Big Changes Coming Our Way!

I've been waiting to write this post for quite some time now.  Waiting for the perfect moment.  and Waiting some more.  I think its finally the time.  We have finally started our NEW HOUSE!!

We love our home right now, and love our neighborhood, but Chris' dealership is all the way in Draper, and we hate the commute! When he opened this new lot in March Chris was working long hours and the drive just made it even longer! So we decided to start looking at a place to move.  We searched for hours on the internet looking at homes for sale.  We started in Lehi and looked up through the Draper/South Jordan area.  We walk through many homes and searched and searched.  Chris and I each had a list of things we wanted to have in this house and wanted one that our family could expand in and we could stay for a LONG time.

Chris' list:
   3 car Garage for his toys
   A very Large Lot! (remember he grew up with tons of acres!)
   Vaulted Family Room

Shani's List:
   4 bedrooms on the 2nd floor-including master bedroom
   Double ovens
   Kids Playroom on main floor

We found lots of houses that almost fit our standards.  Many homes that we almost put in an offer on, one we did.  We even looked at many builders comparing their prices, homes, and neighborhoods. There was an Ivory model home for sale in Lehi and I loved the layout! but we didn't love the price.  This brought us looking at Ivory homes a little bit.  We saw they had a neighborhood in Draper so we drove up there and met an ivory realtor, Ty.  He showed us the neighborhood and sent us information on models that fit our "house criteria".  The next week we went to see "The Hanover" model in South Jordan.  The house was PERFECT.  It had all of our list and tons more.  It was beautiful.  We also fell in love with Ivory's gorgeous communities.

But, we still thought maybe we didn't want to build again, so we searched a little bit more; NOTHING compared, and the prices were close to the same as a brand new house.  So we talked to Ty again and started looking at lots available in the Draper, Riverton, and South Jordan communities.  All of them are super nice.  We loved the Draper community but it was tons more money than the other 2, and the lots were smaller.  We found a large lot in Riverton but it wasn't wide enough to fit our house, finally we found a .35 acre lot in South Jordan.  We thought, and talked, and prayed, and talked and decided that was our lot and the Hanover was our house.  YEAH!

After the decision was made we put in an offer to Ivory Homes.  It came back saying that the person who bought the lot next to ours was putting a Hanover on that lot so we couldn't.  WHAT? Our realtor said they could "resurrect" an older design of our house called Huntington and we could make the changes to the plan to look just like the Hanover.  We had a huge list of changes that would need to be made.  We wanted the exact Hanover on the inside and wouldn't budge.  Finally we met with an architect of Ivory.  We talked to him about what we wanted.  To our luck he decided to draw a new outside called the "Hanover Grand" instead of redoing the inside of a house we didn't want.  A week later he send us the plans and we LOVED it! I'm pretty sure our neighbor with the regular Hanover will be pretty jealous when he sees our Grand!

A porch out front was removed and they added the long stone work up the middle of the house.  Also added are the large pillars in the front.  We squared off the garage and the vents.

With that taken care of we started picking out all our options.  This was fun.  We knew things that we would change after building our first house.  Ivory had tons of options to choose from and we spent many hours in their design center.  This was during the parade of homes so we went to many of those to get ideas.  The tile we loved was every where!  We were told that they really wanted to get moving on our phase of homes in this neighborhood and could be looking at moving around the end of the year! Awesome we thought.  So worked hard and fast to have all our stuff picked out and had it completed the middle of August.

Next steps were to wait for our street and sidewalks to be put in, and our permit to be excepted by South Jordan.  I'm not sure what happened during these last few months, mostly nothing! We waited and waited.  Finally we had a street.  Then we waited more, and finally our permit to build came back.  Then we had a predig meeting last week and were told that they would dig after our meeting.  When we got to the meeting (our house was all staked out) but they told us they wouldn't dig for another week. What?  I'm pretty sure our realtor just tells us whatever he thinks we want to hear-this has not been a positive thing as I have been disappointed so many times because what he usually says is not right! Chris drove to our lot today to see if they did infact dig our hole today.  Guess what he found?

A HOLE!

HOORAY!! After months and months of waiting our house has been started! The whole thing is already decorated in my mind, I've bought a few things here and there for the house as well.  I've been so tempted to start packing but really glad that I waited, and waited...