From the very beginning…

Throughout my life, I have known that one day I would build my own home, I just never realized it would be this early on.  When Amber came to me and said that she wanted to start looking for our “forever” home, I figured it was as good a time as any.

We currently live in a 3 bedroom (if you can classify them as bedrooms) one bath home that totals a whopping 1,080 sq. ft.  It was a perfect starter house for us that has served it’s purpose for what we need, but it is no way our final Home.  We were very fortunate to get into our current house just out of college with a mortgage payment that is no more than a standard apartments rent, so it made perfect sense for us at the time.  Earn some equity while starting our professional careers.

Fast forward to Spring 2012 when Amber brought to my attention that she was ready to start searching for a Home to start a family in.  Me being me wanted to push this off for as long as possible so I decided it was the perfect time to bring up my idea of building our Home.  It only took a little convincing to bring her on board with my plan.  My simple point was that although we could likely buy a house for much less than it would cost to build, as we were in the middle of a buyer’s market, the amount it would cost to buy an existing home and retrofit it to what we wanted would be much more costly.  Building from scratch allowed us the opportunity to get exactly what we want in a Home.

We began searching for a lot shortly thereafter, with only a few criteria in mind.  We wanted to stay within the NFA school district, but not in Norwich as the public schools have declined dramatically over the years.  With the population rapidly increasing, and the school budgets decreasing just as quickly, the level of education is just not up to par.  This was one of our most important criteria.  Secondly, we did not want to be in the middle of a development.  I HATE cookie cutter houses in cookie cutter neighborhoods, so this was another sticking point.  Finally, we wanted to have enough space to grow with land between ourselves and our neighbors.

We searched for a few months through Norwich, Lisbon and a few other surrounding towns and finally found the perfect lot in Bozrah, CT.  We initially made an offer on the land in August 2012, after a lot of hassle and frustration, we finally closed on the land in early March 2013.  The lot fit all of our criteria and it was the first huge step toward the final product.

Because I am naive, my plan was to break ground by May and start building in the early summer with the hopes of wrapping up the project early in the New Year….haha

After buying the land we went full steam ahead to start working on the project.  Through a colleague at work, we were able to acquire a trusted architect to help us through the design process.  This was critical for us because we wanted to design our Home and not have to pick it out of a catalog.  We compiled a smorgasbord of plans and photos of homes that we liked at gave them all over to our architect.  He was able to put together everything we wanted into a perfect floor plan that is both aesthetically and technically pleasing.

Our design consists of a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath 2,700 sq. ft. home.  We know that it is way more house than we need at this point in time, but we are building for the future.  Originally I thought it may be a good idea to start small with the opportunity to expand later, but my logical side could not wrap my head around having to spend double or triple the money to add-on later rather than just doing it all at once.  We now have exactly what we are looking for in a home including an open floor plan with a good size kitchen (for Amber’s baking), a great room with vaulted ceilings, and plenty of room to grow into the future.  Another important step completed…

One of (what I thought) would be our easiest task in the long-term project was to find a General Contractor.  My uncle has been building and remodeling homes for 30+ years, so for me this was a no brainer.  After speaking with him, he was more than happy to help out with notice, which at that point we had more than enough.  Through his experience and contacts we were able to put together a good, hopefully reliable list of subcontractors.

Now on to the fun part…financing.  To this point in time the most frustrating and stressful part of the project, although I am sure there is more stress and frustration to come.  After the market crash in 2008 nearly entirely due to banks over-lending, the banks have really tightened their purse strings.  It is now near impossible to obtain a construction loan, and in order to do so you pretty much need to sign your life away, but hey you only live once, right?  Finally after nearly 5 months of back and forth with the bank, we finally closed on our construction loan in early October 2013.

Seriously though…Now on to the real fun part, Breaking (Bad) Ground!

If you made it this far, I commend you and thank you for taking an interest in our project.  Please stay tuned for updates as we continue on our venture to build our New Home.