Mommy's Time-Out: Our New House

In June 2010, my husband and I decided it was time to put our little love nest on the market and start thinking about building a more family-friendly house for our kids to grow up in. This was a huge a very emotional decision for us. First off, we transformed that little house from a foreclosed shack into a beautiful home that anyone would be lucky to have basically with our own four hands. My dad and several family members helped to build it. I put on the shingles on part of the roof with my mom and my sister. My husband learned how to and actually participated in almost every aspect of building a home. Secondly, the house was, coincidentally, located right next door to my parents when it went into foreclosure and we had grown used to sharing every part of our lives with my parents....from dinners to beers after work on our front porch. Lastly, the house was our first home. We came back from our honeymoon and started working on building it. We finished construction almost to the day of our 1 year anniversary and subsequently went through 2 pregnancies and comings home with our babies in that house. My children both started walking in that house and had so many other firsts there. The house is in the background of the pictures of both my children's infancies and much of my oldest son's toddlerhood. Like I said, it was an emotional decision but when we came home from the hospital with our second little boy....the house literally shrunk exponentially in size. Here is a picture of our first dream home:o)

Before we listed the house with a realtor, I decided I would take a shot in the dark and list the house on facebook first....just to see what happened. Well, WE SOLD OUR HOUSE ON FACEBOOK! The same day I listed it, a friend of a friend called and said she wanted to take a walk-through. She came that night, fell in love with our house and the rest is history. We closed on the house that August. At that point, we moved in with my parents which brought the grand total of people living in their house to 7 (LOTS OF LAUNDRY). In August, we also found a piece of property not too very far from our first house and also in Hollywood. A friend of ours was driving by a lot in a perfect area for us and saw a sign that it was for sale. We drove up to the lot that evening and fell in love! It was about an acre and a half right at the front of a beautiful farm with a pond, cows and barns to boot. Right up our alley! Upon calling the number, we found it the seller was a family friend who reduced the price significantly for us and we jumped on the opportunity! We applied for permits on September 1. Because of bank regulations, we couldn't close on the lot until permits were approved but we figured, "How long could it take?" It was an already zoned, already perced piece of property.....it should only take 6 weeks tops. We were WRONG! Because of newly adopted county regulations on storm water management requiring properties to clean ALL water coming off their house (rain gardens is how we are to get this done) and because of the county not training anyone on these new regulations....we became the guinea pigs for the county to get their sh%t together.

Anyway, 3 months later on December 2, we finally closed on the lot and had permits in hand. Well at this point, we're in the doldrums of winter. Snow storm after snow storm and below freezing temperatures meant that we couldn't even touch the property until mid-February. This meant that we had a 6 month construction loan that was already 2 months in and we hadn't touched the property....yikes! Thanks St. Mary's County! But, nevertheless, here we are mid-March....about 1 month into our project and we are making great progress. My husband is nowhere to be found because he is up at the lot every weekend and each week night helping to dig, or lay block, or brick, or tarring the foundation, etc. The foundation is done, complete with brick all the way around, we enter into the framing stage next week, and, this past week, we made the final decision to put a geothermal system in our house and subsequently received, reviewed, and made our choice on HVAC contractors and Well Drillers. Here is our house in pictures so far:o)