I’m so excited to start sharing more about the design of our home! In some of the past blog posts, I’ve talked about our journey up to this point. It’s been on my “to-do” list for quite some time to start sharing the process of the design. My first step was sharing floor plans and renderings, but they’ve been continuously evolving for about a year now! However, just a few weeks ago, we received our building permit on the most recent set of plans, so…this is it! No more changes on the floor plan and so I think it’s about time to share!
As a bit of a back story, we bought land last Spring with the intention of starting construction in the Fall. This would be right after Connor finished nursing school and had landed a job. I started designing the floor plan shortly after purchasing the land. In my head, I knew what I wanted each individual room to feel like. For example, I know pretty much the exact layout I like in a kitchen and how it connects with a living or dining room. I also have strong preferences about bedrooms and how the furniture is oriented in connection to the doors. Basically, I had all of these individual pieces of a puzzle, but I had to figure out how they would all fit together in a logical way. And they still needed to look good from an exterior and architectural view.
I went through probably 15-20 quick “bubble diagrams” to see the flow in a basic L-shaped floor plan. I narrowed it down to about 5 and then got to work on my computer. There I was drawing things out to scale and eliminating ones that didn’t quite work. Just when I thought I had “the one,” I would find myself awake at night thinking of all the little adjustments that could possibly make it a tiny bit better. I went on like this for several months, tweaking a little bit here and there.
Eventually we started the loan process. Long story short, it all fell apart about two weeks before closing and breaking ground. The bank back-peddled and would no longer finance the project. We scrambled to come up with a back up plan, or get things started with another bank. Our efforts were lost. Winter was approaching and nothing was giving us much hope. We called it quits, until Spring. So in the meantime, I studied the floor plans once more. I started adjusting things again and ultimately landed on a new floor plan. It’s similar to the first, but a bit different in all the best possible ways. It was finally perfect and ready to submit for permitting.
It’s now late spring and we’re working with a new bank to get the financing we need. It’ll have to be a whole separate post about getting financing as a business owner — sheesh. Technically we are very close to closing on the loan. However, what I’ve learned through the process is to not get too excited until you are there signing the closing papers, as anything can happen. I’m still crossing my fingers that things will start soon. There will be so much to share on the construction process as well.
For now, I’m excited to share the final floor plan of our home. Stay tuned and I’ll give you a virtual tour soon!
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