For the last several years, my husband and I have been looking for our next home — our “phase three” home. (I’m borrowing “phase three” from the TV show Soul Man. Maybe I’ll write about those phases some other time.)  We’ve looked at many areas within the Dallas/Fort Worth area; but we just couldn’t find an area that seemed to say, “You’re Home” to us. Part of the problem was that I had always thought we’d retire to a nice cabin in the mountains of New Mexico or Colorado. We often discussed the logistics and difficulties of living even further from our son and daughter. Then, our first grandson was born and we quickly knew that being further away from that wonderful little being wasn’t happening. This feeling only intensified as the next two baby boys entered our lives. Deep down though I still wanted our next home to reflect my dream of living in the mountains next to a stream or lake.

We’ve planned our lives (as much as possible) so we could retire early enough to enjoy this period of life together. We hope to have many, many years to enjoy our next home –a home that we want to have space for our family, grandsons and our hobbies. We decided to look on the outskirts of the metro area – maybe even close to a lake. One day on lakehouse.com, I stumbled across a small privately owned lake close to DFW. On impulse, we drove out to look at the area and we both immediately felt we’d found the area for our next home.

Over the next few months, we began looking at the available homes. The first homes we looked at would have been perfect for a Property Brothers episode; however, we weren’t sure we could pull off such a remodel on our own. Since Drew and Jonathan weren’t likely to film in our area; we began looking at homes that were closer to move-in ready. There were several fabulous homes available; but they just didn’t fit our lives and/or our budget. The price point seemed to keep going up; yet we’d still have projects to complete on all the homes.

Finally, my husband said that he thought it would be easier to just build. Inside, I was jumping up and down screaming “Yes, Yes, Yes!”. However after all our years together, I knew that over zealous enthusiasm could scare him away from the idea. I simply and quietly stated that I agreed that building might work.

Anyone, who knows me, knows I watch a lot of HGTV. I watch reruns of the reruns. Decorating and remodeling our home is one of my favorite pastimes. Luckily, I seem to have a knack for it; so it hasn’t created too many problems. For years, I dreamed about building our “Dream Home”; but really never expect to have the chance. Of course, my mind hasn’t slowed down since we made the decision. So many possibilities become available when you decide to build…

My husband is one of those people who needs to mull over decisions for a period of time (sometimes a long period of time); so I’m fairly sure my husband thought on this for many months before bringing up the idea. He’s contemplated over and over many of his concerns already. For once his decision process works for me because we’re proceeding onward toward building our next home. We have a contract on the lot we found and have met with the builder. I think we may be living in my dreams.

Our Future Home