We had to move. We have lived almost 5 years in a wonderful home we dubbed 'Mount Edwards'.
The stairs and driveway are both very steep. Also all secondary bedrooms are upstairs.
Due to an accident my Father In Law is confined to a wheel chair. This house would not accommodate a handicapped individual. We needed to find a one story place that would allow my FIL to come home. It also needed to have room for 3 kids, 2 dogs and a cat.
I didn't want my kids to have to change schools over this so we began searching for 1 story homes in our area. This didn't work out well at all.We began to prepare for putting Mount Edwards on the market and tried to come up with options. We came across a builder in the area called 'Buffington Homes'. They had some one story plans that may possibly work.
After looking at the plans and lots, we went ahead and put a deposit down with this group to build a new one story home. This would give us the ability to make sure doors and walk ways are wide and bathrooms are modified to work for my FIL to come home. My husband and I liked the plans okay but we weren't super comfortable with the neighborhood. Our home would be the largest in the area and our lot overlooked a plumbing company and their dumpsters. Not exactly ideal but we felt like it was our only reasonable option.
My daily Zillow search feed popped up with another builder starting to build in our area. What's this? I checked it out, only to find it was
KB Homes. This wasn't good. They have a horrible reputation as a builder in our area. They current mantra is they build 'box homes' with cheap materials that aren't up to code.
I decided to stop by and take a look the next day on a Saturday morning. They were actually just opening the model for the first time that day and we watched the movers bring in the furniture. They were having a 'pre open house' sale on lots and plans. Okay. Let's see the model. Honestly my jaw dropped. This is a KB Home? This place is beautiful!
They had a 3000 SQFT one story home as their first model and a beautiful 2 story as their second model. I liked the outside of the 2 story but knew it wouldn't work for us anyways. The one story however, was amazing. Of course there was a problem that my dear husband didn't like the builder and everything we heard about this builder was bad.
I went home and woke up my husband (he sleeps in on saturdays - I don't!) I told him I wanted him to look at a different builder that's building in our area. He asked, "who is the builder?" I told him. He said "No" and went back to sleep.
The next day I finally persuaded him to at least look as neither of us were happy with our current option. When we got there, he felt the same way as I did about the model. It's very open concept, modern and has a great back porch.
DH said okay, let's look at lots. Well - the lots in this community actually back up to Brushy Creek and the city's trail system. All lots on that site will have a permanent green belt. The trail system goes for miles in each direction and is fully paved. From the community there is a paved sidewalk that lets you go directly to the trail. This means my FIL would be able to take his wheel chair down there and not be stuck in the house!
So - we switched. Hubby loved the area and the floor plan so we got deposit back from the first builder and went with the second. We are now building a custom home with KB.
