Building Our New Schumacher Home: Finalize

We ended up modifying the floor plans, changing window locations, removing some walls and cabinets and adding a carport.

We worked with two people at this stage. The website says they are New Home Consultants. The gentleman helped with floorplans modifications, the young woman helped with siding, paint, countertop and other interior options.

We made a deposit and they sent out a home site inspector to make sure the house would fit on our land. We went out with flags and a tape measure and realized that this house wasn’t going to fit where we had intended. The original plan was more of a cape cod/ranch. This house is square. We decided to move the house to the front of the land just the morning before the inspector came out, even though this meant we would be building in the flood zone. We discussed raising the house above flood level and they agreed that it was totally do-able. They got back to us with the site prep price. We included an additional driveway and culvert to cross a gully to get to the back of our land. This way we can add a barn and sell part of the back of the land.

Homesite Inspection >

We pretty much had all the other pricing hammered out to make sure this was going to be affordable while we were still working with various modular companies during the Customize phase.

I drove out to the Design Studio a few days before the scheduled meeting to write down all of our choices. We had spent a lot of time looking at everything since we discovered Schumacher Homes.

We had already gotten prices on most modifications, but there were still a lot of selections to make. Plenty of the options did not cost any more and we tried to stay within those as much as we could. Some things we upgraded.

Schumacher Homes Design Studio >

Now that we had a price, we applied for a construction loan. We signed the application on Monday, July 24, 2017 and had a preapproval letter by Thursday, July 27, 2017.

I wanted a different bathtub than any of their options. We had removed the linen closet from the bathroom plans to leave plenty of space for my tub. I gave them the model. They credited for the tub they would not be providing and priced the tub I wanted. (Here it is I instead of we, because Cliff really didn’t care.)

Choosing the Soaker Tub >

I wanted lighted ceiling fans for the back porch. I did not want an outside wall lantern by the back doors that opened onto the porch. This was not one of their options, but they were able to price it out, with us providing the lighted porch fans. Cliff thought this was not worth pursuing, but it mattered a lot to me. I want it to look like a room. I do NOT want an outdoor light by the doors.

We upgraded the flooring. We selected standard cabinets, but added soft close drawer glides and some other cabinet upgrades. We upgraded the countertop to Corian. We got a credit for the cabinet hardware.

I brought in the fabric from the living room chairs and the paint colors, flooring and cabinets were going to coordinate as well as I thought.

Next: Pre-construction Meeting >