An introduction of sorts

I actually first started writing this post back in January of 2011! Wow, where does the time go? I never ended up finishing it or posting. Today I am going to change this....

Hello there! I believe an introduction is called for. This is a personal blog I have set up to track the progress of the building of our first house. I'm not really planning on anyone actually reading this (haha), but it's here for my use to explore ideas, document the experience, cry, vent, and ultimately (and hopefully) love the end result. My new journal, because seriously, with all of the technology these days who has the time to keep a psychical diary!

I'll tell you a little about myself. My name is April, I'm 27, and live in Connecticut. I graduated from Central Connecticut State University in 2006 with a Bachelor's Degree in Criminology (minor in Psychology). I was at the top of my program, and also interned with the Federal government my last semester. I started working full-time less than 4 months after graduation in the insurance industry for a well-known insurance company. When I'm not working, I enjoy sleeping, watching TV, and procrastinating. Especially when it comes to exercising and getting back into my former svelte shape. My boyfriend and I have been together for over 8 years, and have rented at my mother's house for over 7 of these years. Together, we have 7 animals in the household; 4 cats and 3 dogs. As you can see, we're animals lovers. Well, I am at least! 5 of the animals belong to Chris and myself- Cooper (Shih Tzu), Maggie (Shih Tzu), Lily, Billy and Serena (all Persians).
I enjoy hockey (Go Whale! Rangers! And Whalers RIP), theatre, traveling, reading, cars, and interior design.

So, you may be asking yourself, how are a 27 and 33 year old able to build a new home so early in their respective careers and in this horrible economy? Well, there's been a lot of saving and investing involved over the last few years. I mentioned above that the man-friend and I have been renting from my mom.. emphasis on the word RENTING. Yes, there has been no freeloading here! We didn't start getting serious about moving out until about a year & a half ago. I never wanted to leave my mom. What Chris and I had originally envisioned was staying at my mother's house but buying a home on Cape Cod to initially have weekends and vacations at. That was the plan for a while, until we started realizing it may not be the most beneficial at this time. Things really started kicking into gear when conversation started about buying Chris' family land from his grandfather and building a house on it. At first it seemed like a wonderful idea; 41 acres of land to roam, future investment potential, and keeping the land in the family. We tried for months to make this work, meeting with brokers, banks, and lawyers trying to get things straightened out. After a few months of not being able to get anywhere (due to the property being in distress and the size-deemed too large for residential purposes), and meeting with our lawyer, we finally decided that it just wasn't going to work out in the end. We had a stripped-down 1700sf home plan from Connecticut Valley Homes (a modular builder out of Niantic) because that's all we thought we could afford after the initial price of the land. In the beginning of the process I said if the family land didn't work out, I would look elsewhere to a town I desired to live in; Ellington. There were no homes built that remotely peaked our interests in the area (believe we, we have been looking for years.) My mind soon changed, when we started looking for individual pieces of land in town.

Stafford, Connecticut is a charming old mill town in eastern CT, right on the border of Massachusetts. What it lacks in population it makes up for in size. Many of the families have never moved out of town, and nearly everyone knows everyone. My boyfriend grew up there until he moved out in his early twenties. The town always gave me a "warm", at home feeling whenever we stopped by to visit his family. From the old Main Street with old remnants of once glorious mills, to the small parks and bountiful hills, this town grew exponentially on me over the past years.

We started looking at pieces or land in Ellington but didn't find and land we loved that was also in the price range. We ventured over to Stafford as well, checking out 20-30 lots. We found two promising lots in Stafford; one was in a new development in a very quiet area of town, a quick drive down to Main Street and the highway. The other was in a small, older development farther north in town and right by the big lake. Number one was pricier and had deed restrictions and we didn't think it was in the current budget. We went to number two with our broker and walked the lot, but it just didn't feel right. Now I'm big in to "signs" and listening to the universe, so check this out: I had sent an email to this broker a day or two before we drove out to town to check out number one. We were driving on the street through the development and stopped momentarily at the culd-e-sac, and my phone rings. It was the broker calling me back for the first time :) Anyways... to make a long story short, we decided to try for number one and drew up a contract at the office. We actually met with a builder who had built a few of the houses in the neighborhood and who had a few packages listed with our broker in the development. We didn't go back and forth more than once each before the seller accepted an offer. Back then we thought we needed to draw up plans and get the mortgage before we could pay for the land. After much discussing, we decided to just buy the land outright with some of the money we had saved up. Our finances weren't in order a year and a half ago by any means come to find out. We decided that my new car needed to be paid off and along with a couple credit cards before we applied for a mortgage again. So, on New Years Eve 2011, we closed on our land and now owned it outright! We had a plan and blue prints from the builder, but we have recently changed everything around. The plan right now is to start breaking ground the beginning of May! The house will be a colonial Cape Cod. Now that the back story has been told, I will start updating with more details and thoughts as we go through the process. Thank you for sticking through my rambling!

~April