Piece of Dirt

Lance and I have been trying to keep things on the down low since nothing is finalized, but last night with the help of our friends and their great interrogating skills I guess we are good now to share our news.....

Lance and I had been toying with the idea of beginning the building process but was hesitant because we hadn't found a lot we loved yet.  The beginning of November I spotted a DREAMY lot.  It's located in the heart of Draper right off of 300 East.  A flat, .54 acre, grassy, lot in a cul-de-sac.  EVERYTHING we've wanted and have looked for.  A little worried the lot would sell we contacted our friend who is a real estate agent and she informed us that the lot had two interested buyers, but no offers in as of yet.  Nervous that our dream lot would sell, we began our search for a builder. 

We scheduled an appointment to meet with Candlelight, and found that the cost of building was going to be too expensive and it wouldn't be the custom, personalized home that we've been wanting. So I turned to another company that I met back in 2011 at a home show and liked a few of their floorplans.


I called them impulsively on a Saturday when all Lance wanted to do was sleep and relax at home and dragged Lance out of bed to drive the journey to South Jordan (Daybreak) to see a model home. We loved the attention to detail the builder put into his home and the quality of his craftsmanship.  We also fell in love with his personality and began to be excited to build with him.  Dave, the builder and owner of Stone Brook Homes, is a contracted builder through Smart Choice and would most likely be our guy.

So a few days later, following a doctors appointment at the fertility clinic I ventured down to Orem, UT to talk with a company, Smart Choice Communities, about the possibility of building on a lot we found in Draper.  During our meeting we were going to discuss the cost associated with building and the procedure and plan for the next couple of months should we choose to build with them.    About ten minutes into the conversation we found out that the lot, our dream lot, was under contract... with us!   They had spoken to Dave the builder and had put in an offer to secure the lot should we choose to build!  I was dumbfounded and now the concept of having our own lot and building our own house was real.  This is happening!   We talked for two hours about the floorplan and cost and financing and decided to let it soak in over the holiday weekend.  The Monday after Thanksgiving we were able to speak with the lender and get our pre-approval process started and by the end of the day our financing was all aligned to build our home. 

front of the lot.  there is an additional one lane street behind the lot that we have access to.

somewhere in the middle of the lot.

the large piece of dead grass is from the barn that was recently torn down.

street view looking into the cul-de-sac from 300 east.

the lot is right below the letter A sharing a cul-de-sac with 3 other homes
you can also see the one lane road behind the house that we can use.

my favorite part is how close the lot is to a park with little baseball field and tennis courts (with an AWESOME running path around the entire park YES!!

The next week we were scheduled to meet with the architect, but hit a road block. The floorplan that I loved was going to be too expensive to build and out of our price range. They had missed 1000 square feet of the home when giving us our estimate. Super bummed I started over and began searching for smaller floor plans that would still fit our life style. With hopeful spirits we met with the architect, only to be entirely disappointed. Our agent wasn't able to meet us and show us floorplans due to a family emergency, and the architect didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. He began to tell us that any drawing up of floor plans he would do for us would cost $3000 out of pocket. He also slightly insulted us by telling us each and every room in our floor plan was small. "I mean..the dining room is small. You couldn't fit many people in there. The living room is just barely big enough to be comfy. The bedrooms are all small, ect..." We left extremely frustrated. How could a plan that was now out of our budget be classified as too small for comfort.

I immediately called our builder and we ventured back up to Salt Lake to meet with him and his architect, who wasn't going to charge us (yay!). We agreed on a floor plan where we loved the 4 bedrooms up stairs, but I was still unhappy with the downstairs layout. Over the next week Steve, the architect redesigned the main floor.

We received the updated down stairs floor plan just last week, but there were still things we wanted to tweak. We went to dinner at Su-Casa and talked all about the things we wanted to change or update and Lance says, "you know what would be awesome? if we could increase the height of the 3rd car garage to fit in a basketball hoop!" hahah!! I thought Lance was crazy and that there was no way we could do that, but a few hours later I mentioned it to the builder and he said that wouldn't be a problem! haha!  Oh the little things that make your husband happy!