When we bought our first house seven
years ago, it was a flash of "Oh holy crap, I'm an adult". Sure I was
out of college, living with Mac, and we were even engaged but I remember that
being such a milestone. Finally we didn't have to walk up three flights of
stairs with arms full of groceries or listen to our trashy neighbors fight all
the time then....uh...make up very loudly. We didn't have to call the cops on
our upstairs neighbor for being an inconsiderate jerk. And we finally had more
than one bathroom.
Three years after buying our first
house we decided to build our current home. We were outgrowing our first house
and ready for more space and something that was really our style. Building a
home was equal parts awesome and frustrating. There are so many things I wish
we had known ahead of time but that we learned along the way. Weird little
things that you just never think of until after the fact.
My sister and her fiancé are going to
build a house later this year and from all the text messages and phone calls
back and forth with our advice, I put together a list of things for all you
future house builders out there.
1. Get everything in writing. EVERY.
LITTLE. DAMN. THING. From the time you sign your contract until the time you
close on your house, anything that is discussed should be verified via email
then saved. Even if you think your builder or the company is trust worthy and
you don't need to, do it. We really liked our builder. He was really friendly
and personable. Then he tried to screw us multiple times and our emails were
what saved us.
2. Think about the little things. We
wanted our walls to be painted bright white, not the antique white that was
their standard. It was too cream for us and looked dirty. What color are the
hinges and door handles? How tall are your vanities? Adult height? Standard
height is shorter. How many outlets are there in every room? Are they in
convenient places for Christmas trees, tables, etc? If you're getting an island, put an outlet at the end. My mom told me that and it really comes in handy with the crockpot or giant Kitchen Aid mixer.
3. See if the room placements make
sense and don't be afraid to see if you can move stuff around. We changed quite
a bit on our layout. The planned downstairs bathroom was also where the washer
and dryer were located. It was also inconveniently place just inside the door
to the garage and across from the door to the basement. This was a problem for
several reasons. First, it really made it difficult to get big items down
into the basement due to the close proximity to the bathroom door. Second, I
really didn't want the washer and dryer right next to the living room.
So we looked at the rest of the floor plan
and moved some stuff around. We didn't need two coat closets so we made that
space the powder room. It works perfectly. As for the washer and dryer, we took
some space out of an upstairs bedroom and made a laundry room there. The
bedroom is still large enough for a full bed set and the laundry room is
conveniently down the hall from our bedroom (which I love!). It's so much
easier to do the piles and piles of laundry I have when I don't have to climb
stairs with precariously balanced baskets.
One thing I wish we had foreseen was
how our bathroom shares a wall with Sullivan's room. We obviously knew it but
didn't realize how loud it was when we ran the water or I used my hair dryer.
Luckily this is easily fixed by a white noise machine. The poor kid's bedroom
is also above our living room that has surround sound speakers in the ceiling
so the white noise is helpful there as well.
4. Go and talk to your neighbors. Not
the ones your builder may take you around to see to make them look good. Go
knock on doors or talk to people who are hanging out outside and ask them what
their experience was like and how they like the neighborhood. I would have
loved knowing ahead of time that the neighborhood behind our house shoots off
fireworks not only until 4am every night the weeks around Fourth of July but
randomly throughout the year as well. It's bad enough that I probably
would have not built there. Seriously.
5. Planning for the future. With the
way cars are evolving, you might want to install special outlets in the garage
for electric cars. Plan on at least a 220v but more likely a 440v. We have one
in our garage already and Mac can use it for his air compressor and larger
tools.
Also
think about if you want a wired home network. If so, you're going to want to
run a cat6 cable. Wireless is great for a lot of things but wired is more
reliable and secure for many applications. We use ours mostly for streaming
media and also for the receiver in the living room.
And the final bonus tip I have is a bit ridiculous but I have good reason for suggesting it. If you are getting any part of your closing costs paid for, make sure it clearly states that they are paid AT CLOSING. Yes. That was a problem. Our contract stated our builder would pay our closing costs. On moving day, as we were driving to the office to sign the damn papers, they call us and say that "Oh the closing costs were worked into your discount of the final house price." Huh? What good would that do me? After lots of fighting we ended up paying half anyway. Quite frankly, we needed the keys. The people who bought our old house were moving in the next day and we had nowhere else to go.
So while I try not to be bitter that my sister and B aren't moving anywhere closer to us, I hope this has helped give you a few things to think about. Oh and if you could make my bedroom at your house a nice large one with a lovely ensuite bathroom, I would really appreciate it. And your nephew just wants some Cars or Buzz. Or the Little Mermaid, randomly enough. Go figure.
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