Building Our Forever Home

Finding a builder was not hard. We already had in mind who we wanted to build our home. I recommend choosing someone who you have seen work so you will know what to expect! We had already seen his work and heard great things so luckily he had the opening to take us on to plan out our build. It was somewhat of a lengthy process getting our house plans drawn up though. We had what we wanted in mind after searching several house plans online, but decided to use an architect to do the final renderings for our builder. There were things we wanted to add or take away from the plans we found so working with an architect to help customize our house plans would be the best option in this case. We were able to create exactly what we wanted. Then we were told of the cost! It was not in our budget so we had to hit the drawing board again but was able to come up with the perfect plans for us! Are there things I wish we would have just gone ahead and kept, blowing our budget? Yes, absolutely!

So let me tell you some things we WISH we would have kept in our plans…. 

I wish we kept our kids’ bedrooms bigger. They have 12×11 rooms, they are too small in my option. I wish we would have given both of them their own bathrooms but instead they, being a boy and a girl, have to share a bathroom, which is definitely NOT ideal! We do have an extra bedroom on their side of the house that is their playroom so they do have an extra space to keep their bigger toys and play. 

I wish we would have kept our closet bigger. Ours is a nice size closet, but don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t need a big closet! Trust me, you do! Get the bigger closet!  

I wish we would have added a shower to our upstairs bonus room. We didn’t think about it though when we planned for the bathroom upstairs. Our guests stay up there and although it’s nice to have a toilet room, it would have been so much better if we would have put in a shower for them too! 

I wish we did locker style cabinets instead of a mud bench in our mudroom area. It would have been nice to hide all the shoes and bags we drop on the bench! 

I wish we would have been smarter on where we put outlets and light switches. Pay attention to those things when building a house! You wont realize how much of a big deal the placement is of those things until you need to put a mirror above the vanity in your bathroom and there is an outlet there! Yep, that happened! I had them move it! 

Other things that we did that were such a must-have then and seem not so great now is doing a vaulted ceiling on our back porch! Yes, it looks amazing but so much rain gets blown into our back porch, you can forget about having anything nice on it. 

Things I’m glad we did was to go with a mostly bricked home. Oh trust me, I wanted the all white hardie board. But when we are old and gray, I do not want to have to clean the green off of it. And the way our house sits, that’s exactly what we would have to do. Brick is always better in my opinion in value and quality. 

Doing a crawl space instead of a slab home can make things so much easier! 

Extending our front porch from 6 foot to 8 foot made such a big difference. We can rock in our rocking chairs and swing on the swing when it’s raining and not worry about getting wet!

Using both hardie board and brick to create character to our house was a wonderful design idea! I love the look of it! 

There are so many things we have changed about our house since we first built it! We have learned so much over the first few years of living here and we will continue to upgrade our forever home, one (or two) project at a time! 

Details:

Total under roof sqft 4,495

Total heated sqft 3,186

Brick – Ashton with gray mortar

Board and batten/Hardie board color- Sherwin Williams Dorian Gray

Outside and inside trim color- Sherwin Williams Pure White

Shingle color- charcoal

Back porch ceiling stain color- MinWax Early American 

Back porch beam color- 50% natural, 50% special walnut