Building the Philly farm, or at least trying to

 

First off, Happy New Year you guys! I can’t believe we are well into the new year and already have said goodbye to the last. 2016 was a whirlwind with the twins starting out being only 7 months, then buying our land, designing a house, selling the current house we live in, praying we could rent it back ( we did ) to where we are now, whew!

We first looked at this land a year ago now, which is crazy! And ended up finishing the deal back in April.  ( You can find the original post about that HERE.)  Which means we have owned it for 9 months… If there’s anything I’m learning about this building process, it’s that these things take A LOT of time. I thought I knew and was prepared for that buuttt…. Clearly I did not reallllyy know. Our first set of delays was waiting on building permits. Typically where we live, those take approximately 3 weeks, but with the crazy housing market here in B.C it took us 3 months. Then just when we thought we were about to get it, an issue came up with a creek we have on our property. So let’s just say this – creeks and water on property are absolutely beautiful, but man they can cause you a lot of headaches if you ever try to build something remotely close to them, so remember that! Then just when that got resolved, we got hit with the coldest winter in 30 years ( THIRTY!!) which has lasted for 6 weeks… But guess what – today it is RAINING! I’ve never been so excited to see rain, and this is coming from someone who lives in one of the wettest regions around. Besides these delays I must say we are SO excited about this process and feel very lucky to be doing so.  I’m excited to document this journey here so I can look back on it all and for the kids to remember it too ! They have been apart of this whole process so far, being dragged to every single design meeting ( sorry Andy ) Tile shops, helping clear trees, chopping wood, you name it they have been there ! So they are just as excited as us for this all to finally begin:)

This is the first build for both me and Steve so there has been a lot of learning as we go so far. I am a crazy researcher, and definitely someone who knows what she wants. Steve thank the good lord is easy going and knows how to ” get er’ done ” So all in all I think we make a great team! I am very fortunate to have friends who have recently built, so I’ve been able to pick their brains on a lot of things, ( thank-you girls for being so patient with my hundreds of questions )- But have wondered how on earth people figure this all if you don’t have that. So I am really gonna try to give as much detail as I can along the way and walk you through this process so that maybe one day it can help you too!

CHOOSING A BUILDER:
The first thing we had to do was find a builder. I think by the end we met with 7 in total ( all that were amazing ), but I would say the biggest thing when choosing someone to build your home is making sure

1) They are known to build great, quality homes
2) That you click with them personally
3) How involved you want them to be
We chose Hammerhead construction because they had just built my girlfriends beautiful house and because it is a Dad and son team/ business. Steve works with his family so we love the deep roots of that. We also loved that they only take on a small amount of projects a year and really focus on your house being built, and do a lot of the actual construction of it. We did also ask if they liked kids, because let’s face it, the Philly 5 is gonna be there every step of the way haha!

The next thing we had to do was design our house. This can be a very overwhelming process if you don’t know what style, square footage, budget.. blah blah blah. So my biggest advice would be to DREAM! Me and Steve have talked about and drawn out our forever house for a few years now..What it would look like, how we could fit 5 kids and make it work for us years to come. I had Pinterest and Houzz boards of inspirations so that when it came time to design it we had a clear vision ( with very little arguments ) and thanks to our friend Andy of GM drafting he totally captured our vision. I told him it was like he jumped right into my head and drew it all out. I’m also pretty sure Steve sighed in relief at that point too, because..well not everyone can see my artistic visions bahha!

Here is our first main inspo that we found 3 years ago! I absolutely fell in love with the lines, traditional style and Kitchen / living room layout. Steve keeps teasing me because I basically just keep saying ” timeless classic” in everything we choose.

White house and black shutters, you bet thats what we’re doin! ( Still can’t decide if we should do a red door tho..)

Image via pinterest Image via pretty pink tulips

Thats all I can update for now ! Trusting in God’s timing and well.. warmer days ahead! Thanks for following along friends, it means so much!
PPS: Just because I tag someone or a company or a product does NOT mean we are getting it for free. If I’m happy with it, I want to share it with you !
XO, Michele

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