I’m so excited to finally share the news that my husband and I are building a home!!! This is something that has been in the works for quite some time, and now that things are starting to move along, I am looking forward to sharing more about the process with you all regularly on my blog. So to kick-off this new home building series, I thought I would start by including some Q&A’s below on everything that has happened so far with the process!
Why did you decide to build?
My husband and I are parents to two boys and have longed to raise them in home with an expansive yard for them to run, swim and play for many years to come. We had our sights set on purchasing an existing home that potentially needed some minor updating, but after more than a year of house searching and not finding anything even remotely close to what we wanted, we decided that our best option was to build! In September we came across a piece of land in our current school district that we knew had potential. After some negotiations, the owner agreed to combine the existing parcel with an adjacent property so we could purchase a total of nearly 3 acres of land to build our dream home.
We learned that the property was a former grape vineyard, which is really quite fitting considering my love of wine. During of our first time walking the land, I spotted grapes that were still growing wild even though it has been 20+ years since the land has been used for that purpose! Who knows, maybe we will plant a hobby vineyard here again one day! Another thing we love about the land is that it has a barn at the back of the property that we plan to fix-up in the future to use as an indoor sports area for our boys during the cold Cleveland winters!
Who are you building your home with?
We decided to build with Drees Homes using their Build On Your Lot program, We love that Drees Homes has an extremely good reputation for building high-quality custom homes, but that they also have the resources of a large-scale builder to get our home built relatively quickly. With our older son starting middle school next year, we didn’t want to spend years starting from scratch and building completely custom when our ultimate goal is to start enjoying our home with our boys as soon as possible,
What floor plan did you choose?
We fell in love with the Ash Lawn floor plan, which has an open kitchen, two story family room and lots of options to customize and make it our own. Some of the additions we made to the existing plan include: custom elevation with a front porch, a sun room, custom mudroom / laundry combo, finished basement, 2nd master bedroom closet and an outdoor living area.
What is the timeline for building the house?
We signed our contract with Drees Homes in early October and hope to break ground in early January with a hopeful move-in date of Summer 2021. It’s an aggressive timeline and we are so thankful that our Market Manager, George Pelesky, has helped to guide us through every step up the process so far.
What’s next?
We have locked in all of the structural options for our home, and our blueprints were finalized this week. We are now moving on to making all of our design selections for the house! As a stylist, I’m sure you can imagine how exciting (yet overwhelming!) this part of building a new home would be.
Drees Homes has a central Design Center that is used for selecting all of the options and upgrades for your home. I have visited the Design Center a few times to preview the selections and then my husband and I have our formal design meetings to finalize our selections in early December.
Next up, I’ll be sharing more about the design selection process for our new home. I’ll take you on a virtual tour of the Drees Design Center and will also share some inspiration boards that I used to help guide my selections for each room of our home. Stay tuned!
Congrats! I can’t wait to see this beautiful home and home site. George is one of the best! I have worked with him for several years, and you are in amazing hands. I’m sure you all know that though! Hehe. Such an exciting time for your family. Congrats again.
Mark