Literally Thousands!

There are literally thousands of floorplans to choose from. How in the world do you pick?!? Here are the main criteria:

• 4 Bedrooms
• Master on main
• Two door garage on the side
• Bonus Room
• Open floorplan w/ kitchen that allows the cook a view into the family room
• Screened porch
• Front porch big enough for rocking chairs
• Spacious laundry room
• Two sinks in the master bathroom
• Built-in computer area or a study
• Self-Cleaning (just seeing if you're paying attention)

After months of looking in houses (sorry realtors, we were just checking out the floorplan) we came up with one that we both like. We plan to make many modifications. First we'll add screen to the porch on back of house. There will not be a porch behind the master bedroom. It will be enclosed as part of the house and called a "sitting area". We plan to make it a nursery until our final child is in his/her own bed upstairs though. This should save us some trips up and down those steps. In the "hearth room" we're editing out the fire place, and it will be a formal dining room. However, we plan to eat in that room a lot, because as you can see there is no "breakfast area". So it may be a little more like a "casual dining room". Finally, the garage doors will be on the side of the house, and the front will have windows where the garage door is now. At first, we thought the bonus room may go unfinished because of budget limitations. But, the one builder we talked to so far said that it would be within our budget to go ahead and finish it. Great News!

Since I am an analytical person, and by no means visual; I wanted to see the floor plan in person. Can you believe that we found the exact plan was built right here in the Spartanburg. We went and looked in it, and it seemed perfect. I will admit, I felt unworthy of the master suite. Honestly, who needs that much space just to sleep in?? JC Penney couldn't fill up that closet. It's like the size of our current house. It will be great though. I can imagine our kids "camping out" in Mom and Dad's room sometimes, just like I did when I was a boy!!

We're both getting excited now! We were told we needed to start meeting with builders about a year out... So we did just that. Our first meeting was on 12/16/08 and was with "Builder A". More about him in my next post.

Until then, here's the plan: