Johnson Home of Eastern North Carolina

Proverbs 24:27 Do your planning and prepare your fields before building your house. This was in my morning devotional today. How appropriate? We keep getting asked if we've talked to a contractor yet, when are we planning on building, etc. It's borderline annoying but I just keep answering "Not yet. In due time. We are taking things one step at a time. Trying to complete one task before moving to the next." We have a plan or at least an outline of events and we're filling in the blanks as we go along. We are trying to prepare for the ups and downs and unexpectedness of building a house. I mean, we just got the deed to our land last week and we're already experiencing the unexpected. Building a house is stressful. People who have done it say if they had to do it all over, they'd buy a house. That's not very optimistic for us.  We just want to be as prepared as possible as to avoid as many "surprises" as we can. Of course we are in for ...

  After that incredibly awful Broncos defeat last night and all the really mean but "funny" posts all over the Internet, I feel compelled to explain why I am a Peyton Manning fan and not necessarily a Denver Broncos fan.   I grew up in a NASCAR home. You have a favorite driver, not a favorite auto racing team (i.e. Joe Gibbs Racing, Hendrick Motorsports). Well, I guess some people do, but not my family. If our man was out of the race, then moderately pulling for another Richard Childress Racing teammate wasn't totally unheard of.    I was a Dale Earnhardt, Sr. fan… because my dad was. I would spend Sundays watching that black #3 go 'round and 'round those tracks. I guess my "relationship" with the player started at a young age. Watching NASCAR was a way for my dad and I to bond. I did everything I could to learn more about Dale, Sr. (or at that time in the 90s, he was just Earnhardt… Jr. hadn't made his NASCAR debut just yet.) I watched his in...

  Hoping to get the pre-approval paper work flowing next week with one bank. Might try two just to see what's up. With me not working and us on only one steady income, I don't have such good feelings about dem dolla signs the bank will allow us to have. We shall see.    I have family who works "high up" at this bank but doesn't deal directly with family (smart move, bro) so we've been directed to another loan officer. Said family member did let me in on what we need for a preapproval. And holyyyyy smokes, it's a lot of mess.  We need but are not limited to: - driver's license - SSN card - 3 years worth of income tax info - retirement/401k info - current bank account info (ALL accounts) - life insurance info - out-of-pocket health insurance info - 529 monthly contribution info - 3 of the most current pay stubs Good LAWD! It's taken me a few weeks to gather all that information. Whenever I think about searching for it, I get tired and ...

  The deed has been recorded. Playing with lawyers who know your family (because one landowner is your county's tax collector?!) and just consider this a whole "family deal" kinda makes for an easy, but I-don't-feel-taken-seriously affect. The deed was supposedly recorded two Fridays ago but I still can't pull it up on the online Register of Deeds. Maybe another Friday or two and I'll be able to see it. Our survey platt is there, though. That's a good sign, I guess? I loved how our lawyers were pretty much available to take my phone calls all the time but I didn't love how their receptionist/paralegal/legal assistants had no idea how to answer any of my questions. Like none of them. But instead of trying to help me find the correct answer, would just blow me off. Lots of deep breaths and persistence later, I found my answers. SHEWW!   The Land Use Program had some deferred taxes on our acre that we agreed with the landowners that Brad & I would pa...

Clearly you need to start somewhere and that somewhere should be with buying some land. I never thought I'd move home to Hertford County but after having a baby and plenty of nieces and nephews, our views changed and "Family" became a huge part of our lives. Moving home became our obsession. When the baby was just one month old, we began exploring our "move home" options. First, we needed a reason other than family… like say, a job. After lots of research, several job applications, a few let-downs, the Good Lord answered our prayers and a job opportunity Brad had previously been rejected from became available again. He got it! We had one month to move home before he started working with DOT. For two months and our stuff in 5 different houses, we lived upstairs at my parents' house. Finally we moved into some new digs at Brad's grandmother's house. We have truly been blessed by God to have such amazing family.  Without them we wouldn't have any ...

Some Tips and Forget-Me-Nots for Along the Way Take your budget (what you know you can actually afford) and times is by 0.9. This lower amount should be your new budget. Try to stick with that number along the way as it is incredibly common to go over the budget! So when you DO go over the budget, it won't come as such a shock because you can still afford it. Plus, if you don't go over your budget then it'll be an even sweeter reward in the end. Pick paint colors, lighting, interior/exterior/cabinet doors, flooring, etc. ahead of time so when you need it, you can easily go buy it and not have to stress over all the choices. It can be overwhelming (I'm speaking from our past situation.). To add character to your new construction home, look for light fixtures at Habitat for Humanity or yard sales that you can buy and repaint. Same goes for furniture and even possibly, faucets or appliances. Think about adding Sweat Equity into your home. Do all the painting (you...

  I'm not at all sure if anyone will actually read this or even get anything from it but I feel like maybe blogging about our experience with home-building will help us through it. From what I've heard some people wouldn't wish this experience on their worst enemy. Oh, that's awesome…    We've done this once before; however, it was a custom, pick-your-plan thing. We chose the floor plan we liked, the colors we wanted, changed the layout so we had a side-entry garage and that's about it. It was quite simple. The only other thing we did was ask if we could come in on a weekend and insulate the interior walls and the garage for additional sound proofing and, for a more obvious reason, the electricity bill.    This go-round we want to be more involved. Not as in "I'll be the general contractor, you do the work" kind of involved but know what's going on and add our own bit of sweat equity along the away.   With me not working (for reasons that we...