Design Center

Matt and I have been so excited to get to this step of the home building process! Today we finally headed to the design center. This is where we had the opportunity to make this house our home and put in things that we liked. I was a little bit nervous though because I knew we had a small budget for this and was afraid everything I wanted would cost too much. This wasnt the case at all!

Here is a list of the options we chose:

• Upgraded the kitchen to a premier kitchen. This gave us nice larger cabinets, a few extra drawers, and a higher quality build.
• Upgraded the master bath countertop from 6" white tile to granite.
• Added ceiling fan pre-wiring to the loft, bedroom 2, and bedroom 3. The master bedroom and family room had pre-wiring standard.
• Added tile in the walkway from the front door to the kitchen.
• Added coach prewire on both sides of the garage so we can add lights, they will be opereated by the switch that oeprates the front porch light.
• Pre-plumbing for the laundry room. This will allow us to add a sink in the future.
• Added a window to the great room.
• Upgraded carpet downstairs and on the stairs. We did this mainly because of the lifetime warrenty. It will come in handy because of the dogs and evenutal kids.

We had to do a little give and take to make things stay within our budget. The main give was not having the second bathroom a deluxe bathroom with 2 sinks. We kept the second bathroom basic, so it will have the 4" white tiles. We decided that adding nicer cabinets to the kitchen would have better resale value than the bathroom would.

Here are the color choices for the carpet (upstairs is on your right, downstairs on your left), tile, cabinets, and granite.

The whole house thing is starting to feel real now!

Meet our spot of dirt.

Here is our little piece of land. Its within walking distance of Storm stadium, which will be nice if we ever decide to catch a game. In fact if you look close enough you might be able to see the stadium in this picture. :o)

I drew some black lines to show where our property lines will be. It's a 5000 square foot lot, plenty of room for the dogs and kids in the future.

Surprise!! We are buying a house!

So Matt and I have been keeping a little secret from you all. Ok so it's not so little, its pretty big... 2048 square feet to be exact! We are buying a house!! By the time everyone is reading this we should be past the point of offically being approved. That was the major step I wanted to reach before telling everyone, I didnt want to jinx anything.

The long (sorry!) story of how the house came to be!

Ever since Matt and I moved to Eastvale we've always gone back and forth over buying a house or renting an apartment. Apartment living isn't so bad,anything you need just call the office and they'll take care of it. Shoot we even have garage side trash pick up here! We currently live in a one bedroom with a loft. Plenty of space for the two of us and the dogs. Not enough space for the family we eventually want to have. The complex we live in now has larger units available BUT its going to cost ALOT. Because of the cost factor we thought about renting a house once our current lease was up, this would also give the dogs a yard to run around and play in.

However, fate had other ideas. Matt and I were going to my mom's house one day and took a road that we typically dont take to get there, its abit of a longer route. On the way we saw a small area of new builds with a sign that said "move in for only $2500." We were interested in the almost too good to be true offer and contacted the builders. The sales consultant was nice and answered all of my questions, we took a look at the last remaining 3 bedroom they had and put a deposit down.  The house would make a good starter home and was affordable. However, the more I thought about it the more I knew it wasn't the one. We decided to back out and keep on looking.

The day we backed out of the Crestwood home we decided to head to Lake Elsinore and take a look at what was being built down there. I had lived in Lake Elsinore before and loved the little town feel of it and I knew that new home prices down there were killer due to the economy. We took a look at a single story house that was nice and in a good area. The sales agents were very helpful and answered every question we had and gave us answers to questions we didnt even know we had! But that single story house still wasn't the one. We were excited about it but still wanted to look around some more.

We headed to a new development by the basebal statium, checked out the first set of models didn't even stay around to talk. Not that they weren't nice but we know right away that it wasnt what we wanted. So it was off to the Richmond American homes. We were greeted by the sales agent who was happy to answer questions but wasn't pushy. The first model we looked at was a single story, it was nice but the living room and kitchen area didn't speak to us. It was off to the two story model. We opened the front door and instantly it felt like home. We spoke to the sales agent and she gave us all the information we needed, we told her we were very interested but wanted to go look at a few other homes and would be in touch with her.

The next day we drove down to Temecula to meet with my aunt and to show my mom and grandma the model. Matt and I were still excited about the house and knew it was the one we wanted to buy. We made arrangements, sign a paper and put the lot of our choice on reserve. On May 4th we officially signed the contract!