Good day! First of all, thank you for being patient with me and my posting. This summer has slipped away from me, between moving, building our home, and life in general it has gone way too fast. Although I am really sad at the thought of it all coming to an end, I think we are all ready for a schedule again.
I wanted to share our progress with you today, mostly because I had NO IDEA what building entailed and I hope I can help anyone out there that is thinking about building or is in the process, see what worked for us, and some things we have learned along the way.
There is so much that I could write about the whole process, but today I just wanted to give you the background of how we found our lot and house plans.
Back in November, we were looking through the Sunday paper (which we were only getting for the holiday ads, crazy timing) and saw some lots for sale in an area that we really liked, so we drove by them just for fun. We weren’t really looking for lots or to build at all, but we really loved the lot, and decided just to look into it. The next day we called a few realtors and crazy enough we ended up putting an offer in. This all happened so fast, we felt good about it, kind of if it works out it works out type of attitude, but then had some time to think about it while we went down to Utah for Thanksgiving.
(our emply lot, it’s so fun to look back at these pictures and see how it all started)
While we were there I went to visit my sister in Mapleton and we drove around and toured some of her neighbors houses that were being built. These are some of the houses that I loved…
There was a house plan by Arive Homes that I loved, (this picture above is their model home in Mapleton, UT) so we took it back to Montana and tweaked it until it was the way we wanted it. I will show you our complete set of plans in my next post. 😉
These are pictures of the completed Lyla by Arive Homes from a Utah Valley Parade of Homes that I fell in love with, and what we have been trying to pattern the exterior of our house after. I love the white, but I also love how classic and timeless this home looks with the shutters and rock underneath.
I also really loved this white house with black windows below. Man, I wanted black windows pretty bad, but my husband convinced me to go with something more classic, and I’m actually glad we did.
Just a little background, the lot that we bought allowed us to bring our own builder. My Dad helped build and GC my brother’s house a couple of years ago, and also did a lot with his own house, and was so kind to take on the responsibility of being the General Contractor for our house, which has not only saved us a ton of money, but has allowed us to customize it the way we want. We are forever indebted to him and my Mom, they are really the greatest parents.
So after 4 1/2 months of building, we are finally starting to see some real progress. The drywall is being put up this week and then we will start painting. SOOO with that being said, I am going to be doing a lot of paint posts because guess what?! We are painting the entire house ourselves. Yep. We are trying to stay in budget as much as we can, we have gone over on a few things like cabinets and electrical, and every dang painter in Missoula is hired out until November.
So stay with me, give me all the tips you have, and I will share mine as well. I am so incredibly blessed to have you as my readers.
A few more pictures of our house from beginning to where we are now…
Thanks again for stopping by, have a great day!