Casting call

Welcome to our house building blog. If, like Brian, you are an old movie buff you will recognize the title as a twist on an old Cary Grant movie about a house building project run amok (if not, that's what Google and NetFlix are for). It's listed as a comedy and I'm sure that is true, unless you happen to be Mr. Blandings. Surely his fictional catastrophes are exaggerated for comic effect, however, and our true life experience will proceed without a hitch! (Are we delusional? No, we're just livin' the dream here in South Bend!)

Just like in the movies, though, an awful lot has happened behind the scenes. Allow me to set the stage for you (this would be a good time to get a cool beverage)... After months of touring neighborhoods, quizzing new acquaintances about where to live and stalking the Notre Dame Housing Program (NDHP) director, we decided to purchase a lot 5 1/2 blocks from campus and build our dream house. There are about 15 new houses between us and campus that have all been built through the NDHP in an effort to turn around the rather 'transitional' neighborhood right at it's gates. The homes are lovely and the access to campus is unbeatable. No matter how many homes we saw in other local areas it always came down to "nice, but you can't walk to campus from here!" Although we were too far down on the waiting list to purchase a lot through ND, they did help us broker a lot that will be surrounded by new ND homes within a year. Below are some of the new homes just east of us in the 900 block of ND Avenue.

Every stage of this project thus far has taken a little longer than we'd originally planned and hoped given our looming deadline of July 31, when our lease runs out. It has, however, been time well spent to give us piece of mind that our decisions are sound. Remember, it took us 8 years to redo a kitchen. Building a whole house in less than a year? What were we thinking?!

The holiday season saw us closing on the house, choosing a builder and an architect, attending a variety of city council meetings to gain approval for a tax abatement and a variance for our three car garage, and beginning to design a house from scratch. It's all been quite a learning experience and I am very grateful that I don't have to hold down a job while I figure all this out.

And just FYI, this blogging thing is new to me and may be to you as well. One little trick I just learned is that if you click on any of the pictures, you will get a larger version to view. (That is not true for the slideshow in this post, however.)