Well, Well, Well...

I know I said the next blog was going to be about how we chose the land and that whole process, but I thought I'd throw in a blog about a pretty big milestone first - our well.  It's bittersweet to be writing this because, while the well is in process, it isn't finished yet.  Let's start at the beginning though...

The sellers played a little bit of hardball towards the end of our negotiations with them on the contract for the land and before they drilled the well on the property, they wanted to make sure we secured financing first.  They also changed our requested two-week time frame to drill the well to 35 days.  We knew that would be putting the well drilling around the holidays, but we didn't think much of it when we agreed to give them extra time.  Hindsight tells me now we should have stuck to our guns about the two-week time frame.

As soon as we had a contract on the land with the sellers, Steve and I immediately got to work on getting the multitude of tasks done that we had to do.  This included lining up a surveyor, finishing all the final touches and making rushed decisions on the house so we could sign the builders contract, and securing financing.  There were so many moving parts to all of that and it felt like a full-time job for about two weeks so we could get everything done in the time frames we agreed to.  The longest time frame that was agreed to in the contract was drilling the well which is the only thing the sellers need to do before settlement.  Once we secured financing, we did the math and that meant the sellers had until December 29 to get the well done.

There was serious lack of communication from the sellers' agent for a few days and after finally hearing from him, he claimed he could not open the PDF document we sent over, which was the loan commitment letter from our bank proving we had financing.  I don't know many places of business that cannot open PDFs, so I don't believe him at all, if I'm being honest.  To speed things up, Steve hand delivered a copy of the loan commitment letter to the agent and, while there, the agent said the sellers already had the drilling company lined up to drill the well any day now.  This was before Thanksgiving.

Fast forward to December 22nd, after an entire month of us and our agent nagging the sellers' agent.  That's when we finally heard the rig to drill the well was actually on the property and they did work on it that day, however, they hit rock.  In Harford County, this is not shocking news at all.  They weren't able to finish that day, but they were going to go back on the 26th to finish.  We aren't sure why exactly, but they didn't finish on the 26th despite working on it all day.  Steve dropped by at the end of the day and he did see that they made progress, and he thinks they are close to finishing.  But, they haven't made any progress since then.  We had a very cold snap in Maryland with several days in a row below freezing and the weather messes with the drill.  So they've had to put the whole thing on a break until we get a few warmer days.

Sadly, the weather doesn't look like it's warming up before next weekend.  This is very bad news for settlement.  In order to settle, the well needs to be drilled and pass some tests, and those tests take 3 - 5 days.  The company that is doing the well, Barlow, has been wonderful to work with and has been staying in contact with Steve with updates and they know we are scheduled to settle on the 10th.   We really appreciate Barlow keeping us in the loop, because technically the sellers are their customer.  Fingers crossed Barlow can make miracles happen.  We know it's not Barlow's fault at all for us to be running into this issue, but I could just scream at the sellers for waiting until the last minute.  Not only did they wait until the last minute, but they also lied to us before Thanksgiving saying they were ready to go.

It will all be worth it in the end.  In the meantime, here are some pictures of the well progress.

Progress as of 12/25/17 - this was when they hit rock

Truck on property on 12/25

Me surveying our land.  The pink flag to the right designates the back left corner of the house.  I'm in the backyard looking toward the other lot we were deciding between.

The rig

Christmas morning with the rig

Progress on 12/26 - lots more of the "mess" on this day

The rig

More mess

Again, the pink flag is the back left corner of the house  Steve's car is parked at the top of the hill in the distance; that's about where the common driveway will end and turn into ours coming towards us in the picture.  This view is of our front yard.

Barth Residence

Today we got the finalized plans back from our builder (Bob Ward).  I don't know what it is, but seeing "Barth Residence" on the plans was a great feeling!  I guess in my mind it solidified that Steve and I are really doing this and these plans are for our house.  There will be similar houses because they will build more Somersets, but this one is ours.  :-)

Now that you've seen the video of the house, let's talk about the design changes we made to it.  I'll start with the outside.  I've always dreamed of having a stone-front house and I'm getting that dream!  The model in the video has stone on the water table, but we'll have stone all the way up to the front porch roof and it will carry over to the front of the garage.  The garage on the model is front-load, but we will have a side-load three-car garage.  This changes the way the house looks a bit, so shown below is the drawing of what the front of our house will look like.  We'll have the same stone that you see on the model, but I'm going to leave the siding, shutter, and front door selections out of this blog so you can be surprised when it is built.  I wanted a pop of color on the front door and I'm beyond excited to see the color with the rest of the exterior choices.

Heading into the house, the first room you see in the video is the flex room.  In the video, it is staged as a home office.  That's initially what we were planning to use that room for, but Steve reminded me that we don't use our office at our current house at all.  Even when I work from home, I usually set up camp in the kitchen or dining room so I have a lot of space to spread out.  While I'm not 100% sold on Steve's proposed idea for the room, the front-running idea is to make this a bar.  I'm more and more convinced each day.  We figure we'll use a bar a lot more than an office, which shows where our priorities are.  :-)  We did add the French doors like you see in the video because I've always wanted French doors leading into an office...or a bar.

After the flex room, the video goes into the rooms that sell this house - the kitchen, dining room, and great room.  We did get the "gourmet kitchen" which is what you see in the video with the double oven and stainless appliances.  We also added a stainless apron hood over the stove on the back wall which means our microwave will go on the same wall as the fridge.  Steve is the cook in our household and he is great at it, so I let him go crazy with the upgrades in the kitchen.  The kitchen cabinets, handles, and granite are going to be different from what you see in the video.  Again, I'll try to keep that a surprise until it is built.

Steve is on the HOA Board for our current neighborhood and has been for a few years now.  Recently, Steve became the President of the HOA because our former President, Rob, stepped down since he moved out of the neighborhood.  Luckily for us, he moved to the neighborhood where the model home is located.  Steve asked him which model he and his wife built and they chose the Somerset as well.  We asked if we would be able to tour their house to see what changes they made and what changes they would recommend.  Since Rob and his wife were building in the neighborhood, a lot of the changes they wanted to make they either had to fight really hard for or they were just told no.  When we toured their house, Rob explained that once you get people seated at the dining room table, there isn't a lot of room between the people seated and the windows on the back wall and that he wished they were able to bump it out a foot.  We asked Clark and JoAnna for pricing on this and ultimately we did add it to our house.

In the great room, we kept the tray ceiling that you see in the video and we'll have the exact same stone fireplace in our house, only the actual fireplace will be a little smaller.  They wanted $8,000 extra for the larger fireplace; I responded with laughter!

This takes us upstairs.  The video starts with the master, but I'm going to save that for last.  We're only doing three things on the rest of the second floor, so I'll get that out of the way first.  The bedrooms are all staying the same as shown in the video.  We did not upgrade to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom that is shown after the first bedroom and before the second bedroom.  We will still have a bathroom there, but the entrance will be from the hallway.  The laundry room is a bit tight and when we saw Rob's house with the washer and dryer in it, we realized it was on the small side.  Rob suggested pushing the laundry room about a foot into the walk-in closet that is in the guest room next door.  We did that and there's still enough space for a small walk-in closet in that room.  We did add the optional bathroom to the last bedroom you see (shown in the video).  If we didn't add that, the master closet would keep going into that bathroom and the closet is already obnoxiously large; the bathroom is a much better use of space.

Okay, I saved the best for last - the master!  The only change to the room we made was we removed the tray ceiling.  That was going to be about a $1500 option and I would have much rather put that money somewhere else.  I hope when you saw the master bathroom you didn't fall in love because I pretty much hated the bathroom when we first saw it.  There were two things I hated - 1) the tub and 2) the shower.  The tub is enormous - so big that not only would I have trouble getting in and out of it, but I don't know how I'd clean it.  Also the tub surround uses up so much valuable space on either side of it that it's just wasted space.  The shower is tiny.  We use a stall shower every day at our current house and this one is only a matter of inches larger than the one we use now.  We spend a lot more time in the shower than we do in a tub, so I really thought the spacing on both of those needed to be reversed.

I don't know if any of our readers have glass doors on their shower, but if you do, you know what a pain in the ass it is to keep those damn doors clean!  I gave up on our current shower door years ago - it always looks gross to me no matter how much we clean it.  Quick funny story:  In October, I went to the meeting where we picked all the finishes in the house without Steve (I'm still shocked he gave me that much power!) and my best friend Amy came with me (who is also building her own house right now!).  Amy and I met with JoAnna and had a fun girls' day making all the selections.  We met at the model home so we could see all the options.  Katie is the sales person that usually is at the model and she knows Steve and me by name now since we go visit "our house" a lot.  Katie popped in to say hi while we were picking and we got on the subject of the master bath and how I was strongly opposed to doors on the shower, but Steve was fighting me tooth and nail on that.  He thought it would be too cold without doors.  Katie, JoAnna, and Amy were all backing me up on the no doors concept so Katie said the next time we came in, she'd tell Steve they stopped selling shower doors!  :-)

When we first met with Clark and JoAnna this summer about pricing for the house (our first meeting ever), we told them we didn't know what we wanted for the bathroom.  They agreed to redesign it once we had some ideas but we told them we definitely wanted a more luxurious shower and a smaller tub or no tub at all.  They came back with a drawing a few days later that I wasn't in love with and it still had just a stall shower.  Then I remembered the bathroom at the Keystone model.  I loved it - it had that spa-like feel that everyone looks for in a master bath and better yet, it had no doors to keep clean on the shower!  Steve and I took another Saturday to go back to the Keystone model and pretend we were still deciding on houses.  It's surprising to me how easily they recognize people who come back!  Anyway, while we were alone upstairs, I took several pictures of the bathroom and sent them to Clark and JoAnna.  JoAnna loved the look and let me know they could design something similar for us.

Fast forward to early November when we needed to hurry up and finalize the pricing on the house so that we could officially sign the builder contract (which we needed to apply for financing which had a strict deadline in our land contract).  We took an afternoon to meet with Clark and JoAnna for the bathroom and nail down a few other details, which was a really fun meeting!  All we said was that we wanted a bigger shower, a smaller tub, and no doors.  Clark grabbed his tracing paper (at first I didn't hear him and thought he said "crazy paper" haha!) and he started drawing away.  The plans are included below and I'm so excited with how this turned out.  We got a walk-through shower with no doors!  While the tub is still pretty big, it is free-standing which I'm hoping means it's easier to clean and get in/out of.  An extra bonus with the redesign is that we added a pocket door to the closet and sliding doors leading into the entire bathroom/closet area!  If this blog would let me, I'd have about a hundred heart-eyes emojis here!  Sliding doors are the standard doors that come with the house (shown in the video everywhere), but on barn door hardware so they slide.  One single barn door was $4,000 and we needed three total for the house (two for the bathroom, one for the pantry).  The hardware was only $500.  I found $12,000 in doors worthy of more laughter.

I should probably mention we did change a lot of the basement:  we are keeping it unfinished but we did get the plumbing rough-in for the bathroom.  We will eventually finish it on our own.  In order to finish the basement, Bob Ward wanted $40,000...and I thought an $8,000 fireplace and $4,000 doors were hilarious!

The next post will be about our land.  I already wrote the blog for it, but since the sellers aren't exactly my favorite people right now, I'm going to wait until after settlement to post that entry.  Currently, settlement is on track to happen on January 10, but it depends on when the sellers drill the well which is supposed to happen any day now.

Steve and I in front of the model

To Build or Not to Build

I know this blog is usually about our travels, but I'm going to shift that to making it about our adventures.  Steve and I are putting traveling on hold until April, but it's for a good reason - we are building a house!  Trust me, it's an adventure.  We are very excited about this and I do want to document the process.  I apologize that the posts for the next few months on this blog are going to be only about the house and not about traveling, but it's my blog and I do what I want.  :-)  Let me get you caught up from the events that have happened so far...

In early Spring, we asked our realtor, Beth, to start sending us listings of houses because we were thinking we'd be ready to buy in the Fall.  Our must-haves included an open concept floorplan (we love to entertain), a garage, a fireplace, and at least an acre of land, but preferably two or more (I have a dream of one day having a party barn...not sure that's actually going to happen, but we'll see).  We also wanted land so that we could have space for our dog to run, have a giant garden, and just not be right on top of our neighbors like we are in our current townhouse.  In the areas we were looking, the pickings were very slim and each listing was nothing like what we wanted.  I was trying to keep an open mind because I know no house out there will have everything we want, but we were searching for our forever house, so I told Steve I was going to be extremely picky.  Fast forward to this summer when there were still no listings we were remotely interested in and I brought up building to Steve.  We talked to Beth about it and what that process would look like and she recommended a few builders to start researching and to go see their models.

One Saturday we visited several models from several builders.  I'll admit this was a lot of fun!  Walking into brand new, beautifully decorated houses makes it very easy to picture it as your forever house.  For our local followers, here are the builders we looked at:  Gemcraft, Korey, Keystone, and Bob Ward.

Gemcraft is probably the most affordable option, but their models never "wow-ed" us.  We actually looked at several different models of theirs because there were a couple floorplans we were interested in.  Ultimately, we didn't pick them because upon seeing the floorplans in model form, we really didn't care for the home.

I would give my right arm to have been able to build a Korey home.  Korey has such a great reputation in the area, he is a really nice guy, and he does include a lot of upgrades in his homes that normally you pay extra for with any other builder (better carpets, upgraded counters and cabinets, etc.).  We fell in love with a floorplan he had online (the Megan model), but when we saw it in person we thought it was not as open-concept as we wanted and the rooms were kind of small.  The plus side to Korey is that if you don't like his floorplans, you can bring one to him and he will build that too.  We did that with a house we had fallen in love with and his price was $100,000 over the starting price with another builder.  So we got priced out of being able to use Korey.

This meant our decision was coming down to Keystone and Bob Ward.  There is a Keystone model right behind our current house and we loved the house (especially the master bath in my case).  That specific model was a little out of budget, so they recommended a model that was the exact same floor plan but on a smaller scale.  We drove up to Pennsylvania to go see that model and it was pretty small - about the same size as our current house.  We didn't want a McMansion, but we did want more space.

This brings me to Bob Ward.  As we were driving home after walking through that second Keystone model, we were talking about one of the first models we looked at - the Somerset by Bob Ward.  When we first walked into that house, I went through the foyer which after a few steps opens up into a beautiful open kitchen, dining room, and great room with a gorgeous stone fireplace and a ton of windows and natural light.  My first thought was that our annual Christmas Eve get together would work perfectly in this space.  It wasn't love at first site for me though because I did want a separate, formal dining room (that is a compromise I am making, but I have since grown to love it).  As we walked through the rest of the house, it just got better and better - huge master with a huge closet and bathroom, laundry on the second floor, big kitchen pantry, and more.  When we first left that house, we thought for sure we were going to get priced out of that one too.  My mouth about hit the floor when Clark and JoAnna from Bob Ward told me what the starting price was for the Somerset - we could do this!  We could really build this house!!  We didn't officially decide on the house until we started to build it on paper and get pricing for all the things we wanted to add to it.  Even with as much as we wanted to add, it was still within our budget and ultimately we chose the Somerset and we were so excited once we made it the official decision.

If you're interested, here is a video of the model we walked through.  Don't worry - ours will have a garage instead of a sales center.  :-)  Since we are Bob Ward Trademark customers (meaning we are building on our own land instead of buying in a neighborhood Bob Ward is building), we are able to customize a lot of the house.  I'll make our customizations a separate blog though.  I have to say that there were a lot of people trying to talk us out of building because it is overwhelming, stressful, and builders tend to have bad reputations, etc.  I will admit overwhelming and stress have definitely played a part so far, but it's still been fun.  I know we are at the very beginning of the process, but so far we've been beyond pleased and excited to work with our team (Clark & JoAnna) at Bob Ward.  They have been so easy to work with and even went above and beyond on something that helped us out tremendously with our land.

This blog was all about choosing the house and the builder.  Stay tuned for blogs about our customizations to the house, finding and purchasing our land (boy was that stressful!), and progress on the house once we break ground in January.