Home Owners - Stage 1 - Designing a House

"Costs too much." "Wrong neighborhood." "Too small." "Ugly." "Too far away." These have all been comments made while peering through real estate magazines. No we aren't buying a house, but we were looking to see what is available in our area.

I'm not sure came first: me pulling out my house designs I have drawn up over the years, or Jon mentioning that we should just buy land and build a house on it. Either way, we both felt really good about that idea and decided to glace through the designs to find which would be best for us at this stage in our life. Looking through some of the more recent ones (by recent I mean about 2006 or 2007), we picked one that we really liked.

After talking for a little while we decided we were going to take a walk and look at the vacant lots that are in the area we currently live. We like the area where we currently live, so it makes sense to look at that land around us first. We walked around a few blocks looking at 4 different plots of land. We liked on in particular. (I found out today that it is 1.03 acres and $70,000.)

We walked home and pulled out some software given to us to create house plans on a computer. I started with the plan I had drawn and put it on the computer. After a couple hours of work, I have quite a bit done, not all of it, but a good chunk of it. Finally my husband told me to stop and go to bed. (It was 11 o'clock already.)

Thinking about it now, I'm a little concerned about how much it is going to cost us to build the house because it is a little larger than I anticipated. Tonight I'm going to finish the one I am working on and then start on a revised version on it, a little smaller and cheaper.

But as we embark on this journey of becoming home owners, I am excited and ready to go!