Johnson Home of Eastern North Carolina

  HAHA! LOL! Teehehe! Bahahaha! LMBO! That's God laughing at our "plan"...  Our plan was to break ground Spring 2014. Umm, Summer 2014 is in about 30 days. So much for that plan.  God knows what we want and though we are being impatient, He has perfect timing. We will get our Forever Home when we are meant to have it.   Got back the numbers from a contractor we really liked... and it wasn't pretty. Way out of our price range. So we've been talking to yet another contractor. He seems very real and is super detailed in his hard estimate. We are waiting for his final number. Fingers crossed he is within our budget.  Mind you our budget has increased twice since we decided to buy land and build a house. We are so far away from what we had planned to spend on a 1600-1700 sq ft house it's not even funny. We honestly can't afford to increase it again. Like I told Brad about our beautiful, cleared one acre of land surrounded by growing corn, "I'm abou...

  I guess you could say I get a little jealous when I see all these awesome DIY projects gone RIGHT. I can't seem to get that to happen to me. I've even given up on Pinterest these days. So many cute ideas... but I lack a creative gene or something. It's super rare when I try to recreate the Pin that it actually comes out half decent.   Below you will find a few of my DIY projects lately. They didn't turn out terrible, I don't think. My motto is "when in doubt, buy some black spray paint." Gold Mirror Gone Black Mirror prepped for spraying End result- I cropped out the table on purpose.  I like the mirror painted black now but it is over a dark brown console table in my foyer and it just doesn't look great together. Whoops. The mirror is heavy and requires a screw in the wall to hang. Since we do not own our current house, I will wait until later to move it elsewhere. The console is a family heirloom in great condition so I dare no...

  Alright, I'm not an idiot but I've quickly learned that building a house is not nearly as easy or as cheap as you'd think. Whatever you have in mind that it will cost to build your home, go ahead and add about 15% more to that. It's ridiculous.   If I've said it a 100 times, I'll say it one more: "it's cheaper to live in a big city". TRUEST STORY I'VE EVER HEARD... or told. Cities have more competition, thus lower prices. Small towns have less to offer but with supply and demand, the prices are cray ! From the cost of gas to groceries to constructing your forever home, you might go broke. Let's not forget that the cost of living is ever-increasing everywhere but the paychecks stay the same.    Now, with all the pissing and moaning out of the way, THIS is what we wanted--  to be home around family and raise our family . I just think we were quite naive about expenses here.    To date we've met with two contractors and with one of th...

 Brad called the Land Records lady about our address. Good thing because she had forgotten. Imagine that! But nevertheless, we have an address now!   I texted Mom to tell her what her future neighbors' address is and she responds with "when are you putting up your mailbox?" Really, mom?? Kinda need the house to at least have some string markings for the foundation, first. Sheesh. She's a little bit excited for us. :)  Got a few other contractor names and have another meeting today for estimate #2. Brad and I have tossed around the idea of subscribing to Angie's List but thought it might not have too many listings for our area being as we are 1- a very rural area, 2- one of the poorest areas in the state, and thus, 3- not many are gonna pay for the Angie's List subscription to write reviews. Or maybe we have the wrong idea about this ol' Angie? Perhaps but still not investing. Word of mouth and physical proof seem to be the best way to go in this small ar...

 Well, we are at a sticking point with these 3 things. Haven't selected floor plans because we haven't talked to enough contractors and don't know if we'll be able to afford the house. Haven't chosen a financial institution because we don't know how much we'll need to borrow as we don't know how much the house will cost to build. Haven't selected a contractor because some institutions only finance NC licensed contractors. Is your head spinning yet? Because mine hasn't stopped... And we're only at the very beginning. Good grief.  We are looking at yet another floor plan because the only contractor we've talked to is about $20,000 more than we want to pay.  One bank has approved us for way more than we want to borrow and another only does 15 year mortgages now. This means a much higher monthly payment. Brad has a point- paying a lower monthly mortgage for a longer period of time means we end up paying $40,000-$60,000 extra for our house i...

  It's good having connections. It's not an abuse of privileges per say but rather a knowledge of how to use those connections. With Brad being an assistant engineer with DOT for the county we are building in, it kinda makes getting your driveway put in done quickly.   We had to purchase our 20 foot pipe from CRMP for about $180 then DOT came and put it in for free-- dirt and all. They would have provided rock too but seeing as it won't be the actual driveway we'll use (using the farm path beside our property as our garage will be side entry. Hard to explain but it makes sense to us...). Brad decided on no rock and to plant grass but DOT used a more silty dirt and we aren't sure how well grass will grow there. :( Maybe we need to ask DOT to come BACK and put down some rock so the dirt won't wash away. I guess it'll always be a "No" if we don't ask. Here are the pics: See farm path to the right.  Not much but you gotta start somewh...

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 ...