Hard Choices

Several years ago my parents informed us that they had purchased the land across from their home and offered to let us build on that land. That started a process that took keli and I until just last week to decide on what we wanted to do.

Keli had been collecting house floor plans since she was a young girl. She had lots of ideas, and building her dream home was something she has always wanted to do. So building on the land provided by my parents seemed like a great idea...at first.

After waiting a long time to make any firm decisions, last fall we contacted some builders to get a rough estimate of how much it would cost to build the plan that Keli and I like on the lot my parents were providing. We got the finial results in January, and spent several weeks talking about our finances, life priorities, and the pros/cons of moving versus staying.

In the end we decide that we would not be building on the land provided by my parents. Although, living near my parents would be a major plus, we just don't want to live that far out of town and away from our church. We also don't want to be locked into a larger mortgage payment for another 30 years, and spend the next 2-5 years outfitting an entirely new home. And to be entirely honest, I had no desire to spend the next 12 months of my life with every moment of spare time spent building a house (as the only way we could afford it at all is if I did most of the work myself or with the help of family and friends). So with many good reasons, and a few selfish reasons, it just didn't seem to make sense to build a new home at this time.

So for now, we are staying put and investing in our existing home. Right now we are in the middle of a project to make the basement into a school room/home office/rec room. I'll try to post a before/after shot once it's done.