Building Our House

That’s right – in addition to starting the online shop, opening a booth, being pregnant, and being in the middle of a deployment, we’ve decided to take on a new construction!

The Backstory

When we moved out of our rental house back in February so I could move in with my parents during this deployment, we didn’t have a plan for where we would live this fall once David is back home. We just figured we’d start looking for rental houses or available homes in late July with the goal of moving in by mid-September…but that was about as far as we had gotten. Once we found out we have a little one on the way, I started getting a little panicky about the lack of having a plan. You can’t take a newborn home to a hotel room! (Well, you can. But that would be far from ideal.)

After weighing our options, we decided we wanted to buy in the sleepy beach town of Swansboro, NC. It’ll be about a 40 minute commute for David, but we’ll be super close to the beach and much closer to Jacksonville, NC which is considered the “big city” of our area. It’s also a great market for renting and selling, which will come in handy when the Marine Corps decides to move us again.

With the goal of closing and moving in early September, I did my best not to house hunt online, because the idea of putting in an offer with three months until closing didn’t seem realistic. I did want to go ahead and explore the area to get a feel for the different neighborhoods so I could be prepared to house hunt online later this summer, so in May I took a trip to Swansboro to get a feel for the area.

I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to window shop for neighborhoods without zeroing in on specific houses.  I really gave myself too much credit, because during my little exploration visit to Swansboro, I totally fell in love with a new development. After many long conversations with David – who is totally trusting me with this decision while he’s on the other side of the world with limited phone and Internet access – we decided to put in an offer on one of the two houses left on the street we’re interested in. After some back and forth with the builder, our offer was accepted!

The Floor Plan

The house we chose is called The Milan and it has 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths at roughly 2400 square feet. When we went under contract the drywall was already up, but nothing cosmetic had been done to the interior yet (yay!).

The Progress

We went under contract while I was out of town, but the builder’s rep made it clear that I needed to get myself to Swansboro ASAP to make selections for cabinets, flooring, paint color, and hardware. I managed to squeeze a quick overnight trip in between two week-long trips – it was exhausting, but it was the only way to get it done.

When I first got to Swansboro, I did a quick walkthrough of the house. Even though they weren’t supposed to do any work until we made selections, they had already laid tile in the bathrooms.  Luckily, I like the choice they made. But it was slightly annoying to start off on that foot.

On a brighter note, everything else was looking awesome! Here’s a quick look at the progress.

I’m super excited with how things are looking, and taking a peek at the house was extremely helpful before heading to the selections meeting.

Making Selections

This is where things got interesting. I had envisioned going to this big beautiful showroom and picking out options on the spot. To me, it makes sense to run your business that way. Have the options and pricing ready ahead of time, so the client can pick and choose like a candy store.

That is not what I experienced. Thank goodness I had a realtor with me to ask specific questions and push for information because as much as I like the look of our house, I am not loving our sales rep.

What they had for me to look at (after dropping everything and making a 12 hour roundtrip drive to Swansboro, mind you) was a conference room with some samples. Our sales person is not very helpful or forthcoming, so overall I didn’t leave with a great impression.

Despite that, I was able to select our paint color, cabinets, granite, hardware and potentially flooring. I picked out the builder’s standard options for flooring, but the standard option is laminate and low grade carpet, so we’re interested in upgrading to luxury vinyl plank (LVP) floors and nicer carpet depending on the pricing.

We were sent to the flooring vendor’s showroom to look at upgrade options and are still waiting to hear back on final pricing (two weeks later).

Here’s a look at what we chose to get quotes for:

Next Steps

So, now we wait. Hopefully in the next week or so we can finalize the flooring and get things rolling with the house. We’re hoping to close in September, so stay tuned for updates!