Alright...I really should have started this blog when we first started building because I feel like so much has happened that my head is in the clouds with excitement...but you are going to have to wait because I don't want to miss the important phases of the process.
You know by now we selected our builder--but I didn't formally introduce him. We very happily decided on James Jordan with XR4 Innovations, LLC to guide us on this journey to our first home! We actually have known James for a while through our boys playing baseball together over the years. Our paths haven't crossed in a while as our Bentley moved away from baseball a couple years ago and into the football scene. James is a wonderful family guy with a lovely wife and such darling kids who seemed little just yesterday, but I must have blinked away the days because they aren't so little anymore! We are super excited to work with him over the next several months as we navigate this journey together.
Now....on to the next phase. The Floor Plan!
During the builder selection process, we couldn't stop looking for floor plans that met the "make or break" criteria for our house. We knew we wanted 4 bedrooms or 3 plus a reasonably sized office that could double as a guest room. We also knew we wanted a large pantry and a sizable master bathroom. The other MAJOR must have was a split floor plan!
There are literally thousands of floor plans available online--you can certainly get great ideas as to the layout that makes the most sense for your home. Does it flow? Does it make sense for me to walk straight into my kitchen from the garage or would I prefer a true entryway space? Do I need a formal dining room and a eat-indining space (some plans call this a "gathering place"). What I can tell you is...bookmark the plans you do like! Nothing could be worse than remembering the plan you liked but now you can't remember what it was called, what site it was on, or if you looked at it on your laptop or your phone.
Floor plans can tell you A LOT about the house, but you have to know what you are looking for. There are some plans that have a legend that tell you what things mean. Others are more basic drawings that only have room labels and walls/doors/windows listed. One extremely important thing to note is:
MOST ONLINE PLANS THAT SHOW DIMENSIONS OF THE HOME/ROOMS ARE NOT ACCURATE.
That's right! If you were to just print one off of pinterest and say "let's build a house", it wouldn't likely measure out the way you planned. It is likely that the plan you like will need to be reviewed by an architect and adjusted to ensure everything has a place and everything is in its place. So...how do you know how close to accurate the plan is? You don't BUT most plans will be within a pretty close range of the total square footage that it lists.
Once you find a few floor plans that you like, print them off and draw ALL OVER THEM. Highlight areas in one color that you love! Cross out or highlight areas in a different color that you don't like. Make notes if you want to knock out a wall, add a door/window, have a vaulted ceiling, or change a tub to a shower only unit. This was super helpful for us to look at each of the plans we thought were "winners" and realize that the plan itself wasn't all that great to begin with.
I even remember one night, my husband probably thought I was nuts. I didn't like the layout of one side of the house because the garage was rear-facing and with our plot of land, we needed a side or front facing garage. So....I cut up the plan. I cut all the rooms apart on that side of the house and started trying to fit them back together in an arrangement that made sense. I finally stopped, took a breath, took a photo to send to my builder, and decided that was a HUGE sign that the floor plan was NOT a match for us!
But...there was a plan. There was a plan that kept popping up on all sorts of sites with very minor changes on each. We kept going back to it over and over. We sent the plan over to James and he immediately sent over two house plans that he already had completed and actually built. Out of the two, we found "THE ONE". We asked some questions, made some requests for adjustments, and we lucked out because James already had an architect on speed dial to help us through the architectural changes--KELLY GRIMES @ The Plan Shop in Sulphur Springs!
Kelly Grimes is my spirit designer. It was like she knew my thoughts and could just make a tiny change and make architectural dreams come true! It only took a couple of phone calls to see the plans emerge into a wonderful mess of little icons that became OUR HOME! She was amazingly positive and when something wouldn't work the way I thought in my head, she had a completely logical explanation as to why and an alternate suggestion to still carry out what I wanted in the design. Together with my requests, her ideas and expertise, a lot of clicks and undos, she had it complete!
I remember the phone ringing as we waited for the kids to jump in the car from the school line and she said the final review plans were printed and ready for pick up. I have never been so excited to see a giant roll of paper bound with a rubber band in my whole life. Traffic couldn't move fast enough, the lights seemed to take forever to change, and did I mention we have the slowest garage door in the world?
It was sorta like the Night Before Christmas story, when the kids hear Santa and get excited....you know the part: "Away to the window, I flew like a flash, tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash."
We rushed to the table, and smoothed out the giant papers displaying our picture perfect home. Flipping through each page and examining it carefully, we started the final review!
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