Building a new home - the beginning to a new adventure

Dave has been trying to convince me that we needed to move into a bigger home for a few years. Right now, our house is about 2,400 square feet (downstairs and upstairs). Before we had children, the house was plenty big because we could utilize all of the closets. Now that the kids are getting older and need a little of the space, I realized it may be time to move into something a little bigger. However, after looking at a few houses, I wasn't convinced. Did I really need something bigger, could we make our existing home work?

I kept going back to the house that I grew up in. It was about 1,000 square feet on the main floor and the basement isn't finished. My parents raised all six of us there (I have two sisters and three brothers). They still live in the house today and it's plenty big now that we are all gone. I mean, the house had portable closets, not built in ones. It was only a three bedroom house, my parents had one room, the girls had another and my brothers had the third. I kept going back to this thinking, do we REALLY need a new home? I survived, not happily at times, but somehow we managed with the tight quarters.


If you've ever looked at new homes, you understand how stressful it can be. Dave and I looked at a few and keep in mind that our choices are limited because we wanted to stay on the NW side of Ankeny, a ranch with daylight windows and we didn't want anything older than five years. We looked at one and we were excited with the pond in the backyard, it was within our price range and that's about it. After living in our existing home for 12 years, I knew exactly what I wanted in a home and this wasn't it. The things I was looking for included:

• A large pantry in the kitchen
• A large walk in closet in the master bedroom
• Large mudroom with the potential of a washer/dryer 
• Actual hinged door to the deck, rather than a sliding glass door
• The garage needed to be in line with the other part of the house (I don't like when the garage sticks out beyond the house, the house isn't about the garage, it's the features of the house.) 
• Entry door must have a hallway, rather than coming straight into a room.
• Master bedroom and kids rooms on the opposite side of the house  (I don't like when the rooms are in a so called "cul-de-sak.") 
• Minimal windows and doors in the master (I need to allow my furniture to fit comfortably.)
• Spacious basement with one or two bedrooms

So that list doesn't seem extensive, does it? Well, let me tell you, it's harder than you think to find a house with these requirements. Dave and I tossed around the option of building but we didn't know if we could afford to build a home and we didn't know if we would have time to sell ours, build a new home and move before winter sets in. 

We spoke with our realtor, "Colin Panzi with Coldwell Banker" about our building options. He took us to look at several new homes in Ankeny. We liked a few things about the homes but not many. At this point, I was wondering if we should even be thinking about moving at all. He wasn't about to give up on us that easily so he took us to a few more homes with different builders! As a buyer, I appreciated that about him - he was determined to find something that satisfied our needs. 

After looking at a few, I fell in love with a design from Remington Homes. Every home we went into thereafter, didn't have what I loved in one of their plans.The house I loved is the "Sacramento." We went into more homes after this one because Dave wanted to make sure that I loved it as much as I thought I did. Yup, I did and he wasn't about to change my mind. 

As we tossed around the cost of building, we decided to move forward with building this home. I'll share my adventures, frustrations, worries and excitement along the way. It is fun building but it's stressful as well! But Dave and I are fortunate to work with Colin who is a great realtor and an advocate for what we want when we are communicating with the builder. 

More posts to come about the process of choosing a lot, finalizing a house plan and the items we choose for our home!