Building, Buying, or Both?

our first house

As we outgrew our first house, we considered buying, but we couldn't find a house that matched our style, or that had a functional layout, and we weren't ready to do a large expensive renovation with a newborn. We had big dreams that we knew would take time and a lot of sweat equity. We decided BOTH to buy and build. We purchased land just outside of town for future new construction, knowing eventually we could use the equity in the land as a down payment on a new house. After doing lot of updates to our current home (paint, new appliances, fence, landscaping, patio, etc.) we were up for a DIY challenge and started looking for a house that we could update.

The main criteria for a house to buy, was a great neighborhood and a house that we could update without major construction. While the house we settled on wasn't our ideal style, it was a 1970s tuck under garage with a split foyer, it was the perfect project for us, at the perfect time. We sold our first home to a friend, without it ever being on the market, which made for a quick and easy sale. We moved in the middle of winter 2013, with a seven month old. New appliances and a fresh coat of paint came first. Next we decided to tackle a trim project. We ripped out all the dated oak trim and replaced it with a craftsman style trim around all the doors and windows, and 8 inch baseboards. We used dimensional lumber and designed a pattern we liked. We welcomed baby number two in 2015 and started dreaming of building on our land in a few years.

As our family grew and a future full of school events and sports practice all over town seemed imminent, we traded our six acres in the country for a new lot in a neighborhood where many of the kids' friends lived. We looked at floorpans and met with builders. At the last minute, we noticed a new property in the same neighborhood for sale. We sold one lot, bought the other, and modified our house plans for the new property. Meanwhile, the house we had just finished working on sold very quickly, so with a 3 year old and a seven month old (notice a trend here...) we moved in with family.

Living with my parents and our two small children was not a long term solution, and we knew it would be a while before any new construction was ready. We thought about an apartment or rental house, but knowing that sometimes a step back can launch you forward, we decided wait a little longer and buy just one more house before we built.

A historic home built in 1886, in a great little neighborhood was perfect for our family. Some friends owned it and had done a lot of initial renovations and updates. They were looking to move into their forever home and sold it to us! It was close to school, a park, work, and all our favorite walking paths. Over the next few months we painted the entire interior, installed new solid oak doors, new craftsman style trim(we were perfecting our process by now), new siding and windows, new heating and cooling, and were surprised by another new baby on the way!

While we wrapped up construction on our historic home project, we finalized house plans (which turned out to be very different than what we actually built... but more on that another day) and finalized our construction loan. In September 2017, we finally broke ground on on our first custom build, and two months later, the first walls were framed while I was in the hospital delivering our third (and final) little boy!

That is how we started building our family and building our future one house at a time.