Since I met Marc every so often, we get the crazy urge to pack up our three kids, move a few times, run a busy household, two businesses and build a new house all at the same time! Sounds fun eh! Well for us, it is. And although like any busy family, we have our struggles, we just can’t help ourselves when the opportunity, to do it all again, presents itself.
We start the process as you would expect, searching for a lot we BOTH love, and usually Marc likes when lends itself to a quick and easy build. In this case, we got lucky and got an incredible view with it! A few things I absolutely love about this lot is that:
1. It's at the end of a cul-de-sac, so no traffic when my littles deiced to take up street hockey.
2. Forest on three sides
3. The view, oh the view
4. The neighbors, we are moving into an amazing community of people, and I cannot wait to be there.
Next steps… meet the architect, come up with some ideas and settle on a general look for the exterior that, again, we're both happy with. Here’s where it gets fun! As Marc is a builder and I am an interior designer we get a little crazy. I usually completely rearrange the interior walls change room locations and then change them again. Marc gets to work planning building style, materials, walls, windows, and more. This time around we decided to build the entire house out of a product called ICF. If you’re not familiar it allows the home to be concrete right to the roof and stacks like lego. It's great stuff, if you building new I strongly recommend you take some time to investigate this product!
As a designer, I honestly LOVE what I do. Working with my clients to make their visions and dreams for their homes come to life is one of my favorite things. But… getting the opportunity to create homes for my own family is truly amazing. Not only can I test out new products, but I can get my kids and Marc involved in the process. This way we all feel we put our own stamp on the house. Although sometimes having the kids help just backfires. LOL
Marc and I honestly design the interior together, he has an impeccable style, and I have to tell you how much this man is motivated by functionality. Were an active family, our kids go to bike camp and ski school, we snowmobile, boat, bike, and work hard. Needless to say, our stuff is always dirty and often wet. So, a well-functioning house is key. This is perhaps where we, at times, butt heads. I am always looking at things with a balance of beauty and functionality whereas he approaches each space with 100% function.
Another great thing about building our own home is the time it takes to finalize the choices. Imagine (as I’m sure you have if you’re reading this) that your about to embark on your own new home build. How many choices do you have to make? There are the usual things you think of, kitchen, bathrooms, tile, flooring, paint colours… But what about doors, door handles, trim profile, lighting plan. These are the items most clients overlook when starting out, but soon realize are just as important as the kitchen design. For us, we’ve built so many homes and seen every profile, finish, and material that the choice is easy. I spend a lot of time educating my clients on the choices available and for us, we can skip this and more. So to summarize, building a home for ourselves is extremely efficient!
Our condensed timeline goes something like this. We started the physical work on this house in late April and to date, we’ve completed about 70% of the siding, doors and windows are in, we’ve received the kitchen, the floors on the main floor are mostly complete, the drywall is done, the tile in the bathrooms has begun, the landscaping is about 50% and I’m sure I am missing about 1000 other things that are well on their way to completion. All of this said the other MAJOR motivator is our kids. When were full-time working on homes for our clients during (and not during) business hours and then building our own on evenings and weekends our family pays the price. This is the other, and main, reason why we make it happen as fast as humanly possible.
So, stay tuned, keep watching and I will update you when I can on where we're at and how it's looking. Here’s a few sneak peeks.
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