Several times a week I have friends and family ask me how the house is coming along. There is a lot (A LOT!) of behind-the-scenes work being done, but for various reasons, we haven’t been able to break ground just yet.

We will get there, I think it’s going to go very fast once we can actually start, but when you develop land from scratch it takes a very long time. It’s not at all like buying a lot in a subdivision from a developer and then they can start building right away because they have already done all of this behind-the-scenes stuff. We have to think about sewer mains, and water lines, and high occupancy permits, and sediment control, and installing new poles for the electricity, and yada yada yada. 

I’m impatiently waiting for the fun parts, like picking paint colors and countertops.

In case you are wondering why there haven’t been any pictures of excavators or giant mounds of dirt just yet…

We found our lot in October of last year, about 9 months ago. Since that is how long it takes me to grow an entire human being, lately I’ve been feeling a little frustrated that we haven’t even been able to break ground yet on our new house within that time frame.

Everything is actually going very smoothly (knock on wood) it just takes forever here in Pennsylvania. We are building in a Burrough, which is pretty much a small town within a larger town within a county. Therefore, there are a lot of extra rules we need to follow.

We have to have things approved by zoning boards (many of which only meet once a month) in a particular order and follow strict ordinances, such as the entire sewer system has to rely strictly on gravity, and the run-off and sediment have to have zero impact on the environment, which is great in terms of environmental responsibility, but makes the design process a little more complicated. Lucky for me, I married a top-notch civil engineer.

We are definitely going with the private builder, a wonderful man from our church who comes very highly recommended, and with a floor plan inspired by the Donald Gardner home I showed you before but modified to meet our needs, mostly larger rooms, and closets, a few doorways moved, a different roofline, etc.

Eddie worked very hard this weekend to add some more information to our plot plans, address comments from the sewer authority, finalize our erosion and sediment control plans, and complete the application for our HOP. (one of eight million permits that will be needed)

We are pre-approved by the bank and have submitted the required paperwork, but need more complete plans and a final contract to be drawn up before the financing can be finalized.

Our builder has met with the electric company, the water company, and the gas company and has an appointment with the phone and cable people on Wednesday. He is working to complete our contract and draw up our final set of plans.

Then we will need the actual building permits, which we can’t apply for until we have our house plans completed.

It is looking like we will be able to break ground in August, provided we get all of the necessary approvals.

The builder has given us a 4-month time estimate, which means there is a chance we could be in by Christmas. We know how these things work, though, and we have to expect the unexpected, so realistically it might be February before we can move in.

In any case, we should definitely be in by this time next year, which will be nice. In the meantime, we have been having picnics over there pretty frequently, planting trees, and just trying to keep up with the property in general.

PA sure is a great state for practicing the art of patience.  

We are steadily making progress on the house. Sort of. There’s a lot of hurry up and wait right now.

All of the paperwork is filed with the bank and our sewer plans and application have been submitted and paid for.  Now we just need to be under contract with a builder so we can finalize a construction loan and apply for building permits. Then we’ll wait another few months for the permits to clear.

We had fallen in love with a floor plan that we worked with a modular home company to design, but then we fell out of love with that company. They’ve spent about two and a half months wasting our time now and still haven’t gotten back to us with a final cost, although their initial estimates were almost $30,000 over what we wanted to spend and that didn’t even include a garage. We’re not officially saying we’re going to cut ties with them just yet, but we are definitely leaning very hard in that direction. They have been moved to Plan B, anyway.

We met with a private home builder, a man who goes to our church. He has been wonderful about communicating with us and doing what he says he will do within the time frame he gives us. He also comes very highly recommended by people we know and trust. We are waiting for his final costs to come back to us this week, but we are almost positive that it will be significantly lower than the modular company and include the garage. Plus we get a much more comfortable feeling dealing with him.

When we showed him the floor plan we loved, he said there was an architect who sells plans online he had worked with before and he was almost positive that the architect had a very similar floor plan.

We found it. This is the Michaelson from architect Donald Gardner. At the moment, this is our Plan A.

front:

inside:

back:

And we love it even more than the first one because there is an additional half bath for guests, the girls can each have their own closet, the kitchen will have a lot more storage, and there is another entrance from the back yard that goes straight to the bathroom, which is important because we plan to add a pool in the back yard within the next few years. Not to mention it has the garage, which has become the biggest pain so far. We want to enlarge the girls’ bedroom (the one to the left of the porch) and the master closet, but other than that it was almost exactly what we wanted.

The cons are that I will lose a little bit of pantry space and I’m not super thrilled about having a laundry closet instead of a whole utility room, but those are both things I can live with.

Also, it will take longer to build than a modular home would, but I’ve talked to the school and they said they will allow Nicholas to start kindergarten in the fall because we already own the land. Since he won’t need to switch schools in the middle of the year, time isn’t as much of an issue as we thought it might be.

We are thinking we will probably break ground in July and hope to be in by February or March, but these things always take longer than you think they will. In any event, we should be moved in by this time next year. I hope.

Here’s my original post about choosing our lot and floor plan. Sigh, she was a beauty.