To Build...or Not To Build...

...that is the question!

We are definitely thinking of moving within the next year or so. Ideally, it'll be next spring/summer.

Why?

Well...we live in the city which would eventually mean city schools for Avery (and other children we may have). We also don't have a garage which really sucks in the winter. And it also means we have very little storage for outdoor things. Avery's strollers are stored in our car trunks right now. And when she gets a bike? Yeah, no clue where that would go! And lastly, we have 3 bedrooms. We could obviously fit another kid in our house if we had to, but it would be tight. Our third bedroom is set up for visitors right now-our old bed is set up in there for when my Mom stays, etc. It's just nice to have an extra room that you can put stuff in.

So...we decided it was time to start looking. I've always wanted to build a house-I just think it would be awesome. Gabe wasn't too hot on the idea at all for some reason-I think he had a feeling we couldn't afford it.

But then his mind changed when we went to the home show in Buffalo. The houses (for once) were affordable and they were very nice. I think he could actually see us living in one of those homes which usually doesn't happen at those home shows. Typically you leave depressed because the houses are so over the top that you could never think of owning it.

So after the home show, Gabe really got into the idea of building. We went to the Rochester home show as well and from that we got a pretty good list of builders in the area. Over the past month or so, we met with 3 different builders in the area.

It's sort of a hard process because we have never done this before so we have no clue about anything that's involved in it. We're learning as we go-some things good, some things not so good. I think the thing that will hold us back is the deposit issue. Some builders require an insane deposit before they'll even break ground on your new house. The only way we could afford that deposit would be to sell our house first. The problem? You'd be homeless until your new house is built, which could be up to 5months! So basically you'd have to move twice and find interim housing....can we say PAIN IN THE ASS?! So...right now we're trying to find someone who will take less of a deposit to break ground. Ideally we would like to sell our house while the new one is being built and maybe rent our house back for a month or so until the new house is done. That's the plan at least!

We've been busy going through floor plans and picking out things we like and don't like. We're hoping to meet with a builder next week to try and price things out to see if this is really doable for us.

I'll keep you posted on things and will reveal more as we go...I'm just crossing my fingers (and toes) that this works out for us!