In The Beginning...

So I guess I will start back at the beginning…

Chris and I were married in 2005, and then he moved to Georgia. I was to follow in a year and I refused to rent because it is throwing money down a black hole (night as well just leave a bag of money sitting on the curb for what you have to show from renting…); so I began looking for a house to buy. After looking at a half of a dozen different houses in person and probably every house that was for sale at that time in the CSRA, we decided to buy this one.

It wasn’t the best looking one I’ve ever seen, but you can ALWAYS paint… And get new carpet… and a new kitchen… and bathrooms… and redo the backyard… and put up a new shed… and the list goes on and on, but the bones are good and the lot size is excellent and in the best school district! The neighborhood is nice and quiet too. There are quite a few older residents, but there are a few younger families that have moved in recently, so the kids have friends to play with which is nice.

The thing that seems to be a big downer in this house is that it is a continuous project! It’s a “catch 22” every time we decide to do a project. If you do one thing, then you have to do this other thing; or you have to do this thing first. You know how it goes… But I will chronicle the last almost 5 years of us trying to turn this house into a home, and then I will start on our journey of turning our new house into a home. Yes, I said “new house”. More on that to come as we get pictures and whatnot!

Picking Out The Right One

So now that we have our lot picked out, it’s time to narrow it down to what we want to put on it. We went to look through a house up the street from our lot that Erin thought we would love, and she was so right. It is almost the perfect house! There are a few minor changes that will be made on ours, but she really had us in mind when she singled that floor plan out.

I know, I know… It is definitely NOT an Antebellum style house, or even remotely close to being a Colonial house at all, but it is a Craftsman style home and that was our other choice for styling on the façade. It also has all the rooms we wanted with some bonuses. As you can see from the pictures I took of the brochure the builders gave us, it has the formal living and dining rooms, all the family entertaining rooms, 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and it also has a HUMONGOUS walk-in pantry, a bonus loft space upstairs, and we had them put the screen porch on the back with an added concrete pad for Chris’s outdoor kitchen. 

Going In A New Direction

So, what happens when you open your eyes to see that your absolute dream home is up for grabs and within your reach? You find out that because it is so old it won’t pass any sort of inspection for a loan that you can actually afford… So upsetting… It was eye opening though. We realized that we didn’t have to continue to settle for a house that is what we need but not necessarily what we want. With the way that the market is now, we can actually afford to get what we want! Everything started going downhill from there…

Most people would probably be driven away from trying to buy a new house once they realize that the absolute dream house is not quite as within their reach as they thought. Nothing else would compare. Nothing really does compare to an antebellum mansion built by a Civil War hero in 1854. Any other house is in a category of its own. Instead of buying Woodlawn, we decided to go a different direction and build one. With minimal help from our real estate parachuter, I mean agent, I set it all up to build a house in a nice, quiet subdivision in Grovetown. I did not know there were so many properties for sale right now, and I was definitely not prepared for how expensive it is to build a custom house… Another bummer…

Originally we were looking to buy a good-sized chunk of land and building a house very similar to Woodlawn (but smaller of course) and then we would still have our dream house. Do the same style and everything with the columns, the front porch, the formal rooms, and everything, only it would all be brand new instead of 150 years old and in need of repair. If I were being truly honest with myself though, we were trying to force it…

Things always turn out for the best though, because after meeting with the builder that our real estate friend pushed on us, we went to look at a house in a neighborhood about a mile from where we are now, and though we liked the neighborhood and the way the house was put together, the house itself was lacking some things. We wanted a formal living, formal dining, family room, kitchen, breakfast nook, and at least 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. Since we liked the work they do, we went to the model home and looked through some plans and found the one that we really liked, and picked out our lot.

Next phase…