Last year, you were able to follow along with our pregnancy journey. What you may not have known, however, is that while I was busy growing a baby, we were also in the process of building our first (and hopefully only) house! We used to joke that it was a bit of a race to see which would finish first… Luckily, we were moved in and mostly settled before C made his arrival. We have officially been in our forever-dream home with our little man for just over a year, but deciding to buy a house almost came at a whim. Whenever I had downtime at work, I found myself researching “custom home builders” and day-dreaming about designing my perfect house. I stumbled upon a neighborhood just 10 minutes from our apartment at the time and ventured out to look at the models of two different builders with my dad. I walked into these gorgeous houses and my heart and mind were made up – it was time to buy a house!
That was easier said than done, of course. Not only did I have to get K onboard, but we had not been saving for a down payment. Being home owners was still a little ways off in our minds. But, I took him to see the model home(s), showed him the ratings for the schools in the neighborhood, and when we learned that we wouldn’t need our down payment until closing (aka, after construction was completed) we realized that this could really happen - gotta love the LaRosa double-secret-probation-budget!
In August, we settled on one of the two builders in the neighborhood, but it was still a few months before they got the OK from the city to start construction. And so, we waited – and started saving. In December we got word that the city had given the green light, and so we picked our lot and floor plan. In preparation for the momentous decision, we traveled across the Metroplex to see homes in different stages of construction and met with a realtor to get her input on resale value of the changes we had in mind. Eventually, we settled on the Riverstone and placed the symbolic “sold” sticker on the map of the neighborhood.
In January, we found out we were pregnant, and informed our builder that it would be great if our house could be finished closer to the 6 month end of the 6 to 9 month timeline. With a September due date, we really did not want to be moving with a newborn! Later in the month we met with our contractor to go over our blue prints; we opened walls, we rearranged our kitchen, we added windows and extended the hardwood floors, we added a Jack-and-Jill bathroom, and we expanded our laundry room for more storage. We met with the company that would be wiring our house to decide on the location of our outlets, on a home security system, and our entertainment automation system. We went to the builder’s design studio and picked our floor tile, the orientation of the backsplash tile, our grout color, the brick color, the color of the trim on the house, the color of the dividers in the window panes, the wall color, the countertop shape, the design of our garage door, the type of cabinetry, and made decisions on every other customizable option in our home! Although satisfied with all our decisions, I was a bit nervous to see how it would all come together…
