All American Home- My Seventh Home

After deciding that we were going to build a home on the lot that we purchased, we basically had 2 options, stick built or pre-fab. I was not too excited about buying a pre-fab home because I thought that they were cheap and looked like trailers, but decided to go look at what a few of the local dealers had to offer. I was actually quite suprised at how nice the homes were! Of course, the models showed off a lot of expensive options, but we could choose to upgrade on the items that you would not change (such as the cabinets, trim and doors) and use the standard option for the items that need to be replaced with wear and tear (such as carpets and flooring). Also the pre-fab homes could be built faster, within 3 months of ordering than the stick built because there would be no delays for weather. The house would also be better built because of the way it is built indoors and not exposed to the elements. We ultimately chose to go with a pre-fab home and chose All American Homes. We went in and picked out all of the aspects of the house, from the floor plan to the colors, trim package and fixtures as soon as possible (we had to wait until we had 2 weeks worth of paychecks from our new jobs to take to the bank for loan approval). About two months later they dug and poured the walls of the basement in preparation for the arrival of the house. We visited the lot frequently and took pictures of each step in the process.

They called and informed us of the date that our house would be delivered and we were there bright and early, along with several family members, to watch them setting the house on the foundation. It was amazing to watch them use a crane to pick up each section of the house, it came in 2 pieces, and place it onto the foundation. They then used the crane to pull open the roof and connect the two halves of the house.

Unfortunately, there was some finishing work to be done before we could move into the house. They had to finish the flooring along the seam in the house, hook up all of the heat, electric, etc., and install all of the lighting that we had picked out. A few weeks later it was finally moving day!

We had very little other than our clothes to move as we were only engaged and fresh out of college. We slept on a mattress on the floor until we could afford a brand new bedroom set. After our wedding a year later, we bought our first sofa and chaise. In fact, most of our decor came from gifts that we had registered for for the wedding or money that had been given to us at the wedding. Though we tried to do a little bit at a time, we were always trying to attain what our parents had, not stopping to think that they had had 20 years of accumulating stuff on us! A few months later we were really struggling to keep up with the payments on everything and realized that we would have to sell the house and get into something we could better afford. We listed the house and it sat on the market for 5 months. The listing was about the expire and my husband said that I could go ahead and paint a few walls because we would likely be staying. I painted a dark red wall in the dining room and then there was a showing on the house. We had an offer almost immediately! I was so mad because I was set on staying in the house at this point, which worked to our advantage because we got our full asking price on the house. We moved out of the house on our 1 year wedding anniversary!