On Becoming a Homeowner...

Some of you may or may not know that just one short month ago, Beau and I finally moved into our first "dream" home. I say "first dream home" because I know this won't be our final dream house but darn it, so much thought and preparation and stress went into this baby that I'd by lying if I said we weren't extremely proud of our purchase!

When the idea of buying a home came up, we tossed around the idea of buying a pre-existing home or building. I've always wanted to build. My parents built their house and it was such a fun process to see it all come to reality and I, too, have always wanted to experience that. Beau, on the other hand, wanted to just buy a home. We looked at quite a few pre-existing homes and quickly realized that while we liked some of the houses, we didn't love any of them and chances are, we'd be spending tens of thousands of dollars to change the floors, cabinets, etc...to get it exactly the way we wanted it. Err-I wanted it. Beau knew I wasn't going to stop looking until I was 100% satisfied and I think he quickly realized the only way to get what I wanted was to build it ourselves. ("What baby wants, baby gets." -The Break Up)

Is building a home more expensive? In my opinion, no. It actually ends up being about the same. Like I said, if we would have bought a pre-existing home, I would have wanted to spend the same amount of money upgrading it and changing it to be what I wanted it to be so for us, it was a wash and a no-brainer so we paid the exact amount to build as we would have had we bought a pre-existing house. (Plus, we got to choose every single little thing from the floors and the light fixtures to the appliances and the door handles...and it's all brand new! Win/win!)

May 23, 2012 we signed that dotted line and were on our way to becoming homeowners. Little did we know it would take 4...yes-FOUR, months for them to even break ground. Talk about testing a girl's patience...

September 20, 2012 (our 7 year anniversary!) we drove up to find that there was no longer just a big empty lot...they had finally broken ground and I'll be honest...I've never been so happy in my LIFE to see a pile of dirt.

Our builder (Grand View) swore UP and DOWN we would close before Christmas while I, in the meantime, rolled my eyes in disgust thinking "There's no possible way this house will be done that quick!"

Lo and behold...we closed on December 21, 2012 and since then, it's been a huge work in progress! A very fun work in progress, but definitely WORK, nonetheless! I know I have all the time in the world to hang stuff on the walls and get it the way I want it but we're getting there. One day my fear of putting a hole in my brand new walls will go away and soon enough, we'll actually have something like a picture or a mirror take up residence those big blank walls.

In the meantime, I'm really enjoying the simplicity of it all!

Anywho...without further adieu...welcome to our home! :)

"A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams." -Unknown

Now come back, ya heard! ;)