6 Months Update

Can you even believe that it’s been 6 whole months since we moved into our new home? I seriously can’t. Y’all, I am not even fully unpacked yet. I don’t know where the time has went! It almost feels like it was yesterday that I was digging through boxes to find coffee mugs on Thanksgiving because we moved in the night before. While I’d never choose to move right before the holiday season ever again if I could help it, it sure did make for some funny moments trying to cook a make-shift Thanksgiving dinner not knowing where anything was at. (You know, the same make-shift dinner that I dropped all over the garage floor as I got leftovers out of the fridge for Rob the next day.)

Nevertheless, I absolutely love our new home and all of the wonderful memories that we’ve been able to make in it so far this year. We have had a dream to use our home to love and serve people well (hence how A Hosting Home came to be), and that’s exactly what we’ve done. We love hosting friends and family in our home from time to time. We’ve hosted holidays with friends whom would’ve otherwise been alone along with lots of Keto dinner parties full of laughs and twice baked mashed cauliflower.

READ ALSO: Introducing #AHostingHome + A Peak at Our Neutral Christmas Decor

While we have loved our home from the beginning, building (let alone buying!) a home is not exactly an easy feat. Other than if I am unpacked yet, the most common question I get asked is about what we learned from the building process. As first time home builders and buyers, we have learned a lot since starting this process about a year ago. So after six months of living in our home, what better way to celebrate than sharing with you all the top 5 things we learned! Grab a cup of coffee and a notepad. You’re not going to want to miss this!

What We’ve Learned As First Time Home Builders

I would like to disclose that nothing said in this blog post is meant to shed a negative light on our home builder. As always, we wish to be authentic as we share about our life with you all. That being said, we wanted to share with you what we really learned!

1. Builders don’t take timelines as seriously as wedding planners.

As a certified wedding planner, timelines are essentially a way of life for me. I take timelines extremely seriously. I definitely create them to be followed in order to give my clients a seamless and stress-free wedding planning process. Meanwhile, a big thing I learned during the building process was that builders don’t necessarily take timelines as seriously as wedding planners.

Okay, that may have been a little bit of a loaded statement. They probably take their timelines seriously. But, I’ve found that construction never seems to go as planned. Not to mention, when things are behind, it seems like they’re often in their own little world about it all. With the weather and all of the little things that go into the building process, a lot of things can come up while the home is being built. (They all did for us!) We ended up closing on our house a couple months later than the builder originally predicted. As you can imagine, an extremely excited planner who was waiting on someone else’s inaccurate timeline didn’t make for the best combo.

2. Set your deadline way before you expect to move in.

As Rob perfectly put it, “And they just might get it!”

Like I mentioned, we actually closed on our house later than the builder originally predicted. Luckily, we planned to overlap our lease with our old house to give us a little extra time around the holidays. Turns out, we ended up needing all of that overlap! While you can’t always control the outcome of the construction process, we definitely learned that we should have set our deadline before we expected to close. It may have not helped at all – or it possibly could have helped move things along faster towards the end!

But also – trust God’s perfect timing!

Meanwhile, I also learned to not get my hopes up about our closing date and to trust God’s perfect timing. With us finally scheduled to move in the week before Thanksgiving, our closing date then got pushed back due to the holiday. You probably already know that there were some tears shed when there was a real possibility we would be spending the holiday surrounded by boxes rather than moving into our new home. While these first two points tested my faith and proved that only God is in control, I learned to lean on God and be content in his perfect timing. We moved into our home the day before Thanksgiving, and it couldn’t have been more perfect! While we are fast to make our own plans, it’s important to remember that God knows what he’s doing.

3. You really need to go by the house every day.

One of the first things I was told when we first started building our home was that we need to go by it often to keep on top of the progress. As they get going with the construction, you really need to go by every day. I don’t say that to say that you should distrust your builder. But rather, there’s a lot of moving parts when it comes to building a home. Mistakes can easily be made with miscommunication. Not to mention, it’s a lot easier to get those mistakes fixed sooner rather than later when the house is complete and it’s too late.

We went by the house every few days when they first started, and towards the end we ended up going every day to walk through and make sure everything looked as we planned. Even then, there were a few disappointing mistakes that were made. You may even remember the sink debacle on Instagram Stories. While our situation proves there’s obviously things you still can’t control (even when you go by every day!), hopefully being on top of the progress will allow you to easily fix any hiccups that may come up along the way.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. 

When it comes to building (and buying) a home, it’s important that you’re not afraid to ask for what you want. Speak up! You’re paying a lot of money for this next chapter of your life – you should be getting what you want and are paying for. Especially when it comes to some hiccups that may happen along the way, you have to find your voice. Meanwhile, it definitely helps when you have an amazing realtor like we did. She was so on top of everything, was able to speak on our behalf to help us get what we wanted, and made the entire process so much better!

5. Make it what you want. 

This is an exciting new chapter in your life’s journey. My absolute favorite part of the building our home was the design process and selecting all of our finishes. Rob’s favorite part was adding in his fancy new fridge and TV after we moved in. (Such a guy thing – HA!) Essentially, our favorite parts were making our home ours.

Meanwhile, just like the wedding planning process, I think it’s safe to say that everyone will have an opinion about you buying or building your first home. Don’t worry about what everyone else thinks! Whether good or bad, I’m sure their intentions are to mean well. Design your new home with intention, and do what’s best for you and what you want. You have to live there!

 

 

We definitely learned a lot during the process of building and buying our first home. I hope these top 5 things we learned help you as you embark on this journey of your own. What have you learned as a first time home buyer or builder? Leave a comment for us below!