Over the last couple of weeks, the tree house has really started to take on new life (and shape). The demo of the existing house has been completed, and now the new foundation is under way. I have learned about “footers” and other construction terms, and I have also spent a lot of time nodding blankly while Luke talks about things I can’t even pretend to understand.

We are finally starting to make some decisions regarding flooring, the exterior materials, and bathroom fixtures. It has been very overwhelming to say the least! When you look things up on Pinterest, it is super fun, but when it comes to pulling the trigger and committing to something, it gets a little scary!

Of course, we are trying to stay under budget, so that has caused us to become pretty resourceful when it comes to scouting sales, closeouts, and other ways to save money. The girls were on Spring Break this week, so Luke took some time off so we could do a little shopping. We packed up the girls, hitched our newly-purchased trailer to Luke’s Suburu, and we headed South to visit Luke’s oldest brother and his family near Louisville. We took the opportunity to go to a discount tile warehouse in Lexington (Kentucky Tile Closeouts) since we were only about an hour and a half away. We were hopeful that we would find tile for our bathrooms and kitchen for a great price.

When we arrived, the building was locked up with a sign saying they were closed for Spring Cleaning, even though we checked the website and their “Spring Cleaning” was supposed to end the previous week. We were both incredibly frustrated by this…. swearing and other “ear muff”-worthy behavior ensued…. but Luke decided to call the phone number on the website and see if anyone could let us in. Within about 20 minutes, someone came over to open the warehouse for us and allow us to shop since we had driven so far and the website was incorrect. I guess when you travel from out of state to shop, you better call to make sure they are open, even if their website says they are.

The lady who let us in informed us that she needed to leave in about 30 minutes, so we instantly felt rushed and overwhelmed. We began to frantically pace around the warehouse and quickly eliminate tile that we knew we were not interested in. We were able to quickly separate the tile that we liked and the tile we didn’t care for. We settled on a gray, linen texture, rectangular tile for our master bathroom, the kids’ bathroom, and the guest bathroom. For all 3 bathrooms, it was only $340 for the tile. We felt like this was a good deal. Given that we only had about a half hour to look through a warehouse full of tile, when the store was actually supposed to be closed, I would say we got pretty lucky. I have found that pregnancy helps the sympathy factor. The lady who let us in knew that I was pretty frustrated and felt rushed, so she gave Luke a wooden vase to make me feel better. 🙂

The tile we chose was priced at $1.19 per square foot. I have found it online for around $4.19 per square foot. I am happy with this deal!

We stayed the night with Luke’s brother and his family. With plenty of room still on our trailer, Luke’s brother called in a favor to a local business owner and asked if we could get in to shop (even though it was also closed) a really awesome store full of the most random, amazing things. The shop is called Kentuckiana Trading, and if you are ever near Borden, Indiana, it is worth stopping in! The owners buy new overstock items and then sell them to the public for around 50% off the sticker price. There are 3 or 4 huge stock rooms full of everything from furniture to lighting to bathroom fixtures (like sinks and toilets)…exercise equipment, kitchen gadgets, toys, home decor, etc. It was overwhelming, but we got lucky and found some great items! We could have bought more, but the trailer had reached its limit.

We bought two vessel sinks for the kids’ bathroom for $25 each. We looked up the item numbers while we were shopping, and you can see that these same sinks on Overstock.com are over $370 each (WHAT?).

I love this starburst light we snagged for $60. I have no idea where it will go yet, but we couldn’t pass it up.

This coffee table will be perfect in the great room. You can purchase it from Pier One for  around $350. We got it for half of that price.

I might have had to beg Luke for this crib, but thankfully, he caved. Of course, he said we already have two cribs, why do we need this one? But I have wanted this style of crib for years, and we just never could justify the cost. We actually bought our first crib from Craigslist for $50. It is the drop-side style that you aren’t supposed to use anyway. Our second crib (because Charlotte was still in the first crib when Shiloh was born…and I am a crib-for-life kind of mama) was free! So, I feel like we more than got our “money’s worth” out of those cribs, and now our little guy can have something new and special. You can find it online for around $280-$300. Again, we paid half price for this crib.

This is definitely part of the home building process that I find the most fun. I love searching for deals and sales. It makes me so happy to pay a fraction of the cost for items that we love. Nothing about this process is cheap, but every little bit that we can save will add up over the course of this journey.

I say this all the time, in every post, to anyone I talk to, but I am so thankful for Luke and all the time he has put in to making sure we are doing this right. From spreadsheets to file folders to meetings on meetings on meetings….he has been amazing. His mind is like no other — extremely detail-oriented and thinks of everything. I am proud of him and am happy to just stand back and watch him work.

We look forward to the progress that will take place over the next few weeks. If the weather cooperates, we should start to see something that actually looks like a house in the very near future. I have a feeling the fun (and headache) is just beginning!

It has been unseasonably warm in our area for most of Winter, and we have had very little precipitation, so we really wanted to take advantage of that with regards to our project. The sooner we can get started, the sooner we can be living in it, right?

Well, “real” demo started this week. I have posted some photos of the process up to this point, but maybe I wasn’t clear — the project is not a renovation per se. The project is basically a tear down of the existing house structure with a renovation of the basement and the garage (plus one room off the garage that will be included in the new house).

A few questions you might be asking (and questions we have asked ourselves) are:

Why tear down an existing house just to rebuild a new one in that spot? 

We went back and forth on this idea so many times. When we originally began this journey, remodeling the entire house was the plan. We were going to deal with the “interesting” layout and footprint of the house and simply do cosmetic renovations to bring it up to date and into our style. We also wanted to add on so that we would have a larger living space and more bedrooms.

We soon learned that task was going to be really tricky. The house was originally built in 1942. It was a pre-fab “Gunnison” home that was basically delivered to the site as a kit (we have all the original photos of the original home building process — it’s fascinating!). These homes were popular in post-war times because they were able to get homes up very quickly and pretty inexpensively.

However, 70+ years later, the home had some quirks. The interior wall thickness was about 2 inches thick. Imagine having a family of 4 children and 2 inch-thick walls! Also, because the house was designed to fit together in a certain way, moving or removing these walls would jeopardize the structural integrity of the home. This left us very little wiggle room when it came to altering the floor plan to meet our large family’s needs.

The house had been updated in phases over the years. The original house did not include the existing garage, so the newer garage that you see today was added and a room was built to connect the new garage to the existing house. This created some interesting roof lines and basically a very long rectangular shape to the home.

When we started getting ideas with regards to how much money it would cost to replace the aluminum siding on the house…to put new floors throughout…to update the bathrooms and add on another bathroom…to make the current bedrooms larger and add on another one… to replace the windows, the roof, and interior fixtures… we realized that renovating was going to cost just as much, if not more, than if we would just start from scratch with our “dream home” in mind.

Couldn’t you have just left the current house in its place and built somewhere else on your property?

We could have done this. We looked into it, for sure. However, we weren’t thrilled with the idea of knocking down a bunch of beautiful trees to make room for a new home when we could use the perfectly good home site that has already been developed. In fact, where the house sits now is perfect as it is visible from the road, but not too close to the road, either. We like that you have views of the woods in all directions and that there is still a yard around the property for our children to run and play in.

Just next to the house is a large, open field that produces thousands of daffodils each spring. It is a beautiful sight to see and something we intend to preserve. The previous owner of the house enjoyed cutting daffodils and taking them to the hospital to be distributed to patients and the cafeteria for decoration. We would love to carry on this tradition and include our girls, too. Putting a home in that large, open space would ruin the field of daffodils, and that is not something we ever wanted to do.

So, taking down the home and using the existing site seemed to be the best choice for us. We made a pretty decent promise to the previous owner that the land would be our priority and that we would do everything we could to make sure that the property (trees, flowers, animals, trails, etc) remained in-tact.

Don’t you have any appreciation for the history of the home? Why does everything have to be “new?”

No one has actually asked me this. However, I often wonder if we are giving the impression that we do not care about what has sat on the land for 70+ years and all the history and memories attached. I am probably the most sentimental person you will meet. It is hard for me to part with anything that my children have touched. When we moved from our first house in Indianapolis to Muncie, we had a pink swing in the front tree that Noelle used to love. It was attached to the tree branch with these black woven straps. Well, shortly after we moved out (like, days after), the tree collapsed due to a lightning strike, and it was going to get cut up and hauled away. I made Luke go back to the tree an hour away to retrieve the black straps of the baby swing because I couldn’t deal with the thought of them getting hauled away with the cut up tree branches. See? I am super sentimental about things that are kind of ridiculous.

So, I am sensitive to the fact that we are tearing down a perfectly fine house that has been someone’s place to raise children and grandchildren for many, many years. We could have lived there and dealt with the quirks and been just fine.

However, this was our shot for our “dream house.” We have lived in an apartment and two different homes throughout the (almost) 10 years of our marriage. We are currently in the largest of those three dwellings, a 2,000 square-foot, 3-bedroom home (that we have loved for nearly 6 years). We have been dreaming of having a place that is big enough for our family to spread out but is laid out in the right way to bring us all together (at once, in the same room, with enough space for everyone to sit). Luke’s immediate family alone is very large, and we long for the days of being able to host gatherings that are comfortable and welcoming. We have so many people we can’t wait to bring into our home for parties, holidays, bonfires, and church events (and more). We want to share our property with people we love and make it a special place for them, too.

There are pieces of the home that reflect its history and original style that we hope to reuse in the new version. There are beautiful, solid wood doors from the basement that we hope to refinish and use as our interior doors throughout the house. We are keeping an original fireplace in the home and hope to give it new life. There is an amazing concrete sink in the basement that has to be used somehow — I just haven’t figured it out, yet.

I maintain that the real history is not in the wood and nails of the original house structure. It is in the trees. It is in the daffodils that my husband and his brothers helped plant when they were in high school. It is in the trails that lead to any which way of 40 acres. It is in the birds and other animals who call the woods their home. I can’t wait for my girls to make their own memories out there — out of the house…regardless of how new and awesome it may be.

Now that you know a little bit of the history of the house, I will show you the demo progress of this week alone. It is a bit terrifying. When you drive by, it definitely looks like something horrible happened — a fire, a tornado, a crime of some sort. However, this is all part of the plan. The old will come down. The new will go up.

Well, here we are, days away from our “March” start date, and we are really close to hitting that mark. It is truly incredible how slow-moving some parts of this process can be, but we are trying to stay the course and follow the steps required to turn this house into our dream home.

We received our appraisal of our total finished property (new house with the land). Now that we have that, we can get the loan process officially going as the bank will have a valuation of the house to use as a goal. When you have a property and a house plan that is unlike anything else in the county, it is difficult to find a “comparable” to use to determine the value (and thus the amount of money the bank is willing to loan you). Regardless, the appraisal is done and looks to be favorable for us, so we are hopeful we will be able to get the financing we need to make this dream a reality.

I won’t lie. It is incredibly scary that this is actually looking like it is going to happen. Often times, it is more fun to daydream and say “someday” than to actually dive in and go for it. When you think about attaching real money to this project, it gets a little overwhelming. Many days, I walk around our current, 2000 square foot home, and I think, “I can be happy here forever.” Sure, there are things about this house that I wish I could change. We have three bedrooms (two of which are quite small), and soon to be six people living here. It is time for us to make a change, but a part of me just wants to keep things exactly how they are.

Not a week goes by that Luke doesn’t meet someone at the property to discuss something. I will admit, it feels a little like he has a second wife. He is gone a lot during the little time we have together as a family. We haven’t had a real date in a really long time. Every spare minute and soon-to-be every spare cent will be thrown into this project. I have to commend him, however…again, for all the time he has taken to research different ideas and track down the people who can help us. Doing this “yourself” is not easy….but we are thankful for the Internet, YouTube, Google, and a few special people who keep helping us along the way.

A demo plan has been hashed out with our main carpenter. He is ready to go ahead and pull this house apart, and I think we are ready to let him! I think that will be a real “oh shit” moment when we no longer see a house standing on the property. We are far past the point of no return — we might as well go all the way now.

Last night, Luke asked me if we were crazy for taking on so much at once (new baby, new house, sell old house). I mean, honestly, we might be crazy, but I am one who thinks if things are going to be crazy and chaotic anyway, and any of those three — bringing home a new baby, building a house, and selling a house — would be very chaotic in and of themselves, we might as well go for it all at once and disrupt our lives one time instead of three. We will no doubt continue to test our patience, our love, and our positive thinking, but I think it is going to pay off for us in the end.

While we wait for the action to really begin, we have enjoyed going out to the property and letting the girls play and explore. We are so excited to give them the gift of growing up out there. Let the memories begin.

I promised I would try to keep an updated account of the house progress. Some weeks, there will be lots of progress. Other weeks, there will be nothing to report. This is truly a learning experience for us as we really don’t know anything about this process, but we are forging ahead, and I wanted to share what has been happening so far.

In a nutshell, Luke and I are serving as our own general contractors. I say this loosely as we are getting a ton of help from not only our primary carpenter but also our architect and Luke’s dad who also happens to be an architect. I could not be more impressed with Luke. The man watches tons of videos and reads articles and truly tries to gain as much knowledge about this process as he can…on top of his full-time job as a family physician and a father to three energetic girls and a husband to probably the most emotional pregnant lady who ever lived. My brain can only handle so much at once before I shut down and throw things, so for Luke to be handling a lot of this overwhelming stuff is a true gift to me.

Because we aren’t working with one general contractor who can do all of the bidding and quoting and arranging subcontractors (electricians, plumbers, heating/cooling, etc) for us, we are the ones responsible for doing that. This is a job in and of itself. Distributing plans, talking on the phone, arranging meetings at the house, and following up with everyone is so time consuming. So far, the process has been decently smooth, and we are really close to having all of our bids in from the subcontractors. Again, this is an area that Luke and his dad have really handled because I can’t imagine trying to tell an electrician what I need done in this house. Uhhh…. I just need lights? 

The process of acquiring bids from subcontractors has taken about 4-6 weeks. This part has taken longer than we were expecting, but the holidays were in the middle of that, which does slow things down a bit.

Along with the bids from subcontractors, we have had to think about how much we are going to spend on flooring, appliances, windows, doors (interior and exterior), bathrooms, and other hardware/finishes. While all of this sounds super fun to think about, when you are trying to pick what you would like in your forever home, it is very overwhelming. Nothing has to be 100% decided right now, but I don’t want to estimate wrong and come up short with our financing. There’s a big difference in price in the type of bathtubs you pick out and even the toilets you choose and what kind of faucets you want. We are trying to do our best to plug in realistic numbers and hope that we come as close as possible when we actually go to purchase these items.

Very soon, we plan to have things ready to give to the bank. We have been told it is a minimum 30 day process to get the loan secured. Since everything has taken longer than we had originally hoped, I will assume it will be more like 45 days. Regardless, our goal is to be able to really “get started” in March. As in, old house comes down and new house starts going up in March.

That seems really far away, but we are already halfway through January, so I don’t think it actually is too far away. Until then, so that we can feel like some progress is being made, our carpenter has been getting everything out of the house that we will not need or use. The flooring has been scraped up. The walls in the basement have come down. Some things the former owner had left behind have been removed. We are going to reuse the kitchen cabinets by having them refinished or painted, so those have been taken out. The house already looks very different!

One thing we never really took into account was how difficult it would be to make all of these decisions while being parents to three young girls who need our full attention. Have you ever tried taking children to a hardware store? Or a kitchen/bath showroom? Or a window store? It is truly a “special” experience. It is impossible to focus on anything or get anything accomplished when you have to have your head on a swivel at all times. So, we have tried to make the most of the time the girls are with their grandparents, but we also have had to rely heavily on babysitters. My rate for watching all 3 girls at once is $15 an hour, so that adds up quickly when most of these meetings and appointments last two and three hours at a time. We should probably add a babysitting allowance into our construction loan! It feels like just as great of an expense. I have found, however, that it is absolutely necessary for us to be without our children when we are making these important decisions.

A question I get a lot is, “So will you be in the new house before the baby comes?” The answer is abso-freaking-lutely not. Had our original contractor not bailed on us, it was a strong possibility that we would have been moved in before his arrival, but since we had to go back to the drawing board and have not even begun the true demo process yet, we will not be remotely close to living in the house when the baby comes. This wouldn’t really be a problem if we weren’t toying with the idea of selling our current house in the spring before the baby is born so that we don’t have to pay double mortgage, electric, and gas bills for an entire year. Due to the inefficiency of the current home, the gas and electric bills are more expensive each month with no one living there than the gas and electric bills for our home that we actually live in. Over time, these expenses will add up and cut into our savings and the money we could be spending on things we actually need for the house.

So, where will we live if we decide to sell and move out before the baby comes early this summer? Well, one of our options is moving in with Luke’s parents (who are a 22 second drive down the road from our new property). There are a lot of advantages to doing this, but I am certainly nervous about invading someone else’s home with three small children and a fourth one due shortly after. Our other option is to stay in our current home as long as we can afford it and just hold tight until we can get it ready to sell. My nesting instinct has to be put on the back burner as I know I won’t have a nursery to bring him home to, regardless of where we are living when he is born, which kind of takes a little of the fun out of finally having a boy.

I am nervous about all of the changes and transitions taking place in the weeks and months surrounding his birth, but I am truly trying to stick to my mantra of “one day at a time.” I can’t predict nor foresee the future. I have no idea how any of this will really go. I only pray that it brings our family closer together and that the overwhelming amount of changes taking place won’t bring unnecessary stress to our children. It actually may be a good thing that I have the birth of a baby to distract me. I can see how this house might become all-consuming, and focusing on new life coming into the world might be the perfect way to keep it all in perspective.

I am an open book– obviously. I am happy to answer any questions regarding what we have done so far with this project and what our plan is going forward. We have learned so much, and I am happy to help anyone else. Feel free to ask a question or provide advice!