Before I dive too deeply into our plans for our house, I figured I'd share yesterday's land excursion. This was our second such trip, our first only involved one lot so it was basically a test run. That first try wasn't very successful, because when we looked at the lot on Google maps, the house next door had four trucks parked in the cul-de-sac, and we're thinking, "Maybe they were doing some work on the house when this picture was taken." WRONG. We get there, and those same trucks are parked right in the road in front of the empty lot. So we scratched that one off the list. Lousy neighbors aren't among my priorities.
Attempt #2 went much better. We visited seven properties, two of which we ruled out on sight (the neighboring houses were smaller than what we're intending to build, and I've been told that we'd rather be the smallest house in the neighborhood than the biggest).
Here are the five properties under consideration. The red Xs represent our jobs (click the images to view them larger). As a heads up, I'm not referring to myself in the plural, the boyfriend is in on the process as well.
Lot B and lot E are almost ruled out, just based on distance from work. Lot A turned out to be in the absolute middle of nowhere, but we're not ruling it out yet because that could easily change. We're going to go and investigate the area a bit more to see if we can find a grocery store. I consider accessible food to be a must.
Our fourth and fifth stops were in Wake Forest, and we
loved the area. So those are the lots I'm going to be focusing on. We're planning to go back and look around the town a bit, so I'll be sure to take some pictures to share.
Lot C is on an unfinished road, which has a number of vacant lots available. The houses already on the road are smallish, but close to the size I think we can afford. The lot's a little higher, price-wise, than I was aiming for, at $36,500.
Lot D is our favorite, but it has a number of problems. The first being, it's out of what I believe our price-range is. The lot is $42,000, and based on my preliminary calculations, I'm hoping to spend $30,000 or less on the land itself. We're going to the bank in the near future to find out exactly how much house we can afford, so I could be way off on this. I'll be sure to update once I know more accurately.
Problem #2 is that there's a fairly extreme downward slope on the lot. While this may be good for basement building, it might mean there's not much in the way of a backyard, and my real concern, is that it might cost too much for us to build on it. We're also a little bit concerned about water runoff eroding the land right out from under our house. Part of building green is working with the natural terrain of your lot, rather than leveling it and starting from there. I'd prefer to work with the slope, if that's feasible.
Another, smaller concern, is that the houses in the immediate vicinity of the lot all appeared to have been built by the same builder. We'll need to make sure that we'd be allowed to bring our own. As you can see, it's a cul-de-sac lot, which excites me greatly.
The lot is 26,000 square feet, but due to the slope, I'm not sure how much of it is really usable. I'm hoping that somebody with an eye for these things will take one look at it and say "Oh yeah, we can build on this, no problem." But you never know.
There are a few dogwood trees, right about where I think the driveway would have to go, but I'm sure it would be possible to move them. They really were beautiful. And there was one huge tree that the bf said we'd need to keep. I agree for sure, plus it was off to the side and not likely to be in the way anyway. The goal is to keep as many trees as possible, while still having a functional yard for outdoor activities and such.
So those are the two lots that have seemed the most suitable to us so far. Lot C is near a Wal-Mart and a Mellow Mushroom, and convenient to I-540. Lot D is near the local high school, and is actually just off of the road that leads directly to my office. They're both higher in price than my ideal, but I'm hoping I'll find out that I have some wiggle room on that. I'm considering calling a realtor in Wake Forest to see if they can help me find more lots. There's not a whole lot of land available in the Triangle area right now, so maybe they'd have some insider information that I'm not privy to.
The real benefit of this land excursion, was that now we know we'd love to live in Wake Forest. Narrowing down our options can only be considered progress!
The style was at its most popular in pre-WWII California, but judging by a neighborhood not far from here, I'd say it's coming back. I'll have to get some shots of those houses for you, they're really adorable.
I'm not really the type of person who rigidly sticks to conventions or a singular design philosophy, but from what I've seen, this is as close to "my style" as I can get in a widely accepted genre of home design. It's also a relatively green direction to go in, because a lot of the decorating ideas I've seen involve re-purposing old furniture and things, which means less in the landfills. I love the idea of each dining chair being a different color, and it ought to be easy enough to find some chairs I like at the flea market sometime. I'm reasonably handy with a paintbrush.
