5 Things I Wish I Knew Before We Started Building Our House

Hello, Hello, Hello! I’ve either been watching way too much Ru Paul’s Drag Race, or I’m just overly excited about building our house. To be honest, it is a little bit of both. If you didn’t know, then we are first time home builders, and let me tell you, it has been a process! With that being said, there are five things that have really stood out to me in the early processes. If you’re building a house, thinking about building a house, or just curious about the process, here are 5 things I wish I knew before we started building our house.

1. There are way more steps than you realize there are

Here is the news, everything is going to take so much longer than you think. This is mainly because you have a lot of things that go into a house that you don’t realize. Since we have been working on the house for roughly two or three months, we have just now gotten to the point where it is starting to look like a house.

While I wish the house would magically pop up, I would much rather have the builders take their time and do it right. Since we have started building our house, I think that it has actually made me have better patience, as crazy as it sounds. PS: I’m documenting the process on Instagram!

2. You need to do some planning, seriously

From what I have gathered, a lot of first time home builders who create custom houses don’t actually plan it out. We sat down and drew out what we wanted on a $20 white board, and we were off to the races. We took the time to plan the layout which has resulted in quite a few compliments on our plans! I knew those 20 years of playing The Sims would pay off!

3. Have reference photos for everything

There are so many words, phrases, and just general construction terms that I have no idea about. When we have gone to meet at the house with vendors or builders, they are saying words that basically mean nothing to me. What I have started doing is gathering reference photos of what I want things to look at. That way I am getting exactly what I want and they are able to understand what exactly I’m talking about.

4. Everything works together

What you use on the outside of the house in terms of color and design work together with the inside. It’s honestly a little stressful. The color of your trip on the outside of your house can impact what your windows look like from the inside, and even the color of your front door, door hardware, and floor color.

Something that we did not do is gather some inspiration and figure out what colors we actually liked. Will and I have very different aesthetics. We finally have figured out some common ground, but I think we could have been more ready if we had figured out something that works for both of us.

5. OMG, take pictures of everything!

This deserved an exclamation point. One of the main things I wish I knew before we started building our house is to take photos! For some unknown reason, we have been the worst at taking photos when we go to pick things out for the house. We went to go pick out countertops as well as tile. We hunted down our perfect countertops first and then went to look at tile options. Guess what, no pictures of the countertops for us to compare the tiles too! We have also done that with our bathroom fixtures, so please, take the time to take photos of everything you have officially picked out!

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Have you built a house? What do you wish you knew?