Homestead Update — 2023

Well it certainly has been a while since I’ve updated about the homestead’s progress. Two years, in fact! I’d hoped to update each year at the very least, but to be honest, last year was incredibly difficult and it was hard to talk or even think deeply about all the homestead stuff without it triggering a lot of anxiety and depression. But now I’m in a better place emotionally and it’s easier to talk about now that there’s some certainty to it, you know, actually happening. So, I’m going to do my best to get you up to speed on what’s been going on with the homestead the past couple years and the stuff that’s on the horizon. Let’s hop to it!

Our land is in the Columbia River Gorge, and that area our land is in has very strict scenic building codes about height and window coverage and colors…really everything. It’s like an HOA to the extreme. Because of this, we needed to submit our plans to a local governing process for approval before we could get permits and apply for a construction loan. So, we got our design nailed down and met with the local government official in January 2022, and were told we needed to move the house to another part of the land, and do some other intense redesigns.

So that put us behind schedule and over-budget on the design side of things, but we *finally* submitted our plan for approval in late March 2022. We had been hoping to break ground on construction spring 2022, but when we handed in the paperwork we were told there was a 6 month wait for approval….which meant we were going to have to wait until 2023 to actually start building. And also there were no guarantees that we would even be approved, so we were relegated to waiting to hear back from the government, and had to put everything for the homestead project on hold.

The spring went by…as did the summer. And in October 2022 we finally got word that the plan was approved. It felt like a huge weight was lifted, and it felt *so good* to have something move forward after feeling like the homestead plans were just stuck in one place for so long. But, when we started talking with our builders again, it became apparent that the construction industry was hit incredibly hard by inflation, and the cost to build the house had basically gone up *750k in a year*. The builders we were working with were fantastic and all the building materials were ethically sourced, but it became clear that we couldn’t afford that kind of construction material anymore, so we were going to have to look around at other builder options, which, after working with those builders for over 18 months, felt like starting from scratch again.

And the local government approval was only one of two major hurdles we had to clear in order to start building. The other bar that we had yet to leap over was the construction loan. If you’ve ever applied for a loan, you know it’s a vigorous and intense process. And if you’re a small business owner and don’t have a simple 9-5 job, you know that it makes it even more difficult and complicated, because freelancing isn’t something most underwriters look at as a reliable source of income. And since Jeremy and I both fall under the freelancing umbrella, I was really nervous about whether the loan would even be approved or not.

One of the big things about a construction loan in particular is that you need to have all the finishes for the interior and exterior of the home picked out, because the bank needs to be able to accurately estimate what the value of the home will be, and you/your builder needs to be able to accurately estimate how much it will cost to build the house. That way, in case you foreclose during the building process, the bank will know that they can sell it for more than they paid to build it (the appraisal also factors into this, and I’ll get to that in a second). So the value of a house with all marble countertops and hardwood floors versus one with wall-to-wall carpet and formica countertops would be different, for example.

So all that totally makes sense. BUT, the hard part is this: you have to spend a lot of money out of pocket for the architect and the designer and all those very important planning things **before you even know for sure** that you’ll be able to build it. There were definitely points where it all felt like a very expensive thought experiment, and I wasn’t sure if it was going to actually happen or not. But I just have this draw to that place….and honestly I’d risk almost anything to be able to live there every day (even though it meant that my nerves were rapidly fraying to bits from the financial and emotional turmoil of the uncertainty of everything). As someone who thoroughly enjoys planning and having structure in the day-today, this kind of risk taking makes me incredibly nervous.

We signed with a new builder in January and he has been absolutely incredible, and also was very excited to get the ball rolling which helped give fresh momentum to push the project forward. Construction loans also require building permits to be approved before the loan is granted, so we also needed to finalize permit-friendly building plans with our architect to submit that to the county and get permits issued before the loan was finalized, too. But another key aspect was the appraisal that I mentioned earlier.

So, an appraiser for a construction loan will look at the building plans and the finishing details, and then look for “comparables”, which are houses within 2-5 miles of your build site that are similar in size and have ideally sold for an amount higher than your loan amount (because the bank wants to be certain they’ll be able to make a profit off your home if you foreclose and they have to take over finishing the building process). I met with the appraiser at the homestead because I wanted to make sure he saw the view from the build site, since a river view is a huge bonus for property/home values. He seemed to get it + understand, but did mention that he was having a hard time finding any similar houses in the area. Since we’re building in a rural area that’s mostly forest, that makes total sense. But what’s frustrating is that the appraisal process doesn’t seem to make any allowances for rural locations, because since he couldn’t find anything similar to our home location/view/size/design, he appraised it at 100k less than the loan amount. Which meant the bank could only loan us that lower number.

As you can imagine, that put us in a really tough spot, but the loan officers we were working with were absolutely **amazing** (thank you Vanessa + Corinne + Kristen!!) and worked with us to troubleshoot and get everything through. In the end, we basically had to empty our savings to pay the extra 100k out of pocket in order to close the loan. That was money we’ve been saving for over a decade, and I’m not going to lie that it makes me really, really nervous to have that savings buffer gone and basically go back to living month-to-month until we can build up some savings again. But sometimes doing something big means big risks, and I’m following my heart and hoping for the best that things will work out.

When we got the email that the loan was approved and ready for closing, I finally felt like it was really, actually, truly happening for the first time. And I let myself actually *feel* happy. With the infertility stuff that’s been going on the past few years combined with the homestead struggles, I’ve developed a habit of numbing my emotions and not feeling things fully, good or bad, as a protective reflex. It’s kind of the brain’s way of thinking “well if I don’t get too excited about something, I have a shorter emotional distance to fall if it doesn’t work out”. But the result of that is that you just kind of start floating through life not feeling anything. And I’ve come to realize that that’s just a means to exist, but not truly live.

All that to say, it felt really good to actually shout with joy and be truly excited about something without a giant cloud of apprehension around it. So….that brings me to now. And you know what? Even though things have been hard, even though it feels like an almost unfathomable amount of things have gone wrong, my commitment hasn’t waned. Maybe it’s simply stubbornness, but I know I want to be a mother, and I know I want my life to unfold on our bit of forest, shepherding both as they grow. The thing about struggle is that it doesn’t last forever—nothing does. And while sometimes it feels like it’s breaking you, maybe it’s just forging you into something stronger, something more resilient and more compassionate than what you would have been capable of otherwise.

And after all that, last month the day finally arrived where we were actually able to break ground!! (Insert approximately one thousand cartwheel emojis here.) To say that Jeremy and I were excited is a prettttty large understatement. It happened on a day with some wildfire smoke in the sky, so there was a kind of dusty look to the landscape with the pinkish-grey sky, and it was beyond surreal to see the building process physically starting after years and years of planning and setbacks and struggle. Things are still tight financially, but I’m opening up my photography course over the next couple weeks and am hoping that does well (and if you want any photo or video presets, your support would be HUGELY appreciated (also the presets rock pretty hard!)), so fingers crossed.

That morning we opened up a bottle of wine that I’d been saving for something special from a work trip in Europe back in 2016. We had some transport-friendly glassware (hello, mason jars) and just did tiny pours because we were breaking ground at 9 am due to the heat. I know it was very early for wine (😅), but as a Greek I feel like it’s bad luck not to celebrate a big life event with a cheers, and we poured a tiny splash into the dirt so the homestead could enjoy it, too, for good measure! I didn’t realize it at the time, but Jeremy googled the name of the wine afterwards and it translates to ‘raw earth’ in Italian, which felt very fitting.

I’m deeply grateful to the incredible people who helped us make this happen, like my friend + designer Sam Struck, our landscape specialists Mulysa + Michael, and our builder Philip. And since the design is pretty much finalized because of the way the government + loan processes worked, I have a lot of design + floor plan changes to share with you! The design has shifted a decent amount to accommodate budget stuff, so it will be interesting for you guys to see the items that we cut or changed because they were too expensive for the budget we were staying within (turns out curves in staircases are a LOT of money.)

Now that construction is kicking off, my goal is to share once per quarter about the homestead’s progress, since the homestead build won’t be finished until about October 2024. And now that I’m putting it out there into the universe, y’all better hold me accountable. I won’t let another two years go by without an update now that things are movin’ and groovin’! Thank you so much for reading through this very, very long blog post, and for your support over the crazy long journey to get here. I can’t tell you how much it means. Here’s to more homestead adventures ahead!!