Building a Home....It is just the Beginning!

Fellow First Time Home Builder
I decided to write a blog about building a home. It is 2018 and the housing market is HOT. Like volcano, lava, flowing hot. I am a 32 year old woman, married to a part-time Army man who is also a 9th grade History teacher. We have 2 beautiful girls and 2 dogs. I have not found a lot of information from actual customers who are building a home and thought, this is a process that people really need to know about and hear first hand about it!

Let me start, we loved and enjoyed our starter home but we knew it was not our dream home.  We started looking around at several builders, MI Homes, Drees, and we knew we wanted a 3-4 bedroom ranch style home with a basement. We ended up choosing Pulte to build our dream home. They offered everything we wanted and then some. The features that sold us the most was the extended garage, the master bedroom and bath, and the basement the same size as the ranch. We will see if Pulte likes this blog in the end or not (really a lot would depend on how we are treated during this). I plan to only blog once per month as this process goes along or if important pieces occur. We put in our offer on a lot/home on March 4, 2018. This will cover the month of March/April--but mainly April. March was a lot of paperwork, etc and doesn't need to covered in this blog.  Let's start from after we put our offer down and about 2-4 weekends later when we start selecting all our exterior/interior items.


One important recommendation!!
If you have young children, really try to get a babysitter for the selection processes and meetings. WOW! Here is one picture I took on a day we had our hands full!
Pulte Planning Center with 2 children-- bad idea!
Zachary has been very helpful and responsive. He was our go-to person who you communicate everything to, including, I changed my mind on this, can I do that or tell me more about, etc? You can ask any question to this person. For example, we weren't offered an overhead patio when we went through our selection of the main details of the house, and later we asked. It was discontinued with Pulte, but we were able to add on after we asked. They have ways to change some details, and so you should be willing to ask. 


Model Home Master Bedroom
Gorgeous Master Bedroom
Video of the Amberwood Model

Exterior and Interior Selection Process
We selected the Amberwood design--which is 3 bedroom, flex room, 2.5 bath plus unfinished basement. We met with Zachary to go through our exterior colors, we could only have certain choices because they try to not make all the houses look the same. People have to use different elevations and different colors. Then we went into all interior choices. This includes carpet, laminate, granite, cabinets and colors of them, bathroom laminate/granite, fireplace tile, and etc. It was overwhelming to have to pick all of that. I asked, are we able to change our mind? The answer is YES! Not until you meet with the "builder" and finalize it all and they order it, is it final. So as you can see below, we made all of these selections. So you are aware, we already have changed our exterior option. Then we are discussing our kitchen cabinets again after thinking more about the floors we want to install. See below about cost savings!
Our options we selected
Laminate for laundry, kitchen, hallway (removing the kitchen, hallway after we move in--see cost saving options below!)
Love the wood tile on the right for the bathroom
Fireplace tile, carpet, and bathroom granite and cabinets

Cost Savings Options
We met with a previous co-worker of mine who lived in the neighborhood and she and her husband gave us a lot of advice. So here is our first time home building advice.
  1. You could easily do a lot of their "upgrades" yourself after you are in the home. For example, we didn't like the flooring options they had. They looked plastic and cheap to us for waterproof laminate. The price was also the same as if we went to Lowe's and we picked out what we wanted for nicer quality (we had recently done that in our house). So we plan to actually take out the laminate in the hallway and kitchen and remove the carpet from living room and replace with our choice of waterproof laminate.Things like flex rooms, you could actually turn into a 4th bedroom someday easily and more affordable than they offer. Also things like sink heights or double vanities as well. You may have a hassle to have to get all that coordinated, but honestly, for us, our dream home, we didn't want just any flooring for our main area.
  2. Keep in mind--the model home has MOST of the upgrades! The idea is that they coax you in and want it all. So be prepared to let go of some of those items unless it doesn't bother you. Just be prepared for all the upgrades to be shown, so that way you are enticed.
  3. Take your time and really think through everything. We thought we needed a 3 car garage due to storage. Then we realized Pulte offered this extra storage past the cars, that essentially makes it a 3 car garage but to where the 3 car is the storage. I will show pictures someday. It is perfect garage storage. This meant, that we don't need the 3 car garage and saved money on this part. 
  4. USAA Members get a discount with them--which is nice. So feel free to ask about all things you are associated with like AAA. I have no idea if they offer it, but ask! 
  5. We are utilizing the Pulte Mortgage Company to get the additional savings. We will see how that goes, but so far, it has given us a big discount. We think that actually is a good idea to use but I definitely am allowed to change my mind on this later. 

DIGGING BEGINS!
There is a hole in the ground! As of May 2, 2018, there was a hole in the ground. From around late March, they were putting in permits, etc. They said this takes about 30 days. Then they started the digging. They could have started several days prior, we only went on May 2 to see if anything had started. We are excited to see the progress!
That is our HOLE!! 
Excited to see our future!

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