House plans and the beginnings of all the choices to be made

Since the last post, David and I have decided on a set of floor plans for the house. We have been working with David Patton of the Home Plan Center (www.homeplancenter.com)  to modify the plans. We took the Bella Catherine III plan (http://www.homeplancenter.com/HomePlanCenter-1123110PHD-BellaCatherineIII.htm) and are making changes from there.

Some of our changes from the Bella Catherine III plan include the following:

• Close an opening in the kitchen that leads to the family room and put the oven there
• Move the breakfast nook over towards the pantry so we can have an open and a covered deck
• Add one foot to the bathroom so the shower would accommodate two shower heads
• Square off the sitting area in the master bedroom and avoid that three-sided window on the front of the house
• Eliminate all curved windows and elliptical transoms (anything curved costs more!)
• Make the pantry/desk/laundry area one space, just a big ole laundry room/pantry in one
• Add bench seating in the breakfast nook for a bench.

Those are just a few of the changes for the first floor! You get into really nit picky things like the changing the openings between rooms to six feet instead of seven feet, changing the fireplace opening to 42 inches so that the TV we'll put above the fireplace won't be bigger than the fireplace itself. Details!

Here are a couple pics of us looking at house plans and with Mr. Patton in his work room:

We are trying to keep the plans under 3,000 square feet. I am afraid that we are getting a little over budget based on the square footage - and I'd rather skimp a little on the square footage here or there and have more budget to spend in the kitchen and master bath. We just don't know until we estimate the whole thing out, though.

That leads me to my next topic: the order for how things go at this point. Right now we are working on getting the final house plans drawn up. We have met with Mr. Patton twice already, and we should have one more meeting to go until all details of the plans are finalized. After we get the final plans, we have to have the architectural committee at Ballantrae to approve them, as well as the City of Pelham to approve the plans to get the building permit and the water hook-up. Then, we go to the various subcontractors and vendors to get estimates on all the parts of the house: kitchen cabinets, granite countertops, bath fixtures, hardwoods, brick, plumbing, framing, etc. Then, my dad can put together our master estimate (and hopefully this won't exceed our budget, or we have to do some heavy revisions!!). After we have the master estimate, we then go to the banks to get our construction loan financing. Once you have your financing set up, then you can start building. So, you really have to pick everything out (fixtures, countertops, cabinets, windows, doors, appliances, EVERYTHING) before you start so that you have a good estimate of the total cost.

Today I went with my dad to several vendors to begin the looking and choosing process. We visited the following places, all between 12 - 4 pm:

• Jenkins Brick & Tile (outside brick, inside tile for bathroom and kitchen)
• Southern Window Supply (windows and doors)
• Inline Lighting (lighting fixtures)
• V & W Supply Comany (faucets, tubs, sinks, toilets)
• and some appliance store to look at ovens, fridges, range tops, dishwashers, etc.

I learned a lot today about brick sizes (modular, queen, and engineer are the sizes), keystones (rock face vs smooth), window varieties (vinyl, wood, wood/vinyl clad combo, tempered/non-tempered glass), doors (wood, fiberglass, double vs. single doors), faucets (did you know a kitchen faucet can cost $900!!!), and toilets (comfort height is a must, and you can get an automatic bidet thingy to top your toilet that blow dries your bottom...yeah, no thanks). It was a lot of fun! I got lots of look books to thumb through and mark up.

Here are a few pics from today's excursions with my pops:

Last week, I went with my dad to Counter Dimensions to an open house they were having for their new showroom. It was a lot of fun; they had professional chefs cooking dinner and you could look at all kinds of kitchen stuff like cabinets and hardware! A few days ago, I went back to Counter Dimensions to speak with Sandra about the kitchen design. Apparently, kitchen work stations are designed in triangles to keep the work stations flowing, and our current design is not very "flow-y." Sandra made copies of the house plans and is going to work on that to see what changes she can make to increase the flow. I also looked at kitchen cabinets and colors and woods, so she'll give us an estimate for kitchen cabinets, too.

Here are a few photos from the open house:

We won't really start building until after January 7, 2010. This is the date at which the original owner's one year right of redemption expires. We did get a great price on this forclosure lot, but we must wait to build until the land is totally in the clear, just to be safe. So, I have some time to mull over the many choices that must be made. Mine and David's decision making process is for me to wade through the hundreds of initial choices and find about five or so choices of whatever and then bring him the five choices and we will then decide together what we want from among the list of narrowed choices. He isn't much of a details person when it comes to some things, and I am, for just about everything. :) Satisficer decision maker vs maximizer decision maker....and I think that this works well together for us.

Once we get our final house plans drawn up, I will post images. For now, I am going to be busy thumbing through the various books and getting ideas for what types of lighting, faucets, doors, windows, etc. that we want (and that we can afford!).

Closing on the Lot

We are now officially landowners!

This past Thursday, October 15, 2009, David and I closed on our lot. The closing took place at the Duell Law Firm in Eagle Point down 280. All it really entailed was signing a BUNCH of papers and handing over a check. There were two lawyers, two real estate agents, and David and me. We signed papers and passed them around the table in a circle. The closing documents included papers about the terms of the sale, about taxes, about deeds, about titles, about everything else you could think of! We ended up having to pay some taxes on the lot as well as homeowners' association fees for the rest of the year. I thought that having to pay the homeowners' association fees was a little much considering that we only have an empty plot of land! Oh well. My dad said that we are basically paying for upkeep of the neighborhood - for Ballantrae folks to maintain the common areas and whatnot.

The whole process didn't take long at all; we started at 10 am and were done by 10:30 am.

Here are some pics from the closing: one of David signing and one of David and me with our wonderful, sweet, and beautiful realtor, Teresa Stahl (if you're in the market for a house, let me give you Teresa's contact info - she's great!!).

Next up is deciding on a house plan. We have an appointment this coming Wednesday, October 21, 2009, with David Patton of the Home Plan Center in Hoover. Mr. Patton has several books of plans to look through. My dad, Glynn, is going with us to look at the plans.

Dave has been playing around with Google Sketchup lately. He has drawn a picture of the plan we had been considering. Using this program, you can draw 3D images, and then you can walk around inside the house. We were using this to "test out" the Greenridge plan. Here is Dave's rendering of the outside of the Greenridge plan (complete with his TT out in front - just for laughs).

Tomorrow we are going out to Ballantrae to visit the lot. I want to take down the for sale sign and want to just walk around on "our property." ;) We will also go in the open houses in Ballantrae (again) to get ideas of what we like and don't like in the house plans. We might meet up with my mom and dad, Wanda and Glynn, to show them David's Google Sketchup renderings.

Looking forward to going to see Mr. Patton about the house plans! I'll post some photos from that (and maybe of me taking down the for sale sign from the lot!) next time.

The Beginning

We began this process thinking that we would buy an existing home in the Hoover area. As we looked around at the homes on the market, my husband began to see that he preferred a new construction home. I scoured the internet at night and then we went out driving on Saturdays and Sundays looking at the locations I had found. My dad, Glynn, is a home builder and knows a thing or two about houses. We asked him to go along with us to provide an experienced eye. 

The first neighborhoods we visited were Lake Cyrus and Ross Bridge off of 150 in Hoover. A very nice salesman from Lake Cyrus took us all over that community and showed us the new homes that were within the budget we had made up for ourselves. My dad noticed that these homes were rather close together and that they were at lower elevations than the street. All of these homes were "slab houses," which means that they were built on concrete slabs with no basement. After Lake Cyrus, we went to Ross Bridge to the Chalybe neighborhood. The Ross Bridge Chalybe homes were farther apart and were all at higher elevations than the street. My dad deemed Chalybe more desirable than Lake Cyrus for these reasons. The Chalybe homes were also "slab houses," but they were much nicer than the ones in Lake Cyrus. The Ross Bridge sales representative suggested that we get pre-approved for financing so that we would better understand our budget. I began that process online.

At this point, neither David nor I had seen one home that was just "the one." We saw a lot of things that we liked, but had not yet found what we were looking for. I returned to the internet to search for more new construction communities. This is when I found Ballantrae.

Ballantrae is a development located in the Pelham/Alabaster area. The development has a golf course and pool. There are several different neighborhoods to fit a variety of budgets, from small garden homes to large "manor" estates on the golf course. The overall theme of the development is Scottish. This is ironic for us since David's mother is from Scotland. All the signs for the neighborhood feature a Scottish Piper. Ballantrae is located a wee bit farther out of town than the other neighborhoods we had looked at thus far. We first looked at the Lauchlin neighborhood. There were four open houses the day that we visited. I immediately noticed that here the houses were farther apart, had bigger front and back yards, and were constructed of higher quality materials (cabinets made of real wood, real wood hard wood floors, etc). After mine and David's initial visit, I brought my mom and dad out to the area to get their opinions. My dad immediately liked Ballantrae better than the other communities we had shown him. As we were touring around Lauchlin, a pretty real estate lady wheeled up and offered assistance. This was our first meeting with Teresa Stahl of ReMax, the lady who later became our realtor. We had seen a few empty lots in the neighborhood and asked Teresa about the possibility of my dad being able to build a house for us. Teresa informed us that this was definitely a possibility and then proceeded to get quotes for the available lots in Lauchlin. 

A few days later, I made an appointment with Teresa to go look at a few of the resale homes in the nearby Ballantrae neighborhood of Stoneykirk. None of these homes really stood out to me, so Teresa and I began discussing the option of buying a lot for us to build on. It turned out that there were a few lots in Stoneykirk that were in foreclosure. The prices of these lots were almost HALF the prices of the lots we had seen in Lauchlin! I began to get really excited; it had been my dream all along for my dad to build mine and David's house. 

Very early one Saturday morning after getting off a long 12-hour night shift from the hospital, I met my mom Wanda, dad Glynn, and David out at Ballantrae to look at the available foreclosure lots in Stoneykirk. We hiked around the rocks and trees and looked the lots over. My dad ordered them from first choice on down and gave his official approval on the lots. David and I pumped his brain about what he thought we should do. Should we really jump into the unknowns of building a house? Did he think that this would be a wise decision? David and I went to breakfast to talk it over. We then went to see his mom and dad, Bob and Kitty, to ask their opinion. 

During all these considerations, Teresa, our realtor, called me with some "good news." Turns out that, since the lots we were considering were in foreclosure, the realtors would not get a percentage commission of the final appraisal value of the house! This was huge news! We were going to be saving about $20,000 because of this!

After asking our parents' opinions and talking things over with Teresa, David and I decided to make an offer on our first choice lot. Teresa had pulled the information for the lot next door and told us the price it had sold for. We based our initial offer on that price. I asked my dad to come to meet with us before we signed the paperwork on our offer. There were contingencies of the offer, such as that the seller release his rights of redemption (more on that later), that the final offer depended upon a successful survey, etc. A few days later, the bank (who is the acting seller in this case of foreclosure) came back with their counter offer. David and I then countered their counter offer with a final price that was the same as what the lot next door had sold for. This is where we knew the game would end up all along, but we played the part and bartered. Teresa called me a day later with the good news that the bank had accepted our offer! We then set a date for the closing: Thursday, October 15, 2009. That is the date when David and I will officially own the lot. :)

A note about foreclosure properties. When a property goes into foreclosure, the bank takes possession of the property and assumes the role of selling the property. However, the owner has what is called a "one year right of redemption." This means that, if the owner is able to come up with enough money to buy back the property (plus extra interest and fees), he or she may do so within one year from the origination of foreclosure. If the property has been purchased during this one year, the original owner may still redeem the property, but must pay the new owners what they paid plus 12%. If the new owners have made any non-essential improvements to the property, the original owner is not required to pay for the value of these improvements. The original owner may agree to release the rights of redemption if he or she so chooses. Our owner chose not to release these rights. What this means for us is that we will not begin building our house until the one year right of redemption expires. For our property, this date comes in early January 2010. 

So, this is where we stand now: we are going to build a house in the Stoneykirk neighborhood of Ballantrae. My dad, Glynn, is going to be our builder. We must wait until January to begin the true building process. Until then, we will pick out our house design and plan, begin the process of estimating the final cost, and look for construction financing. I am dreaming of kitchens and bathrooms, brick colors, window choices, etc. This is a very exciting time for us and we are so thankful for this wonderful opportunity. David and I have been very fortunate in that we are getting our lot for less than half the price of the other lots in the neighborhood, in that we do not have to pay commission on the final value of the house to the realty folks, and in that my dad is our builder. 

We will use this blog to document the process of building our house. This is more of a scrapbook for us than anything else. I'll include pictures of the process all along the way.

We are looking at home designs right now. A good Birmingham-based firm is the Home Plan Center. Some plans we are looking at can be found on this page: http://www.homeplancenter.com/plans/Half%20Story/HomePlanCenter-112.2400-2599.htm. So far, we like the Greenridge a lot. 

Here is a photo of David and me out at the lot today. We took his parents, Bob and Kitty, out to see the neighborhood and to see where we will be living in about 6-8 months!  

Thanks for reading! The other posts won't be near this long. I just had to set the stage and tell you all the background info. :)