Why Our House is Different

From time to time I search the web for blogs like mine, about people building their own house. Let me tell you, there are plenty! I've bookmarked so many of them. However, more and more I've noticed that we are in a different situation than they are. They basically took a piece of paper and drew exactly what they wanted, where they wanted. From wall structures, to designs of rooms, picking where the bathrooms go, how big their laundry room is, where they want bay windows. They picked their architect, builder, electrician. They went to a huge warehouse to choose from millions of options for counter tops, cabinet shades and material, bathroom tiles, fixtures for every light possible.

You can imagine how different it may be for us... or maybe you can't. So that's where I'll pause and explain these differences:

First and foremost, yes, we "chose" our builder, but really, we chose the community we liked, and then from there we had to go with what builder would fit into our budget. Our builder had the best base price which included things STANDARD like granite in the kitchen, hardwood floors on main level (excluding the study, however we finished that off with hardwood too). The builder who owns the development had a higher base price which did not included granite and hardwood as standards; everything was an upgrade. So therein lay our choice. Plus, we really loved the layout of the builder we went with, so it all worked out beautifully!

Before I move on to the second point, I looked back through my posts and realized I never explained further the above situation about our builders. So, another pause while I walk you through that. There were a couple of new-construction communities where we wanted to be (which was close to my parents and closer to the city). There were plenty of options if we wanted to go further out in Maryland but we chose not to go that far. The second community we saw, the one we chose, is owned by a large builder which sold a number of properties to our builder, the smaller, less expensive one (for now at least; their base prices have risen about $8k since we signed...). So, that's how that all happened. Now, back to how our story is slightly different from others.

Secondly, as I've talked about before, we had two choices for granite that fit into our price tier; certain types of cabinets, tiles, faucets and fixtures. We walked into a room in the model home that had all of the options laid out for house. But it's not like we went into this huge warehouse and had an endless amount of options and it was up to us to figure out what looked good. For us, that was probably a blessing since the smaller amount of choices we had was overwhelming for us anyways!! I think the biggest difference is that we didn't choose where the walls were put, where windows were installed (Except in the basement, we chose where they would and wouldn't be). There were two layouts we could choose from, with only one difference, really. One had 3 bedrooms upstairs with a loft, and the one we chose had four bedrooms, no loft upstairs. The loft was super cool, but in the end we knew we wanted that fourth bedroom, and we would have plenty of space to play if not in that loft. The other options were to put a bathroom off one of the bedrooms, and then a couple different layouts for the master bathroom (tub or no tub, where the vanities would go, etc.). But that's it in terms of changing the layout of the home.

I wanted to clear that up, as we are definitely going through a different, probably less stressful, process than other people are! But it's great to be able to learn from others about questions they needed to ask, what they had to look out for in terms of inspections and builders. We are all sharing in this fun journey together, getting to a common goal: our dream, forever home :)

I cannot wait to see it this weekend and share photos. We're hoping all of the siding will be up and drywall in! It will be two weeks though, which is a long time in building days, so we'll see where we are!!! I'd post photos, but I want to keep them in order, so before I post any updated ones, I need to get those darn pre-drywall pictures up!!