Property!!

I haven’t posted any updates on our house building/buying process in a while. Everything has been pretty stagnant while we have been planning and deciding our next move. Making what we know was a smart decision, we decided against the Monstrocity, as intriguing as it was. I mean, really, who wants to clean that much house anyway…not this girl!

Looking from the house pad to the road

Instead, we came across a for-sale-by-owner plot of land in a rural suburb that is between my husband’s work and my office. It is close to the interstate for quick access to the city, and came with a whopping 11 acres, a housepad, and a pond! My husband and I are both country folk at heart, and we are super excited to be living in an area where our kids can grow up fishing and playing in the woods – not to mention it is in a great school district! The property has bayou frontage and is bordered by wooded wetlands that will remain untouched, plus it is very near a wildlife management area that is accessible from the bayou or by walking across the street 🙂 It is basically our dream come true, so after talking and meeting with the previous owners, we signed our life away and now have our very own piece of earth.

View from the road

The land purchase occurred several months ago, and we have been plotting and planning ever since. We sold our current house very quickly (thanks to renovations that we did with the help of my family and our awesome real estate agent Kyle Petersen), and it actually never even hit the market. We moved in with my dad as a temporary solution while we are building, and that has been an amazingly wonderful opportunity to save money and take our time designing and building our dream home. That being said, we are so ready to be in our new home! With a toddler, a teenager, and another baby on the way, we are beginning to feel again like we are living in an episode of hoarders!
Using home architecture software, I have been designing model homes to get some ideas. We met and talked with several architects and draftsmen, and decided to go with a highly recommended draftsman who works out of his home close to our new property. He has built several homes in the area, so we feel confident that he knows all about the hurricane standards, flood levels, and elevations we have to consider in our area. We are toying with the idea of sub-contracting the building of our home ourselves, with the help of consultants to help guide our way. Kent is an amazing handyman who can supervise contractors, and I love scheduling/planning (if you haven’t noticed from all my super detailed travel plans ha), so the combination could save us quite a bit of money.

Satelite View

While life never follows your plan, we are moving forward like this will be our “forever home”. We are spending a lot of time designing a home that will grow with our growing family and into the future. We will be seeing the next draft of our dream home this week, and hopefully will be finalizing our plans and moving forward with building in the near future! We can’t wait to get started!