Foundation baby!!

I always hold my breath alittle as we drive over to the house to see what might or might not have happened! 

TONIGHT was quite the overly awesome excitement as I see the house coming together. 

Pre Foundation

How is it that it feels like it is going so fast and yet so slow.  Not sure how it will take until Oct for it to be done, but we will see!

 We are going by after Liams baseball games and it is amazing to think this will soon be our home!

Sharing with boys

Since we now have a whole we had to show it to our boys!!!

Ewan had a blast playing in the rocks!

Here is Chris standing in his future electrical room!!!! It will be exciting to see what he does with this place!

Big mountain hills of dirt!

Ewan is so cute in here!!

We have a hole!

We met with our builder today, and got the papers all signed and things all ready.  We have been working with the forman and the secritary and after we met, we went by our lot, and this is what we SAW!!

We were so excited we had to hop out and see what was going on. We talked with the volvo driver and he was so awesome.

We didnt have alot of time. so we headed back later that night! 

Chris is loving his to be theatre room! We are getting 9ft ceilings and Chris is happy as can be!!

Finding a Home

After feeling beaten up and kicked down, we had to try to bounce back and find somewhere to live.  So much easier said then done.  We found one that chris really loved.  I liked it, but it was more then I wanted to spend.  We put in an offer, however they did not accept it because we needed help from them to close (with regards to the money).  We did not make as much as we had wanted to on the sell of our last home.

We would look from time to time, but we have very high expectations and nothing was meeting our wants.
We started to slowly look into building but no matter what we couldn't find a house a builder NOTHING that would work for us.  I (like usual) would make list after list after list to figure out what we wanted what we didn't.  I would ask chris CONSTANTLY what he wanted, he would explain i told you yesterday, but I had to hear the answers just a few more times!!

While at work one day, one of our old maintenance guys came in and said he was working for a builder, "called Lodders".  They build in our area and I have tried calling them a few times, but they didnt have any lots available. :( He said they had 2 lots available right now...so I called them that day.

We opted to put down some money on a lot we had 90 days to figure out what we wanted to do, so that was a good place to be. 

I still continued to look at houses all the time, because I was not sure if I was ready to wait to build. 

In this barber house, we can never just do 1 thing at a time.  We have been out of our house for about 2 months and lots was happening.  It was CHRISTMAS TIME.....  I finished up my last semester of COLLEGE and GRADUATED!!! and decided it was time to find myself a new job.   A few months before I had met someone at Liam's school that works where I want to work so I started thinking about a change.

Buying a house, and getting a new job dont go hand in hand very well.  I interviewed and a few days after Jan 1 I was offered a job.  We decided that it was time for my dreams to come true...oh and well..... Our loan lady told us we would need me to be in my new job for about 6 months before we could close.  That was scary but what we had.  I loved my offer and I was NOT going to turn it down.  

Ashten goes house looking.....

I have a habit of constantly looking at houses. It is my favorite thing to do! See what is on the mls and day dream! I found a houses that was beautiful. I convinced my hubby to go look at it with me. We called the listing agent, because well we didn't want to bug our realtor  because we were just looking for fun.

We saw 2 homes that day, and on the drive home, we were ready to make an offer! Just like that! 

OH!! But wait our house isn't even on the market. We weren't even sure we could sale.  We spent the next few days getting our house ready and on the market, and we, with our realtor got in an offer. They accepted with the contingency! 

We listed on a Monday, and we heard nothing. On Tuesday they did the realtor show and from what I can remember we didn't really get any advice. 

We twiddled our thumbs and then showed the house I think 2 or so times that week. Week 2 on Tuesday we got an offer!!! A real legit offer, with no contingency!! We countered and they accepted. We were really selling our house. We got 2 nibbles after that, so we really had a piece of mind that we would be selling!!! 

We began to pack up and Donna (our realtor) had it all planned out so we could move straight from one house to the other.

The inspection and appraisal on our house went perfect, then we had our new house inspected, there were a few things that needed fixing, and we had the stucco bid out to make it work. It was pretty good...until... The appraisal. Dun dn dun!!!!! The house was 500 sq feet less then they had listed. We really wanted a 3,000 sq foot house this was now 2,800ish. Way less then we had hopped for. We still loved the house, but the cost per sq foot was really high. I also started to notice the imperfections what I was going to need to change/ switch and alter to make it my way. It added up quickly and we started to counter. I can't remember the details but long story short we didn't buy it. They listed it again and it just wasn't our dream anymore...oh but wait. We were still selling our house in a matter of days.

I started to look into apartments, however most of them cost the same as our old mortgage.

We talked with Chris parents and they said we could move in.  I love my inlaws but there is something nice about having a place of your own.  

We closed on our townhouse in the end of October and moved all our STUFF into storage, and the last few little items into my inlaws basement.  
READY SET GO!!! on our next journey

Here goes nothing!

The winter of 2009 I applied for a job I was so under qualified for, but it sounded like a good experience. So I applied for the supervisor in Brigham City and got it! I then was driving an hour north while Chris was driving 45 min south. The job was really hard and in April I was able to transfer to Ogden and the stars alined and Chris got the Brigham job.

Before long that commute got OLD!! 

We decided it was time to move!! 

Jason got us in touch with a BEAUTIFUL builder. Castle creek homes. We decided to put our house on the market and get started planning to build!

The sales guy from castle creek was listing it for free! We were ecstatic!! 

Chris took some photos and we got on the market. 

With shady we tried to get her out of the house for each showing which was a challenge. 

After a showing a week for the first six months, we started to get tried of keeping the house on the market, and I kept driving by our lot every few days. 

We opted to go with our friends realtor for the next 6 months. Lots of nibbles but no bites. After about a showing a week for the next 6 months again (total of 1 year) we were about timed out. 

We planned to go back with the castle creek realtor when our realtor offerd to match his cost.

We got a bite!! It was so exciting!! We had the appraisal and everything was going perfect. Their house was under contract so it was just a matter of time. 

The sale of their house fell through!!! :( to say we were heart broken was an understatement. I was so tired of being on the market with a now 3 yr old. It's impossible to keep a house clean! 

Things were going our way, we got another offer! It was perfect the inspection required us to fix a few things, but we didn't care! We were passed ready! We were a few weeks from closing when they had the appraisal. It came back about $10,000 less then the agreed price! We were so heart broken and frustrated! It had been less then 45 days from our last one which appraised perfect! We were crushed!!  Our neighbor put her house on the market for a huge loss ( in our opinion) and sold quickly, so we had to pull our house off for at least 3 months or it would be a comp and drop the price of our house. 

We decided it was time to move back in our house and make the most of it. We did a few things with the basement and garage to make it feel more like ours, but it was still hard! 

The years of making our house a home!

We were moved back into our house and it was time to make it ours. We were ready to try for baby #2 so I decided to make use out of our basement and turned it into a play room for my Liam for Christmas! It was beautiful! We got new carpet and it was a perfect place for him to play. It was a great addition. We started to fix up things here and there, namely the microwave and faucet. They were both broken and a pain to use so we got the micro for Christmas and the faucet for Mother's Day!

Summer of 2013 we made the biggest upgrade of all. We had a very small backyard with an annoying tree. We talked with the hoa and were able to get the tree removed. We demolished the deck and made something beautiful! It took us about 2 months, but when all was said and done, we were so happy we did it and would spend all evenings and weekends outside!

It was our outside oasis!!!

Should we move?

Before long I was working in draper with Chris. We would drive a good 45+ min to work each day. It was the right thing for us, but a long commute.

We started to look at houses in Harriman. They were pretty, but we were still on the fence if it was the right thing.

We looked and I would search online all the time, but it just wasn't right cause we couldn't find anything and I was not ready to put our house on the market 

Almost move try 1

After Liam was born I quit my Dld job and got a part time job. In March 2008 Chris decided to put in for a promotion for the Heber city Dld supervisor. We started to look at moving up there. We found a beautiful lot and we decided we would build. We met with a loan officer and we found out that I would need a job paying at least $12 an hour to qualify. I tried and tried with no luck.

We had a beautiful house plan we wanted to build, but it wasn't right for us.

We decided to stay put, which in hindsight was perfect! Because it was the TOP of the hosing market. I went back to work Ft that fall and we chose to stay put.

Our First Home

After working with Woodside for a few months and moving in with Chris' parents (Jan 2007) we found out that one of Dan's friends, friend was selling his town house.  We had already put down money on our house in North Salt Lake, so we weren't sure what we could do.
We thought about driving by, but we just never made around to it.
I feel that was a blessing in disCize because the house looked like this

Not bad, but not great either. I had second thoughts but we already had an appointment so we needed to at least look at it.

I walked in the door and fell in love!! 

A huge comfortable fitting home for less then the build. We could guarantee being in the house before Liam was born, so that made this little almost mommy happy!!!

The next day we went to office max to get a contract and got it all signed.

It was about March and we decided to close on Chris' birthday may 30.

We went and met with woodside, told them I was pregnant and that we were worried about being able to close. They hadn't even poured the foundation. We assumed we would be out our $3,000 enerest money, which would suck but nothing we could do about it. 

Their sales agent ended up working it out so we could get our money back which was a huge relief!

We were able to have more money piled up since I knew I would be quitting when I had our baby.

They guy we were buying from was building a house so we were flexible with moving in, but I really wanted to be in. Before my Liam was here.

Because of the big belly we hired movers. Best choice EVER!! ;) 

Also I was in a total nesting mood so I had all our house unpacked within about a month. And that ment every single cardboard box was gone!! :)

First Almost Build

Chris and I have wanted to build a house for YEARS!!!
We started to built in 2007.  We were building a town house in North Salt Lake with Woodside homes.

This is the style of the front room of the house we had planned to build.  The home was almost 1400 sq feet.  It had a main floor and a second floor, 3 bed 2.5 bath, and a one car garage.  

It was a beautiful house, but not ment to be.

About Me!

I am a VERY ECCENTRIC person!   I have always been into homes.  I would love to be a realtor, however I know I would want to buy every house; also I don't think that is the right job for me.
I am a FT employee working in the financal industry, my husband is a FT supervisor for the state in which we live.  We have 2 BEAUTIFUL boys Liam (6) and  Ewan (1) and a wonderful little black cocker spaniel named Shady! (6)

I love to stay busy. I finished my BS degree in December and now do so many things to keep me busy. My favorites being little house projects, working overtime, playing with my family and BUDGETING!!

I hope you enjoy our house building, designing, styling, and moving process!!