Building our dream home is definitely one of the most fun and most stressful things we've ever done. People joke that if you can get through building a house, your marriage can make it through anything. I think this sentiment is completely hyperbolic, but I will say that building was definitely very challenging at times.
The whole process was so interesting. We had the tremendous blessing of Shaye being bought out of a business he had built as the majority owner. We considered staying in our Tonaquint home, but then we soon began looking at the homes on the market and realized that it was time for a change. We looked at many homes, some of them somewhat seriously, but then we realized that there really wasn't anything on the market that was exactly what we wanted. I was over the moon when Shaye agreed with me that we should build our dream home. We began pouring over plans and were struck by this plan by Don A Gardner, which had the cozy craftsman cottage feel we were looking for.
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There were quite a few things we wanted to change, so we hired a draftsman, and began the process of making a loooong chain of what felt like super critical decisions. After we decided on a plan, we sent it out to 3 contractors for bids. All of them seemed great, but in the end, we went with Dan Hoopes. I just had a gut feeling about using him, and despite the ups and downs, we were glad we chose him in the end.
We broke ground in late January. This lot meant something special to me from the very beginning. I remember driving into our neighborhood and seeing this last vacant lot. We almost didn't even call on it because I thought it for sure would be out of our price range. We were shocked when we found out that the owners had greatly reduced the price and were flexible. I didn't know when we decided to build here just how lucky we were becoming. We absolutely adore our neighborhood. Our neighbors could not have been more welcoming!
And just like that, the house started to go up. The initial framing was so fun to watch. And what everyone said was true--the house looked tiny framed. It wasn't until the drywall went up that things started looking like we'd expected.
When they started framing the second story, we definitely had a moment of shock because the house looked taller and less cottagey than we had envisioned. It took a bit of getting used to. I think nearly all of the decisions were this way.
When they put the center gable on, the home really started to look like we envisioned.
One thing that exceptionally fun was watching the upstairs come up. Our engineers had to make a bunch of changes upstairs and we ended up with attic trusses that made for 1,000 extra square feet upstairs, some of which we still haven't finished. This is a picture of the theater room under construction. The framer's cute dog came to the site frequently, which I kind of loved.
Here was the fireplace being framed. We poured over details like this. It's funny how much evolved during the process. There were many choices that we began with and ended up tweaking. Every change we made brought a bit of fear for me as I wondered if we were making the right decisions.
When they put our rock up, we had another moment. It looked so dark! We were worried that the house would be a terrible color. For a few hours, Shaye was pretty sure he wanted to have the masons take all the stone off and take a loss. Dan assured us that once it was grouted and our stucco was up that it would look much better. He was right.
This little munchkin was quite a challenge at the site. She ran and got into everything and took plenty of sips out of half-full soda cups that workers had left there. Yuck!
When we got down to the end, we got so excited.
We moved in the very first part of July. Looking back on the whole process, I am so glad it's over. It was an amazing creative process, and I felt so fortunate that Shaye and I shared the same vision. It's so strange that we went from a dirt lot to our dream home in 5 months. Every day since I've been so grateful to call this place home. It's been a process getting everything situated and decorated the way we want, and we're definitely still adding things. I think I'll post decorating pictures at the one year mark. I'm such an over achiever. I know!
We love our home so much! I pinch myself that we have been so so blessed.
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