10.02.2013

31 Days of Building a Home: Day 2

Start with a plan! Even though your plan selection may change based on your loan amount or the land that you choose to build on, having an idea of what you want really helps in the early stages of the game.

When we first started the home building process, I had a good idea of what I envisioned for our home. A few months before, I had visited the Southern Living 2012 Idea house and it was my farmhouse dream come true. I was completely smitten with almost everything about it. Brad and I began reviewing the plans and realized that there were certain things in the plan that were not useful for our family, also at over 3200 square feet, we knew that it would be out of our budget if construction costs went over. 

We began searching house plans and looked at hundreds. There was always something about a plan that we weren't crazy about. We contemplated working directly with an architect to make something custom, but ultimately decided we could find an existing plan and tweak it to our needs. 

The search came down to two contenders. The floor plan of the two houses was very similar, but we were having a hard time choosing between the exterior. 






While debating the two plans, Brad emailed over the plan for this house. I had looked at it before, but dismissed it due to the half round window in the center and a really narrow master bathroom. When I realized that this house was essentially a scaled down version of my dream farmhouse, I was sold. 

We made quite a few tweaks to the floor plan and exterior to get exactly what we wanted. I think that it is a bit ironic that the exterior of our house looks like a combination of the two plans we debated for so long. 





8 comments:

  1. I love this plan! Can't wait to see the finished product.

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  2. it looks beautiful :) We're renovating and I can totally see why people that start out renovating end up building their own house one day haha! I'm so excited to see how it turns out!!

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  3. how exciting! I love the exterior! It looks similar to the house we will build once ours sells. We did use an architect to design ours for us, but he was super reasonable and not much more than buying the plans from a website. Are you and Brad the GC for the home?

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  4. What a beautiful plan! Would love to hear more about how you went about finding land or the lot you are building on.

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  5. So I'm pretty excited about your series :-) I love your house!

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  6. Nice choice! Your house is going to be gorgeous! Can't wait to see more! :)

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  7. We are looking to build on our own land too. Any suggestions on where to get/look at plans? Thanks!

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  8. My estimations below are based on a major remodel that I did last year and then had the house appraised for a home equity loan.
    bathroom renovation loan nj

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