The Hyde's: The New Digs

One thing I have not shared is much about the fact that we moved last year. I had mentioned in my previous post that we built a house last year and talked more so about why we moved and about our old house and not so much about the new house. Now, 8 months later we are settled in enough to share some highlights of our new digs.

We wanted to stay in the western suburbs of the metro. Our last house was the perfect location; we already knew going into moving that we would never have as good of a location as we had then. We decided to move further west into the suburb of Waukee. Waukee is a growing community and we picked a neighborhood that was/is still being established. In fact, we were the first house built on our street. Lots and lots of construction is going on in our neighborhood but it’s starting to fill in and we have met a few of our neighbors, which I’m excited about as many of them actually have 2-year-old girls for Annie to play with and will be in her class when she starts school. Much more kid friendly than where we were before.

Would we build again if we had it to do over? Yes, we would. Since I have a bad case of OCD and am very particular about things, I found it to be pretty stressful and so yes I would do it again but I did not find the process that enjoyable and would certainly prefer to buy a pre-existing home as my first option.

What do I love most about my house? My favorite is our floors. I spent a lot of time picking out the right flooring as I wanted hard surfaces throughout the main living area. I’m very happy with them. I also love that this house is very conducive for small children. That was one of the main reasons we moved, and I can see the girls from just about anywhere in our main living area. We also needed more space, especially storage. We doubled in square footage from our last house and the extra space has been great! It’s so nice not living on top of each other anymore. We also love our play room we added on, basically a sun room that is an extension of our living room. It’s nice to have a toy-free living room and a separate space for toys. I look forward to the day that I can claim the sun room back as an adult room and make it more my own but right now it’s perfect for Annie and Claire. And lastly, my favorite is our patio. We haven’t had a chance to use it much but I love that we aren’t confined to the parameters of a deck anymore. We specially choose a flat lot so we could put in a stamped patio, I love how it turned out and I personally think a patio is better for entertaining, where we can overflow into the lawn if needed.

What are the mistakes in our building process? My laundry room is a huge mistake. It’s too, too small! Unfortunately, we may have to get a stackable washer/dryer to gain space and I’m not a fan of front loader washers from having one previously. Another mistake would be our dining room. We did add about 2 feet onto the original plan and it’s still a bit small. We rarely eat dinner together at the table so I didn’t see the need for anything too big but I do wish I would have made it slightly larger. We also wished we would have added more natural light sources to the front of our house. We started off with a different plan that would have been a wider house and would have given us more light but we had troubles finding a flat lot wide enough to fit the plans so we had to shrink down our façade and build our house longer rather than wider. We have lots of light in the back of the house but not much coming in thru the front, our last house had tons of natural light in every room and I do miss that.

What was our favorite part? Picking out our touches. Especially enjoyed our meeting where we picked out our light fixtures, that was fun. I think a lot of people consider that a stressful part but Aaron and I like and enjoy making decisions so picking things out was easy for us to do and we have the same taste so we easily agreed on most decisions. Did we go back and change some of our selections? Yes we sure did! I’m guessing the builder may be happy to have our house finished, I’m sure they got sick of hearing from me as I called and emailed them on every little detail and I questioned everything. It’s a big deal building and spending money on a home, I didn’t want to take any chances of miscommunication or misunderstandings.

We are happy here and it feels like home. Many memories have already been created here and it’s where our family is defined, refined and grows each and every day. I thank God for providing a comfortable home for my family where we have warmth in the cold weather, a roof in the rain, food on the table and love growing in each room of this house. Home really is where the heart is.