Planning for a house

The house planning process started as soon as we were under contract. Cole and I had a few ideas for how we could approach this project. It is widely known that building a house is not cheap, and usually more expensive than buying a home that already exists. We had some tricks up our sleeves to make sure this wouldn’t be the case. With Cole’s background in engineering, and his experience in woodworking and building (thanks Roy!), we knew that he would be able to do some of the work required to build a house.

Our brainstorm lead us to two options. The first option we looked into was working with Huntington Homes. They build prefabricated houses that are ax emblem rather quickly in their shop, and then delivered to your house site. The crew then works to put all the pieces together and finish the house to whatever degree you want. The best part, was that if we left most of the finishing work to ourselves, the house was very affordable.

Another option we had looked into a bit was to build a “SIP” house. This is a process where you order panels that are 5” of foam sandwiches between two sheets of plywood. They are “Structurally Insulated Panels.” These houser are extremely efficient, which is what we were hoping for in a new house. In the end, we decided to go with a Huntington Home.

After several meetings with Huntington, we got our design ideas together (this was very fun for me!). We were told many times that if we moved forward with signing a contract relatively soon, that we would have a house by late fall of 2019. This was exactly what we were hoping for, since we could then use the long winter months to chip away at the interior finishes of the house. We were excited to sign off on a design contract, where Huntington Homes would create all of the documents necessary to build our home. This included floor plans, electrical, plumbing, heating, the whole shebang. One week after signing the contract, we received an e-mail that stated that they had just had a meeting where they discussed all their projects and the timeline in which they would complete them. In this meeting, they determined that our house would not be ready to be delivered until late spring of 2020. This was not what we were hoping for, and ultimately what caused us to make the decision that we would terminate our contract, and build a SIP home!

Once we made this decision, it wasn’t long before our house project was officially underway. I’m definitely going to have a hard time remembering the order of phone calls and plans moving forward, but things got real when Parker from Swan Site Work dug all the dirt from our house site away. It looked like this:

Suddenly, our luscious land was all torn up. It’s amazing how much can happen in a day!  Now, as I write this, we are in the midst of a global pandemic, and coronavirus just might give me lots of extra time to write some entries here. Aside from checking in on distant learning student work getting handed in, Cole and I will be doing what we can at the house with what we have. So far, the delivery of our kitchen cabinets has been postponed. We are hopeful that these times will not effect our project and our lives too much. Fingers crossed!

The Land

I am going to attempt to go back in time a little bit, and start sharing the process of building our house. I haven't been the mastermind of most aspects of this project so far, but at least I can take credit for the floor plan and some colors!

I'm going to talk a little bit about how our search began. In 2019, Cole and I decided that our relationship was a good one, and we wanted to start making moves that would help us to begin to start a life together, instead of traveling over the App Gap several times a day most days. We were both on the lookout for anything we loved. We were open to a house or just land, but there were certain things we knew we wanted on our land. 

We knew that we wanted to be able to garden, and we wanted a variety of vegetation, including fruit trees and sugar maples. We were hoping to find a good amount of acreage to have some flexibility with our land, and to get some space from neighbors. It would be a huge bonus if we had southern exposure. One of the most important things was location. We have current jobs that stretch about 55 minutes from one to the other, and a central location was ideal, although Cole was willing to travel further if we found the right place. I wasn't too keen on a commute longer than a half hour. 

The houses that we really liked that would come up on the market would often be sold within days, which was tricky because we weren't working with a realtor, and Cole still owned his house in Charlotte. Eventually, we stumbled upon a few plots of land that were in a new development called The Knolls (we know, what a terrible name). We had no interest in being in a development. We strongly dislike how beautiful areas are getting plowed down for new developments, and we did not like the idea of being involved with this project. HOWEVER, the land was simply stunning. We first saw the land in October, and the leaves were starting to fall, and we could see mountains in 360 degrees. There were both old and knew sugar maples, and old apple trees bordering the west side. The land had wooded areas and rolling fields on prime agriculture land. To put it simply, I was sold. It took a bit of convincing with Cole, but eventually, he agreed that it was the best thing we had come across.

There were definitely some quirky things about this spot. It boarders a very popular disc golf course (yes, they even play through the winter). The house location had a LOT of ledge. And finally, this land was part of one family's long history of farming. They were terribly sad to sell the land, especially to a developer, but they are trying to make the best of it. I might elaborate more about this as we learn more about the family and their history with surrounding land. 

Despite some complications and delays about the covenants and some of the contents of our original contract, on May 13th, the land was ours!