely "modern", so I'm willing to roll with it.
With dark(ish) floors and dark cabinets, we're going to need a lighter counter top. Granite is included so no worries there, but with granite being a natural product, we really won't know what's available to us until we get ready to actually install it. But we're trying to decide as much of this stuff in advance as we can so we're not deciding under pressure later, so we wanted to get at least a general idea of what were looking for. I *really* wanted the black granite, and despite how many pieces giving it up breaks my fragile little heart into, I'm forced to admit that with all of the other "dark" materials we're using, dark granite just doesn't work. So, when the time comes, we're hoping to find a light grey slab that has some darker flecks in it, we think that will look pretty great.
One quick note about the sink. From my experience renovating in a kitchen in a previous house, I fell in love with granite or quartz composite sinks. I'm convinced they are the greatest thing since pants with pockets. They're durable, easy to clean, *never* look dirty and are absolutely gorgeous. We were able to get a credit for the stainless steel sink that the builder was going to provide written into the contract on the condition that we purchase and provide the sink ourselves, so that knocked $200 off the purchase price. We did some quick online research and found a quartz composite sink that looks like it will be perfect, and Theresa has another friend who can get us a pretty decent discount on that, so it's only costing us $250 making our total "sink upgrade" price a mere $50, a bargain at twice (or maybe even 5 times) the price! (I'm very excited about this sink...)
That leaves our backsplash. Unfortunately, the builder does not provide an allowance for any type of backsplash beyond what is built into the granite counters, we we'll tackle that after we close. No hurry, we don't even know what we'd want to do there. I will probably come back and add under cabinet lighting at some point as well, although I may have the electrician do some pre-wiring for me while we have the studs exposed.
Overall we're pretty much hoping to end up with something very close to this in terms of color scheme and overall aesthetic, even the paint color should be similar!
We both liked the kitchen in the existing house. It was by no means "gourmet" or special really in any way. It was pretty standard, medium sized with an average level of finish, but we both liked the amount of cabinet and counter space and the overall u shaped design layout, the staggered 36 and 42 inch upper cabinets and I in particular loved the look the light floor tile, cherry cabinets and black granite and thought that they played off of each other really well.
One of the things that was initially changed when the architect re-imagined the plans was the layout of the kitchen. The architect initially suggested that we spin the island 90 degrees so that the counter overhang was facing the family room instead of the refrigerator. I was completely on board with that change, because it addressed my one complaint with the existing house's kitchen. The architect also suggested that we move the sink to the corner and add in a 2nd window. We both loved the idea of having a 2nd window, however we weren't in love with the corner sink idea. We didn't like the fact that it remove some of our upper cabinet space and overall we thought that it would look a little janky, so we vetoed that change and decided to keep the layout essentially the same.Our builder uses a local custom cabinet shop instead of providing off the rack stock cabinets (yay) so, armed with a good idea of the basic layout, Theresa took a visit to our cabinet shop to investigate any additional options we might want. We decided to go with a few upgraded options, like deeper corner cabinets, soft closing drawers, deeper cabinets above the refrigerator space and a mircowave shelf, a few frosted glass doors. It all added up to a few hundred $$, but we feel it's worth it.
We were still unsure about our appliance choices however. We knew we were doing a stainless steel look, and we definitely want a range hood instead of an over the range microwave, but we weren't sure if we wanted to do a built in oven + cooktop, or go with a traditional standalone range. We loved the integrated look of built ins, but our kitchen layout didn't really lend itself to them. We kicked around a few ideas, but in the end we decided to do a36 inch free standing range. 36 inch is a rare range size and generally comes with a higher price tag. We a have a few options well within our budget, but Theresa also has a friend who can possibly get us a good deal on a little higher end model, so we'll see how that shakes out.
Finding the door style was easy. We knew we wanted to do a contemporary kitchen with sleek clean lines and our cabinet shop seems to do mostly more traditional stuff, so they only really had 2 or 3 door styles that could be considered "modern" and we agreed on a basic framed flat panel door right away.
That left us with overall color scheme... as I mentioned, I really loved the color scheme in the existing house and initially I just wanted to copy the light floor, cherry cabinets and black granite scheme. However, Theresa eventually convinced me that doing continuous wood flooring instead breaking up the flow of the house by transitioning into tile for the kitchen and casual dining area would be a better option so all of that tile we loved so much was suddenly out (we later found a home for some of it in the laundry room and mud room) We're going with a stain a little on the darker side for our flooring, so after we decided to with with wood, the black granite was simply too much "dark" and had to go (very sad for me, very happy for Theresa... she did not share my granite enthusiasm) We still considered the cherry cabinets, but we didn't feel they looked quite right our color of wood floor either, so after examining 100's of pictures of "contemporary" or "modern" kitchen's online, and another trip to the cabinet shop we decided on an "expresso" finish. In all honesty, it's a very weird stain. It's very dark, most of the time it looks almost black, but depending on what angle you're looking at, how close you are or how the light is hitting it, it can appear to be a deep brown, or even have a strong hint of red in it. I'm honestly not sure I'm in love with it, but Theresa ***really*** likes it which is surprising because it's pretty masculine. But I definitely don't have a better idea, and it is definitely "modern", so I'm willing to roll with it.
With dark(ish) floors and dark cabinets, we're going to need a lighter counter top. Granite is included so no worries there, but with granite being a natural product, we really won't know what's available to us until we get ready to actually install it. But we're trying to decide as much of this stuff in advance as we can so we're not deciding under pressure later, so we wanted to get at least a general idea of what were looking for. I *really* wanted the black granite, and despite how many pieces giving it up breaks my fragile little heart into, I'm forced to admit that with all of the other "dark" materials we're using, dark granite just doesn't work. So, when the time comes, we're hoping to find a light grey slab that has some darker flecks in it, we think that will look pretty great.
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That leaves our backsplash. Unfortunately, the builder does not provide an allowance for any type of backsplash beyond what is built into the granite counters, we we'll tackle that after we close. No hurry, we don't even know what we'd want to do there. I will probably come back and add under cabinet lighting at some point as well, although I may have the electrician do some pre-wiring for me while we have the studs exposed.
Overall we're pretty much hoping to end up with something very close to this in terms of color scheme and overall aesthetic, even the paint color should be similar!
Flooring
Decisions...
One of the first things that needs to be decided is flooring. The existing house had carpet everywhere except for the foyer/kitchen/walkways on the first floor, which were tile. Neither of us likes carpet, so we knew right away that we wanted hardwood, but we also knew that upgrade would be expensive. Switching the tiled areas to hardwood would be "free" for us, but replacing the carpeting would be costly. We considered replacing the tiled areas with wood and living with the carpet for a few years until I found time/money to lay wood myself... but that would be difficult to match. At the end of the day we decided to bite the bullet and pay $4,000 to upgrade to hardwood on the entire first floor. We still have carpeting on the 2nd floor because we can't afford to upgrade both :) The plan is to replace that in a few years when the carpet wears out. $4000 is a lot of money, but I know myself... if I cheap out on the flooring now I will likely find myself in the midst of a tearout and upgrade in a few years... and much of the appeal of buying a new house comes from NOT having to do any remodeling!
Despite the upgrade, I still wanted ceramic tile in the kitchen/breakfast nook area. I've never been a fan of wood in the kitchen, I feel it's to easily scratched or damaged by spills/overflows to be practical. However we have an open concept great room that combines a kitchen/casual dining/family room together and Theresa was eventually able to convince me that having one cohesive flooring solution in that room was the way to go. At the moment we're thinking we want to go with a darker stain on the wood floor...
This is another area where our builder choice has proven to be wise... we're getting a discount of sorts on any tile purchase. While natural stone is not in our budget the increased cost per square foot is manageable and because we're doing so little area, it should fit into our budget, so we're currently leaning towards installing that. Our thinking is that we're getting a pretty good deal, and adding a little bit natural stone is probably going to go a long was towards increasing the richness and value of the home. One wildcard is the cost of the installation. Stone may cost a bit more to install, and we're not quite sure how many sq feet of tile we will need to cover shower walls, etc... We have a hard budget of 5k for all of our flooring upgrades, 4k of which is being taken for the wood flooring. So fitting in a natural stone tile may take some compromises and/or deal shopping!
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| Wood Floors |
Despite the upgrade, I still wanted ceramic tile in the kitchen/breakfast nook area. I've never been a fan of wood in the kitchen, I feel it's to easily scratched or damaged by spills/overflows to be practical. However we have an open concept great room that combines a kitchen/casual dining/family room together and Theresa was eventually able to convince me that having one cohesive flooring solution in that room was the way to go. At the moment we're thinking we want to go with a darker stain on the wood floor...
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| Travertine Bathroom |
We do still have some areas will be tiled. The mudroom/laundry room will be tile, as will both the master and main bath upstairs, and I'd like a small tiled section in the foyer at the front door to help protect the wood from people tracking in dirt/water/salt/rocks. We've been to the tile shop a few times to check out our tile options... and we're starting to lean towards doing a natural stone. Natural stone is not as durable or low maintenance as a porcelain tile, but the richness and textures do no even come close to comparing. Natural stone is GORGEOUS.
We're thinking of doing a traditional travertine in the foyer and upstairs main/guest bathroom, but then trying something a little different and more modern for the master bath. Maybe a slate or quartzite look. The laundry and mud room areas will not get upgraded to stone, we'll stick with porcelain there. Porcelain fits into our allowance budget, so that's always nice and it is more durable and requires less maintenance, which is good for utility space. Plus, one of the things we really loved about the existing house was their choice of floor tile, so this gets us an excuse to work that exact same model of tile into our house as well.
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| Slate Bathroom |
Contract
When we met with the agent to go over the potential contract, it turned out, the builder was unable to get license to build the same floorplan a second time, so he had enlisted an architect to design a very similar floorplan. We actually liked the majority of the architects changes better than the original plan, the house was 100sq ft larger, and the builder would build it for exactly the same price that the house next door had sold for. In fact we were able to make a few small changes that knocked almost $2,000 off of the purchase price.
We had a lawyer review the contract, who (unsuprisingly) notified us that it was written with priority to the builder's interests. We negotiated a few small changes and inclusions to make the contract represent our interests at least a little more fairly and signed. The builder's really hold all of the cards in these situations, and legal documents make me nervous to begin with, but the contract does protect us from builder negligence and mistakes and the only real repercussions come if we break our part of the deal. It's hard to argue too hard with that logic.
Signing a contract to build a house is obviously a huge deal. In a lot of ways it's very very scary. Although the builder is financing the majority of the build, we are still putting a large sum of money down and, as I mentioned, if you can't fulfill your end of the bargin you can lose a great deal of that money. When you spend your life's savings you tend to wonder if you're spending it on the right thing. However, we feel like we did our homework. The offer on the original house came much too quickly. Having an extra 6 weeks to research property values, tour houses (both existing and new) and work with the builder and sales agent/realtor made us a feel a lot more confident in our decision. Also the builder has proven to be very reasonable and easy to work with. We're able to customize and upgrade the floor plan and finishes without any hassle and we're being given builder cost for any upgrades or changes we're making.
We had a lawyer review the contract, who (unsuprisingly) notified us that it was written with priority to the builder's interests. We negotiated a few small changes and inclusions to make the contract represent our interests at least a little more fairly and signed. The builder's really hold all of the cards in these situations, and legal documents make me nervous to begin with, but the contract does protect us from builder negligence and mistakes and the only real repercussions come if we break our part of the deal. It's hard to argue too hard with that logic.
Signing a contract to build a house is obviously a huge deal. In a lot of ways it's very very scary. Although the builder is financing the majority of the build, we are still putting a large sum of money down and, as I mentioned, if you can't fulfill your end of the bargin you can lose a great deal of that money. When you spend your life's savings you tend to wonder if you're spending it on the right thing. However, we feel like we did our homework. The offer on the original house came much too quickly. Having an extra 6 weeks to research property values, tour houses (both existing and new) and work with the builder and sales agent/realtor made us a feel a lot more confident in our decision. Also the builder has proven to be very reasonable and easy to work with. We're able to customize and upgrade the floor plan and finishes without any hassle and we're being given builder cost for any upgrades or changes we're making.
Research
When we started talking to the agent about constructing the lot next door, there were some initial hiccups on both sides. We were very interested in building the same floor plan, but we didn't want to pay a penny more than the other house sold for. To complicate matters, the builder only had license to build that floor plan one time and was unsure that he could procure the rights to build it again. Initially the process moved very slowly, which was fine for us because we wanted to do a lot more research before we made a final decision.
One of the major research tools for us was touring model homes. We walked through every new construction model we could find getting a sense of features, floor plans and layouts. We found a lot of little features we liked, but we didn't find a single floorplan that we liked better overall than the house we tried to buy.
Model homes also helped us get a sense of what a new construction home should cost. We found quite a few homes that were cheaper, but without a doubt they were slightly smaller homes in tract developments in more suburban communities where land is readily available. Because of the location of my job, moving that far away was not an option. Besides, neither Theresa or myself wanted to live in a tract home community with small yards, close neighbors, no trees and that classic "cookie cutter" sense that sub divisions built by the same collection of builders always get.
We did manage to find a builder who was building the exact same floor plan in a few tract communities around the area. The prices on that model were 10k-40k higher than the house we tried to buy for the base model (depending on community) and the house we looked at had quite a few upgrades, such as granite countertops, etc.... The clincher for us was when we walked through a model home literally right around the corner from the house we tried to buy. The house was very similar in size layout and finish, however it had a few things we didn't like as much (notably the kitchen size and layout) This house was selling for 75k more than the house we tried to buy. At that point our minds were made up. If the contract looked good, we would sign and build a house.
One of the major research tools for us was touring model homes. We walked through every new construction model we could find getting a sense of features, floor plans and layouts. We found a lot of little features we liked, but we didn't find a single floorplan that we liked better overall than the house we tried to buy.
Model homes also helped us get a sense of what a new construction home should cost. We found quite a few homes that were cheaper, but without a doubt they were slightly smaller homes in tract developments in more suburban communities where land is readily available. Because of the location of my job, moving that far away was not an option. Besides, neither Theresa or myself wanted to live in a tract home community with small yards, close neighbors, no trees and that classic "cookie cutter" sense that sub divisions built by the same collection of builders always get.
We did manage to find a builder who was building the exact same floor plan in a few tract communities around the area. The prices on that model were 10k-40k higher than the house we tried to buy for the base model (depending on community) and the house we looked at had quite a few upgrades, such as granite countertops, etc.... The clincher for us was when we walked through a model home literally right around the corner from the house we tried to buy. The house was very similar in size layout and finish, however it had a few things we didn't like as much (notably the kitchen size and layout) This house was selling for 75k more than the house we tried to buy. At that point our minds were made up. If the contract looked good, we would sign and build a house.
How did this happen?
I suppose I should start at the beginning...
I was not planning to build a house. For some odd reason I took a quick look through realtor.com one day and one house in particular really caught my eye. It was brand new construction in an existing neighborhood, looked very nice and when I ran the numbers I was suprised to see that I could afford it.
I sent the link over to Theresa and she liked it just as much as I did. I still didn't think that there was any chance we'd actually consider it, but we decided to go take a look just for fun. A few days later we showed up and toured the house and we both loved it right away and a few days later we were making an offer (which was well below asking price). We were promptly outbid.
Everything happened so fast for us that we weren't confident making a strong offer. We weren't certain about the house's true market value, the idea of living together was a new idea to us, the timing was bad because I'd be forced to break an apartment lease, Theresa already owned a condo that she had no hope of selling and wasn't sure she could rent... so we kind of took that approach that if we could get a great deal on the place that'd be awesome. If not... oh well.
But it did open our eyes. We started looking into property values, thinking about moving in together, Theresa started looking into renting her apartment and we started paying close attention to our financials. Everything pointed to the house being a decent deal at full asking price, and something we could easily afford. The more we thought about it the more we started to think that it was something we maybe should have done. Of course there are always more houses, but interest rates were low, housing prices were depressed, and we had found something we really liked... it seemed like the right time to buy. We were a little bummed.
We did engage a realtor and started looking at the existing house market. We weren't in any hurry but we did want to get a sense of what was out there. Everything we saw reinforced our thoughts that we should have made a stronger offer. The existing houses were not much cheaper, and they all had less desirable layouts, or just generally weren't as nice and for almost every one of them we would have undertaken some level of remodeling, which didn't sound the least bit appealing to me.
But the agent selling the first house had mentioned that there was a possibility of building another house on the lot next door...
I was not planning to build a house. For some odd reason I took a quick look through realtor.com one day and one house in particular really caught my eye. It was brand new construction in an existing neighborhood, looked very nice and when I ran the numbers I was suprised to see that I could afford it.
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| Existing Genick House |
Everything happened so fast for us that we weren't confident making a strong offer. We weren't certain about the house's true market value, the idea of living together was a new idea to us, the timing was bad because I'd be forced to break an apartment lease, Theresa already owned a condo that she had no hope of selling and wasn't sure she could rent... so we kind of took that approach that if we could get a great deal on the place that'd be awesome. If not... oh well.But it did open our eyes. We started looking into property values, thinking about moving in together, Theresa started looking into renting her apartment and we started paying close attention to our financials. Everything pointed to the house being a decent deal at full asking price, and something we could easily afford. The more we thought about it the more we started to think that it was something we maybe should have done. Of course there are always more houses, but interest rates were low, housing prices were depressed, and we had found something we really liked... it seemed like the right time to buy. We were a little bummed.
We did engage a realtor and started looking at the existing house market. We weren't in any hurry but we did want to get a sense of what was out there. Everything we saw reinforced our thoughts that we should have made a stronger offer. The existing houses were not much cheaper, and they all had less desirable layouts, or just generally weren't as nice and for almost every one of them we would have undertaken some level of remodeling, which didn't sound the least bit appealing to me.But the agent selling the first house had mentioned that there was a possibility of building another house on the lot next door...
We're building a house
Welcome to my blog!
I started this blog to document and detail the decisions, frustrations, trials, tribuilations and triumphs of constructing a house.
No, I am not building it with my own two hands... a licensed builder will be handling that. However, I and my lovely girlfriend Theresa will be paying for it and somehow figuring out a way to agree on every one of the 100's of decisions that need to be decided, so I think that counts.
My main goal for writing all of this down is to preserve some of my thoughts and memories during this process for myself in future. I'm likely only going to do this once! Beyond that I suppose there is a small chance someone else might find it entertaining, interesting or informational.
I expect the house to be complete 6-8 months from now, and in the meantime I will attempt to post at least weekly thoughts, or try to put something down whenever anything "major" happens.
I started this blog to document and detail the decisions, frustrations, trials, tribuilations and triumphs of constructing a house.
No, I am not building it with my own two hands... a licensed builder will be handling that. However, I and my lovely girlfriend Theresa will be paying for it and somehow figuring out a way to agree on every one of the 100's of decisions that need to be decided, so I think that counts.
My main goal for writing all of this down is to preserve some of my thoughts and memories during this process for myself in future. I'm likely only going to do this once! Beyond that I suppose there is a small chance someone else might find it entertaining, interesting or informational.
I expect the house to be complete 6-8 months from now, and in the meantime I will attempt to post at least weekly thoughts, or try to put something down whenever anything "major" happens.
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