Let’s take a step back and start from the beginning.
About two years ago, we started toying with the idea of selling our current house and buying one on some acreage. We had a bunch of reasons:
- An irascible HOA that was driving me completely bonkers. (Think of the stereotype, then take it further. Yup. That’s them.)
- Desire for more land to hike on, build on, grow things, and protect from development.
- Wanted to move in with Lisa, but we don’t have space here.
There were more, but I think those were the big 3.
We wanted Lisa to move in with us because:
- We’re always hanging out together anyway and we adore her.
- She’s paying a ridiculous amount for rent.
- Splitting a mortgage 3 ways means we can get a bigger place and more land.
Yeees. More land. More trees! More… ahem. Sorry about that.
Finding the right place proved more challenging than expected because of internet. Well, internet and budget. And rapidly rising land costs. Okay. Land costs, budget, and internet. All 3 of us work from home at least part of the week. And we all need to do video calls for work. So high speed internet was a huge deal. We must have looked at dozens of properties all over the triangle. Pretty much any place that we liked had super slow internet. And did you know that realtors know NOTHING about internet? They don’t even list it. Water, sewer, gas? Yup. All listed. Internet? Nope. Sorry. Why would you want that? (sigh)
We’d really only been looking at existing homes. After going through this for quite a while, we decided that we might have to buy land and build a house. About the time we came to that conclusion, our current property hit the market. 10.5 acres! Listed for $200k. Best of all – the adjacent property had high speed internet!
We visited, walked around, and fell in love with it. There’s a huge creek and 2 or 3 smaller ones. It’s completely wooded. (I’m allergic to fire ants, and they don’t make nests in deep shade!) It’s in the country, but still really close to all the amenities. And there’s no HOA. We decided to pull the trigger and put in an offer. I may or may not have done a happy dance…
After going through all the paperwork and stuff to buy the land, we had to find a builder. Thankfully, we found out that a custom builder had purchased the other lots next to us and wanted to work with us. We talked to him and decided it made sense. He was already building the other houses, so there had to be some savings that we could take advantage of. Economies of scale and all that stuff. (Yay high school economics!)
Next step was finding a house and floor plan that we all liked and could be built within our budget. We decided on a plan with two master suites, since Lisa will be living with us. To keep the budget down, we wanted a simple foundation and a simple roof. We found it. It’s modern with clean lines and I was honestly surprised that I liked it so much. But the shed roof means that the great room is going to have these amazing 2 story windows with a ton of light.
I’ll post pictures of it later. Along with a full post about the design choices.
Our builder submitted the plans to the county for building permits in October (I think) aaaaand… that’s when things slowed down. Because of all the development in this area, Durham County is swamped. I mean… I work in an adjacent county and we’re swamped too, so I know how it is. It’s nuts.
Plus, we get most of our rain in the winter and spring. So doing any construction this time of year is dicey at best. It’s hard to clear trees or move dirt when that dirt is clay and has turned super slippery. On the upside, we got to see that our creek gets really full after rain and that’s exciting!
But! last week they were able to get the house site cleared. Ben posted pictures of that yesterday. We’re so excited!
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