We Are BUILDING OUR DREAM HOME!

I cannot even believe I get to type DREAM HOME at all! But here I am!! Ahhhhhh!

We are building our dream home, friends, and I have so so much to share!

I will be documenting this entire journey over the next 18 months or so, and I’m so thrilled to take you on this ride with us! We’ll chat researching builders, grading, well drilling, septic, building plans, finish selections, alllll the things!

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Building Our Dream Home – The Backstory

But before we get to the REALLY good stuff (aka pictures of our gorgeous property!), I want to share a bit more about how this whole plan came about.

For those of you who don’t know, my mama is my best friend. I rarely go a day without talking to her. Her and my Dad moved up to Oregon in March 2017, and we are currently down in San Diego. So last October (2020), I was at Walmart shopping for pumpkins, chatting on the phone with my mom. I honestly have not a single clue how we got on the topic, but we ended up chatting about my husband and I moving up to Oregon, buying a property with my parents, and building two homes on it.

San Diego is a wonderful place, but both my husband and I are ready to get out of the rat race and get away from the traffic and general congestion. We are so looking forward to more space, a slower lifestyle, and truly CLEAN and FRESH air and water!

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Getting my husband and Dad (he was the biggest wild card 🤪) on board was relatively easy, and by the time my husband and I visited my parents in Oregon for Thanksgiving, we had a realtor in place and were driving around looking at properties in the Medford/Ashland area! The second property we saw was EXACTLY what we were looking for, but there was a small snag in our plans.

Because of zoning regulations, we could not build two homes on one lot unless it was OVER 10 acres and we subdivided it. AKA, more money, more time, and more red tape. But we couldn’t let the dream die, so our realtor looked for larger properties that would match what we wanted.

The problem? There wasn’t anything out there that was going to work within our budget. We weren’t in a rush by any means. But the more time passed, the more we realized what we envisioned just wasn’t realistic, unless we wanted to wait 5-10 years to do it. So the plan evolved into building ONE home, with an elevator. My parents upstairs and us down. And that is exactly what we are doing! As an only child, I’m excited to get to spend more time with my parents as they get older. And of course, once we have kids…. free babysitting! 😜 haha! just kidding… sort of!

Lucky for us, that property I fell in love with back at Thanksgiving was STILL AVAILABLE! Our offer was accepted on March 10, 2021, and we closed April 15!

Building Our Dream Home – The Property

I really can’t explain it, but there was just SOMETHING about that property we saw back at Thanksgiving and some part of me knew deep down it was meant for us. We had passed on it because we couldn’t build two homes, but once we arrived at the new one dream home upstairs/downstairs solution, everything fell into place!

The property is just under 6 acres of beautiful farmland in Medford, Oregon. The land surrounding it is rolling hills. And in the distance, the stunning trees and mountains that make up the Cascades. It really the best of both worlds.

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Purchasing the property was not without it’s setbacks, but it was overall a very smooth process. And the sellers actually live on the property nextdoor!

The property already had a well, but unfortunately it was so under-performing that we’ll have to drill a new one. I’m sure that will be an interesting learning process! Septic has also been approved but not yet installed, so that will all be happening during the build as well.

Hubby and I will be going back up to OR in June or July to interview and select a builder. Until then, my parents will be connecting with various builders and architects and narrowing it down for us to all make the final call this summer. I’ll be sharing that whole process with y’all here on the blog, so be sure to Subscribe if you want all the updates as they happen!

We’ve also been looking at house plans, which is SO fun. We’re finding that most don’t have the set up we are looking for, so we’ll either need to modify or just straight up find an architect to design from scratch. We’ll see!

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Once everything is built, our property will 1000% be a hobby farm! Both my mom and I go crazy over little furry friends! So babydoll sheep, chickens, and who knows what other four legged buddies will ultimately be joining us there!

Building Our Dream Home – What’s Next

Up next is navigating the builder selection process, and planning when we’ll be MOVING up to OR ourselves. We own our home in San Diego, and we do plan to stay down here as long as possible to keep building up the equity in our home before selling. We’ll have to rent in OR for several months until our dream home is complete, so we’d like to rent for as little time as possible, but also long enough to really oversee the most important parts of the build.

This entire process will really be a collaborative effort between me and hubs and my parents! But my parents currently live a little over an hour away from the property. So as we get to the final stages, we don’t want them to have to drive back and forth multiple times per week!

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As we travel down this EXCITING new road, I’ll continue to share our progress with you here! I’ve also created a “Home Building” category for you to easily reference on my home page, where all articles related to building our dream home will live!

Until next time, I’d love to hear your home building advice and tips/tricks in the comments below! And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask! I tried to include lots of fun details without going overboard, but in all the incredible excitement we are feeling over here, I’m sure I forgot something! 😊

Chat soon friends!

XO,

Ana

P.S. For those of you who followed along this past week on Instagram with my daily clues leading up to this big reveal, I’m going to quickly share how each clue added up to this!

Clue 1: blue cheese – The world’s best cheese is blue cheese that comes from Oregon! (Right near Medford actually). Rogue River Blue was crowned the winner in the annual World Cheese Awards in 2019, and was the first time an American product won the title!

Clue 2: wine – each of the 5 bottles in the photo I shared in my IG stories were Oregon wines, and there are loads of wineries near our new property!

Clue 3: Gone Rogue High Protein Chips – this was simply for the name. Medford, OR is part of the Rogue Valley in OR.

Clue 4: The Roxy Theatre in LA – this was another play on names, too. RoxyAnn winery is a very popular winery in the Medford area.

Clue 5: toolbelt – this was pointing you towards the building process!

Clue 6: Mythical Phoenix – Phoenix, OR is just down the road from our property. It was in the news a lot in 2020 due to the devastating fires that came through the town. Phoenix is still recovering from the devastation.

Clue 7: pears – Harry and David is FAMOUS for their pears! And it is literally less than 10 minutes from our new property! I cannot WAIT!

Clue 8: Pinterest – if you head to my Pinterest, you’ll find a Forever Home board I’ve been pinning to since October!! The inspo on their is definitely a different, more modern yet European, style than our current home, and I CANNOT wait to get to all the designing steps!

If you can believe it, someone guessed the big news after only 5 clues!! But no more guessing, cat’s outta the bag now! And I’m so thrilled to get to go on this ride with y’all! Stay tuned for more fun as our dream home comes together!

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