Building a Home from Scratch – Start to Finish

As some of you know my mom started building a home last year and now just moved in! I am so excited for her and I’m also thrilled to have been a part of the design process. Designing homes, literally just for the fun of it (I know I’m a bit of a dork) has been a hobby of mine for the last twenty or so years. But when we started work on the design of Mom’s house, seeing it go from my architectural program to actual reality, was beyond my expectations. After designing so many homes to actually be able to WALK through one of them. OMG!?

I got choked up honestly, it was just so incredibly cool.

(The program I use is called Home Designer Suite – check it out here.)

Especially with mom’s home because she and I worked and worked over years of different plans to finally settle and start tweaking her final one.

Building a home is an enormous undertaking.

I’ve been a part of several house builds over the years in my family and my gosh I am so happy to have our renovation done and look forward to being in this home for a LONG time.

Building a home is seriously stressful but, unlike a renovation, there is a lot less compromise and you get to choose exactly what you want to live with.

Which is a huge reason why I am so thrilled for my mom who, after over fifty years of working, is no longer compromising for anyone else but was able to build the house of her dreams.

I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more!

We had several house plans in the works which (after a lot of tweaking) gave her the absolute no exceptions on her wish list.

• No stairs. Main floor (laundry, master suite, kitchen, living, office etc.) all on one level.
• Screened in porch and front porch.
• Lots of interior light, main bedroom especially must be east facing but the more rooms the merrier especially a place to sit in the morning sun.
• Attached two car garage.

She could have added an addition to her current home that would have given her most of those things but it came down to the big (maybe most important) thing:

Location. Location. Location.

Her place was at a busy intersection on a dirt road with close neighbors. I don’t think it would have mattered if it was her dream home, she didn’t like the spot.

(I’m actually convinced that you’re either happy to sit outside and hang out with your neighbors or that’s just not your thing. Both my mom and I grew up with no neighbors so maybe its in how you’re raised.)

Mom attempted to make the piece of land she owned beside us work for years but it just turned out that she didn’t like that spot either lol. (We still worked on several house plans for that spot anyway, trying to make it work.)

Fast forward a couple more years and she found her spot.

Its not far from us and is still actually on part of the old farm that my grandparents owned.

Its also on a tar road which I am quite envious of!

(I don’t care how romantic country songs make old dirt roads out to be… they can really suck to live on.)

Now we truly had our location so we grabbed all of the house plans we had completed that she had loved. And, from them, we took what we could, and changed what we needed, to work with her lot.

We had the final plan!

Building a home is a big undertaking no matter what, but especially if you start off with a wooded lot and no driveway.

Last year her contractor cleared it, built the driveway, got up a steel shed / building, electric to the site and got the septic completed and the well dug.

THEN WINTER

This spring they tackled it and it was just the coolest thing stopping on my way home from work, watching it grow.

It went so fast!

Having put up walls with just my lonesome or just the two of us I drool over what a whole construction crew can get done in all of one day lol.

Mom did have to make some compromises in her plan as not everything can have an east facing window. She did get her east facing bedroom though so she gets the sunrise and light all morning long. (Personally that would not have been on my wish list as I am not a morning person lol.)

The majority of the home faces the south though so she won’t be missing the sunshine!

She did get her all one level home with an attached two car garage and open concept main level. She also got her front porch and screened in porch too.

The home really welcomes you to sit down and stay for awhile.

Its cozy without being closed in.

Like most people when they’re building a home, when they see the initial foot print they think they’ve lost their ever loving minds because it looks ENORMOUS. But once the walls start going up it begins to make a lot more sense.

I think we managed to be conservative but still give her the feeling of lots of space. (Its 1,800 square feet.)

Her place has two bedrooms and two bathrooms and, in my opinion, is a great example of a wonderful home to retire in.

(Can’t wait to have Thanksgiving here!!)