Two Twenty One

I’ve Been Keeping a Secret

It’s true.

I’ve been sitting on a big secret for the past 6 months.

I’m sure you’ve caught on to the fact that my blog posting has been sporadic. To be honest, I was waiting for someone to ask if I was pregnant. But you guys are polite and no one said anything, so forgive me for assuming.

 While I wasn’t/I’m not pregnant (that I know of), I’ve spent the last 6 months gestating something else.

A house.

I birthed We built a house!

OMG I feel so much better getting that off my chest.

Allow me to start from the beginning.

Brad and I have been looking at real estate listings for 2-3 years. We were never very serious, but we wanted to be knowledgable about real estate in our area and get a feel for floor plans. One of my favorite past times was lying in bed at night and scrolling through listings. If we found something we liked, we’d often email or text the link to the other spouse.

So I wasn’t very surprised when I received an email from Brad with the subject “I could live here” and a link to a listing of a spec house on the afternoon of Wednesday, January 4th.

It was a beautiful house, but I didn’t think the floor plan was right for us. So I decided to look into the neighborhood and see if they had any lots left and floor plans that would work for us. I emailed Brad back with a screenshot of all the available lots. And I found two floor plans that I liked.

We were homebuilding rookies, so I decided to shoot my realtor friend, Angela, a text and inquire about the process. She suggested we meet with a rep for the builder at the model home. We scheduled an appointment for that upcoming Saturday. In the meantime, I visited my favorite potential lots twice to get a feel for the area.

 On Saturday, we spent two hours at the model home looking at floor plans, touring the model home, picking a floor plan, choosing options, examining lots to see if our floor plan would fit, getting prices, etc.

Brad and I instantly fell in love with the floor plan we chose. It’s perfect for us. And of the five lots we were eyeing, one could fit the house we wanted.

The builder rep wanted us to make a decision by the following Monday, January 9th because he was going out of town, and we were leaving for New Orleans on Thursday. But I was still hesitant because things seemed to be moving so fast. We weren’t even contemplating selling our house until the summer or fall days before, let alone building a freaking house!

I’m a cautiously optimistic person and typically the holdout on big decisions in our marriage, but I’m also really big into signs. And it just so happened that the lot number contained a two-digit number in one of our phone numbers. The number also came up again when I was crunching numbers on the house. I know it sounds silly, but those little signs, long conversations with Brad, and the feeling of this being ‘right’ made me more comfortable with our decision to pull the trigger.

So we signed the sales agreement on January 9th and the officially official paperwork later that month.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “WTH, Chelsea! Why didn’t you say anything sooner?!”

Trust me, there were plenty of times I wanted to spill the beans and ask for your opinions on certain design choices or ask how you handled something while building a house.

There’s a bunch of reasons why I (we) decided to keep this off of the blog and social media. Like I said, I’m cautiously optimistic, and I know deals fall through all the time. And us buying the new house was dependent on us selling our current house. No pressure. No pressure at all.

I also wanted to be able to go through the entire home building process, be reflective once it was over, and then share what we learned and experienced.

And while I know it’s normal to feel curious, I didn’t want people attempting to locate exactly where we lived and find our house listing. I’ve had blog friends tell me some crazy stories after sharing that their house was on the market with their readers. And while I love you guys, I don’t want anyone showing up on my doorstep. It’s creepy, and I appreciate boundaries. There. I said it.

We also had an easy-to-access house (while not technically ours yet) sitting empty for a couple months.

But worry not– I took approximately 5,000 pictures throughout the building process, and I already have a handful of home building posts in the works. Because we learned A LOT along the way. I figure I’ll share those posts as we get settled into the new house.

Thanks so much for all your well wishes on our big news! We’re really excited about our next adventure!

P.S. I’ll share some sneak peeks of the new house on my InstaStories (twotwentyone) over the weekend!

Photos by Nicole Green

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Comments

  1. It’s beautiful! I’m so glad you’ll be blogging more! I have missed your blog posts. So, did you redo the floors, paint, bathroom because you knew you were selling?

    Reply

    • Thanks, Katie! No, we had been wanting to redo the floors for a while and figured we’d be able to enjoy them for 9-12 months before moving, but our timeline was moved up a bit. The bathroom was a 50/50 thing. I was getting tired of the look, and I wanted to spruce it up a little for listing the house.

      Reply

  4. Oh Chelsea your new home is just perfect. I love the exterior design and am very excited to see what’s beyond your new front door !! Big hugs, Dorinda

    Reply

  7. It’s gorgeous!!! Can’t wait to see more pictures! I don’t blame you for not sharing…I’m sure the whole process was a bit overwhelming and not the time for unwanted opinions/stalkers! Although I will stalk your instagram for peeks this weekend! 🙂

    Reply

  8. Chelsea! I love that last picture of your new house. It’s gorgeous. I appreciate you keeping it a secret til now. How fun and exciting for your family! Congrats!!!

    Reply

  11. How you could write that whole post and only give us 1.25 pictures of the house!?!?!!?! TORTURE! 🙂

    I also have a bit of a hobby of real estate ogling, and am very curious about the building process. Can’t wait to hear/read/SEE more!

    Congratulations and thanks for sharing!

    Reply

  12. That is a GORGEOUS house! Congratulations!

    I’ll admit I did wonder if you were pregnant, not really because of the sporadic posting but because of a few things on Snapchat or instastories….like looking at baby pics of Owen. It made me wonder if you were going through baby things for a specific reason 😉

    Reply

  15. But your Peonies!! lol. A new house is better than a baby (says a mom that just had three babies in 4 years…)

    Reply

  17. OMG what a FABULOUS secret to keep for just your family while you went through the process! Congratulations — can’t WAIT to see and read all about it! (It’s hard to believe that my husband and I have been in our own home for the past 11 years already, but we did the same thing: it felt like things were moving fast, but our decision also felt very “right” too!) So happy for you Chelsea!

    Reply

  18. How exciting for you and your family! I agree – that keeping areas of your life private is not a bad thing! Looking forward to you sharing the process. We are contemplating putting a new house on our property, and I feel like a deer in the headlights, just thinking about it all!

    Reply

    • Thanks, Katie! Yeah, I felt bad/weird keeping such a big secret, but I knew it was for the best. I don’t blame you! Ours a production build– a custom build would scare me too. But I think some of the stuff I plan to share will be helpful.

      Reply

  19. I’d love to see the different floor plans you looked at and why you ultimately decided on the one you picked!

    Reply

  21. Hello Chelsea , Congrats!!! I can’t wait to read everything about your new house and see pictures.

    Reply

  22. Congrats Chelsea!! What an exciting time for you & your family!!!! I’m sure it will be beautiful!! love your posts! you’re very down to earth — and tell it like it is!! can’t wait for you to share the excitement with us all! best wishes in the coming weeks & years in the new HOME!

    Reply

  26. You have such a natural talent for decorating i just know your new home will be beautiful – congratulations to you both and good luck (p.s. i loved your old home so im sure i will love the new one also)

    Reply

  27. This is so exciting!! I have been missing your posts, and can’t wait to hear about your journey. We built our dream house about a year and a half ago and it was an amazing experience. I hope yours was too!!

    Reply

  29. Congratulations on your new place! It is gorgeous and its going to be so much fun to decorate! I love reading your blogs and truth be told, yours is the only one that I don’t immediately delete. Can’t wait to see house updates!

    Reply

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