Modern Farmhouse Details!

I remember the day we decided to sell our house in the city and move to Decatur so vividly!  We knew we wanted to build a "barndominium" or something similar to keep our total mortgage low.  We had just been through Dave Ramsey's program and wanted to continue the minimalist trend in our life.  We also knew that when we started our business we would want our monthly expenses to be very low so that we could ultimately both quit our jobs once the business was making enough.  Though the barndominum probably is not anyone's DREAM forever home, we quickly got over of the fancy dream-home idea when we realized this home would offer us much more freedom.

As adults we quickly learned that you really cannot put a price on your freedom and flexibility, especially when you start a family.  We had missed many of the early months with Saylor while we were working and we did not want that to be our lives for EVER.

So THAT is how the Sands Modern Farmhouse came to be :)

Carson asked me what the house would look like and I quickly showed him 665045604 Pinterest pictures to give him an idea. While he was looking over those, I took a piece of paper and drew the plans for our house.  The drawings I made that day are actually the plans our builder worked off of when we built {crazy}! We calculated all of the costs to build the house that day (CPA-Carson wanted a good budget) so we could figure out if we could really make this dream a reality. We searched the cost of foundations, dirt work, surveys, builder compensation, water well digging, septic systems, flooring, kitchen appliances, etc.

We knew we wanted a lot of square footage {for our future BIG family} even if that meant we had to sacrifice some on the finish-out of the interior.  Our thought was that if we had the space we wanted from the start then it would be much easier to upgrade interior items later on down the road rather than trying to add on more square footage. We went with a rectangular design in order to save money on construction.  We initially planned to use metal for the exterior of the house, but finally landed on Hardie siding instead when we learned the metal didn't save us any money and we preferred the look of siding.

We added an office with its' own entrance that would one day be the office for our accounting firm (that was merely a dream at the time).   Initially the plans had 5 bedrooms, but we ended up having to make the 5th bedroom into a closet to save money and stay on budget.

After what seemed like an INSANE process from start to finish, here we are in our house. We obviously have learned a thing or two about the home-building process, but overall we are SO happy with the result. It took 10 months start to finish.  The building time was about 5 1/2 - 6 months and the other time was spent dealing with paperwork for the city so that we could start building.

Here are all the fine details!

4 bedrooms

4 bathrooms

2 living rooms(1 upstairs and 1 downstairs)

1 playroom

1 home office

3 car garage

10 extra closets that are NOT for clothes 🙌

His and Hers closets in Master Bath

HUGE pantry

Laundry room

Mudroom

3700 square foot of living space

Hardy-siding exterior

Concrete floors on entire first floor

Granite counter tops in the kitchen

Foam insulation used throughout

Tank-less hot water heater (has been AMAZING)

Custom paint-grade kitchen cabinets made by a local carpenter

Ikea vanities in all bathrooms built by Yours Truly

Carpet on second floor with tile in bathrooms

All tile and carpet used was basic in-stock selection from Lowe's

All Paint used was by Sherwin Williams with the builder bulk-discount

Composite roof

1 Large covered back patio

The cupola on top of the house if fake and just for looks(people ask us if you can climb up in there all the time!)

The barn doors on the exterior were made by our builder and are not functioning because he fixed them to the house so they would not move in the wind

Our builder ordered all the barn door hardware for the house off Amazon

Most of our lighting in the house came from IKEA!

The other 25% of the lights came from Costco :)

We used a local builder who also does many remodels when not working on a new-build.  This was by-far the best decision we made in the process.  He was not the "TOP" builder in the area and not well-known, but he did a great job teaching us along the way, offering his expertise, and was available ANY time we needed him!

The house was built for about $73/sq. ft- this included the water well and septic system.

Things we have added since completion that were not included- concrete in front of the garage, sidewalks, concrete flowerbed barriers, gutters, an asphalt driveway, backyard fence, security system through Simply Safe, and sod.

To my babies:  I want you to be proud of your home and know the amount of love, work, and time went into making is as perfect as possible for you to grow up and make memories here!