New House Update: Lot Prep

After what seemed like a lifetime we have finally started moving in the house building process!  2021 is going to be such an exciting year and I cannot wait to take yall along on this journey.  If you enjoy house stuff, be sure to stay tuned.  I will be sharing the process step by step: layout details, design ideas, material selections, mood boards, etc.  Should be so much fun (and a bit overwhelming).  Today is all about bringing you up to speed and lot prep!

BACKGROUND: We bought a lot almost 2 years ago.  We started interviewing builders, etc and finally decided on Joe Vastano with Joseph Paul Homes and could not be happier.  I will be sharing a ton more about him and making that decision in a separate post.  Anyway, from there we started designing and I had approximately 4,834 changes (Sorry Joe).  Luckily, Joe was super patient with me.  We got a design and then went to plot it on the land and realized we needed to flip it to work on our lot better.  Our lot is basically a forest so we wanted to try to save as many trees as possible and flipping it just worked better.  Once we flipped it we realized our driveway was going into a landscape easement that we were not able to build in.  We tried to get an exception of 5 feet and were denied (insert some tears here). 

Where we live the lot guidelines are a little crazy.  We have 2 acres, but our lot is narrow and deep and regardless of your land layout with 2 acres they require 50 foot build lines on each side.  This makes designing a house tricky, especially when we wanted a 1 story!  For example my friend has 1 acre out here and her home was able to be 30 feet wider than mine even though we have double the land!  It is kinda crazy.  Anyway, due to the fact we got denied, we had to make some changes.

Joe was a miracle worker and we went back to the drawing board and redesigned a huge chunk of the house.  Needless to say 2020 was constantly being 2020 during this whole house process!  Silver lining though is when Joe was done with his magic work I loved the new design even better!  We moved the garage to the front of the house and its everything I had ever hoped for.  We are designing a timeless house that is Southern Living meets Cape Cod!  I cannot wait to share more!

Ok, now that you are caught up. . . in December we closed on our loan (had to wait til final designs were done) and started clearing our lot!  This was super exciting because our lot was a jungle and now that it is cleared out we can actually see where our house will go!

LOT PREP:

BEFORE:

This first pictures was taken a while ago, the vines under the trees got massive.  Some were taller than me!!

This was one of our family photos take 2 years ago when we were under contract for the lot!

AFTER:

We tried to save as many trees as possible.  It looks so bare now in this photo, but there will be house and driveway where the empty parts are.  There are still tons of trees.  It is really hard to get a photo that captures all of them.  The kids are standing in our future circle drive.

The tractor is sitting about where our future pool will be going.

Braden was having a blast in all the wood piles.  It was really hard seeing the trees knocked down.  I am ready to see the empty space filled out with house!

Now that we cleared the trees and finished lot prep, the next couple of weeks will be trenching for plumbing, inspections, and form boards.  I am ready to get passed this phase and on to the actual framing!  That is when the real fun starts!

It actually snowed in Texas this weekend.  If you know anyone in Texas this was a HUGE deal.  Of course we had to come out to the new lot and see it in the snow.  Here we are soaking it all in.

Hopefully I will have more to share really soon!

If you are building a new home you might find this post helpful.  I took a poll from all of you on your must haves in building a custom home and yall delivered!  So many helpful ideas HERE.

Find all of our NEW HOME (SOUTHERN CAPE COD) posts HERE.