It’s a [Dig] Date!

The most tedious parts of selling a house come after the “sold” sign is actually hung in my opinion. All of the paperwork is squared away though and our first house is no longer our house. That means we’re clear to move forward! It took a whole 5 minutes to sign the closing paperwork, when we bought the house, it was a 2-hour marathon of names, dates, etc.

The wonderful folks at Ryan Homes have done a great job of fast-tracking our start and we have a dig date!

Today! They’re breaking ground on our house today!

With that said, I’m going to back up and talk about some of the process of doing a new build. From start through the whole process.

Picking a Floor Plan/Community/Builder

I don’t know how the majority of new builds actually end up working, but we picked our community and home plan kind of at the same time. Brad researched builders in the area and looked at what was available in our price range for floor plans. We landed on Ryan Homes and a community in Cleveland’s west-side suburbs primarily because of the ability to have a basement and proximity to work.

There are many other ways to determine who, where and what you’re going to build but our process was pretty simple. We arrived at the community to look at the Sienna and Florence floor plans. Both had positives and negatives to them, what made the decision to build a Florence rather and Sienna was walking through each floor plan. We walked through two under-construction houses that were framed but not yet dry walled. We did not walk through a model home. Both plans are nice, but we landed on the Florence for 9-foot ceilings, double-sinks in the master and a little more square footage.

What Did We Really Want?

Not terribly long after moving into our first home, we realized that there were a few things that we really wanted in the next one. So when we started looking to buy our second house (before building crossed our minds!) we knew what were must-haves and what would be wants.

Here’s the must-have list:

• Attached garage
• Pantry
• Main-floor bathroom
• Usable outdoor space

Of course everyone has a long list of wants for a home, but some of the wants that we’re getting are:

• Dual bowl vanity in the master bathroom (and an actual master bathroom)
• Walk-in closet
• Something called a “gourmet island” which is actually a peninsula
• Future-proof NEMA 14-50 electrical outlets in the garage for charging my Volt and potentially a second EV down the road.

We walked our lot over the weekend, it was already staked out so we were able to get a good idea of the placement of the house on the property. It feels more real that this is actually happening now that the Pelham house is gone and I know they are digging today.

What would be some of your must-haves or wants in a home? 

Have you built a home? What was your experience?