It has been so long since I've posted, and I am truly sorry for that. I promise that I thought about posting incredibly often-- as if that's enough-- to fill ya'll in on the craziness of the last few months.
November began with a surprise visit from Mike's parents for his birthday, a visit from my parents and a visit from Colin before he and Mike roadtripped to the Crims conference in Atlanta. We spent Thanksgiving in Frisco, TX with Mike's parents and his Aunt Kate & Uncle Jerry who had recently relocated to TX from IL.
We celebrated December with a visit from Natalie over my birthday, traveled back to CT/NY for Christmas with my side (including Tom & Riley) and Mike's official PhD graduation, and then celebrated Christmas here by ourselves and New Year's Eve with our new friends Heather and Todd.
I taught two four-week winter courses online between December 20 & January 20 which made for a stressful month, but at the end Stephanie came to visit. We all got iced in during her visit but made it out to explore the area a little!
We are so thankful for all of our amazing friends and family who give us so much to look forward to. Now you know why the longer I waited to post the more overwhelmed I became!
This spring we are on track for an equally exciting ride: next weekend we will visit NC for Riley's 5th birthday party, in April we are headed to a relaxing vacation on the beach in Galveston, TX with Mike's family, and in May we are going to Disney to celebrate Mike becoming a doctor and our general adulthood status (and because Mike wants one last hoorah before "real" adulthood begins).
And in July, we will move into our first house, hence beginning Mike's definition of "official" adulthood.
We weren't even going to look for houses until a few years from now, but long story short, all of our stars aligned and we found an amazing subdivision that is just being built now. The subdivision is about a 10-15 minute drive to LSU-- no highway, which is awesome, and we just could not pass this up. So not only will we be moving into a new house, but we will actually have the opportunity to build our house from the ground up!!
It's not a custom home; we got to choose from a variety of floor plans and we got to choose our lot and we will get to make lots of design choices-- so exciting! We officially signed the paperwork for our purchase order yesterday, and we couldn't be more excited.
We chose a lot. We picked our lot because it is on one of the less-busy roads, and not right on the lake. We will have lake views, but we will be a little further away from it. Our backyard butts up to an empty lot, which is nice, and that is where the walking trail will begin. It is quite far from our back patio, but it will be nice to have neighbors walking by and enjoy the benefits of lakefront without having no space behind our house. The map below will show you where our house will be built-- our lot is the one with the yellow circle around it.
There is still so much of the neighborhood yet to be built. It will be noisy for a while, but it will be such a great place to live and take walks when it is done! They say houses take just a few months to build (probably about 3-4) so construction by us should go quickly.
This is an overview of our lot from the middle of the street. We will have a neighbor behind us, but his patio faces perpendicular to our own. There is also the empty lot between us for more privacy.
This is the "approximate" view we will have from our patio. The land is untouched right now and will be more level and cleared out, but as you can see we have great lake views.
We fell in love with the floor plan we chose after seeing it in a listing that our realtor sent us. What really sold us was the extra study space. Since Mike and I are both academics and especially since I'm working at home, it's really nice to have a dedicated space to work so that each other room can be used for its intended purpose. The study has a great built-in desk and a nice big window and is the perfect sized space for productive dissertation writing and teaching!
Image courtesy of DSLD homes
We have seen a model of this home built, and each time we see it we don't want to leave! The pictures below show you what our floorplan will look like, though the finishes and options of our exact home may be different (for instance we want all tile floors vs. having different floors in the living room vs. kitchen/dining room and a different cabinet color). This should give you a good idea of what our house will look like.
This is not our house, and we may have different options (i.e. different garage door color) but this is what it will structurally look like. So cute! Love that little window :)
View from the front door (notice the closet on the left side.. something that is extremely uncommon in many houses here).
View of the living room from the dining area. I don't think we'll get the wood floors; I think we'll get tile throughout. Otherwise, the windows and the size of the rooms will be the same. Great open concept.
Mike in the kitchen ready to wash some dishes! That empty spot will have a fridge, and the door is to a pantry.
The Doc checking everything out. Better view of the pantry.
View from the garage entryway. What you can't see in this photo is the cute built in bench to have a mud area when you come in (it's that dark corner barely visible on the left).
Master closet!! It opens into the laundry room, which then opens to the other two bedrooms. You almost have a full sight line to the garage door.
The master bedroom. Love the windows.
Master bathroom. And check out the creeper in the shower! haha. Double sink, separate shower and garden tub.
The study. This will not be our view-- we will potentially be able to see lake from our window!
I think it's easier to see some of the details and get a sense of the flow of the house from a video, so we filmed a quick video tour this afternoon.
So what's next you might add? Here's a brief timeline of the building process:
- Once the builder signs our purchase agreement (hopefully tomorrow) the builder will file for permits to begin building. They figure about 8 weeks until they begin building.
- In about 4-6 weeks we will meet with the builder's realtor and choose our design options (paint color, tile color, granite color, etc) and our upgrade options (appliances, extras).
- Once the house begins being built, it goes quickly. Like I said, it takes about 3-4 months to build one of these houses, and they get so much done in one day (we got to see some houses at different stages; it is so amazing).
- We will close in mid-July, and we will have a few weeks overlapped so we can move more leisurely from our apartment to our new home.
We are so excited-- especially because we never thought that this would be the route we would take, but we couldn't be more excited. When I say the stars aligned for this, I really mean it. Thanks to all of you who have contributed to making this dream a reality for us-- we are using our wedding money in part for this house, so each of you is making this possible for us. We are so happy to share this with all of you and I do plan to blog more about what we're up to and the progress of our house. I can't wait until they break ground and we have some exciting stuff to share with all of you!
No comments:
Post a Comment