I have been in my new house a little over a year now and am very satisified with EVERYTHING…. here is my experience.
I started out with a floor plan that I drew up over 20 years ago (when I was in 4th grade) and when I passed an adbandoned farm house I got insperation to start construction. I took a copy of these floor plans and photos of the falling down house to an architect . with almost no changes to the origingal 4th grade floor plan and replicating the exterior of the old house I now had blue prints. One thing I did that was very helpfull at this point was: seeing how I was trying to create a house that felt like it had age I had my arct. go on a house walk in a historic district and pointed out the features I liked and he pointed out features he thought would work in the house.
Next thing I did was to start purchasing antique light fixtures. I had always admired old fixtures in the house of a family friend and wanted the same. having these fixtures prior to construction also gave me visuals on what I wanted the finished product to look like. Having a visual allowed me to communicate better with the contractor when I was bidding out the project.
took the blue prints to contractors for bidding (see my post under tips for building our first house) Know what you want by this point, the more changes you make from this point on the more over budget you will run.
got construction loan. went though my local bank where I had done buisness for many years. my loan officer oversaw the entire budget aspect of the project and tracked progress….. that took a lot of stress off.
construction startes…. I had a building on the property already where I set up house durring this process. living close to the site allows you to check on progress and workmanship. I did not change specs once construction started. I provided samples of finish materials prior to finish subcontractors started. also my contractor gave me his supplier of flooring and I purchased the flooring materials in advance. I also purchased some materials in advance such as a custom made front door.
The house exceded my expectations having all the comforts of new construction and the feel of a late 1800’s farm house…. a hard task to pull off in new construction.
another aspect to this house I am pleased with is i invested more in detail and less in size. it is large enough to meet my needs and I also built in expandability, there is 800 sq ft in the atic that can be finished in the future (stairs already installed) and a exterior door off of the living room opens into the space where I plan on adding a wing containing a formal dining room and sun porch. these expantions can be done at any time and without changing the charm of the original house because they were though of prior to construction. will post some photos in the photo board shortly.