Future Home Floorplan

As you may have picked up from an earlier post, the name of our home model is the Empress. I guess that means I'll have to refer to Brian as "the Emperor?!" We selected Elevation D, which is one of the newest elevations (and not even on the NV Homes website yet). It has a brick front and a walk-out basement. See below for a sketch of the front of our home (Elevation D):

You can check out the floor plan here: http://www.nvhomes.com/httpHandler/fileGrab.ashx?ID=5b658c3a-f48f-4225-92e9-03d075437195

And once the house is built, this is what our landscaping will look like:

Lucky Charms

They say on St. Patty's Day you find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and I'm pretty sure we found our pot of gold on Lot 15 at Kirkpatrick Farms in Aldie, VA. After walking (er, trudging through) the muddy lots with our realtor, we decided on the lot and set about the grueling 5 hours of reviewing floor plans and options. Who knew there were so many shades of granite or variations of brick? Certainly not us. However, we somehow survived signing all 50+ pages of paperwork to set the wheels in motion on building our new home, which will be built in a mere 4-5 months!

Getting Serious About Our Search...

After consulting with numerous friends including Nicole and Brian, and reading a very helpful first time homebuyer's guide from good friends Andrea and Xavier, we narrowed our search down to a few neighborhoods in VA. With Mom, Dad and Mom-Mom in tow, we toured model homes and checked out amenities, with my Mom finally concluding that there was no way she'd allow us to live where Canadian geese would make a mess of our sidewalk.

Which brings us to Aldie Glen at Kirkpatrick Farms.... http://www.nvhomes.com/Aldie_Glenn_At_Kirkpatrick_Farms_9713420060825.html

It's hard to say that the Empress model was not love at first sight, but we both agreed that it would be a perfect fit for us. After getting our realtor onboard and drafting some specs, we set about taking the next (and somewhat scary) steps toward owning our first home!

Moving to the 'Burbs

A lot of people have asked us in the last 6 months, "well, how does it feel to be married...do you feel different?" Ironically (or maybe not), we both seem to answer that it feels pretty much the same (especially after we've been sharing an apartment for nearly four years). However, after we got married we realized that not only had we accumulated nearly 4 years of stuff (from grad school and the Army), but we also had toasters and Calphalon pans and Kate Spade china that we had nowhere to put. Believe it or not, our oven had become a storage area for overflow pots and pans, and the trunk of our car had become a virtual public storage on wheels. And if any of you have had the pleasure of sharing a bathroom with your significant other, which means having the other person seemingly annoyingly open the medicine cabinet just as you are putting on your make-up in that coveted corner of the mirror or having to squeeze past each other to get in and out of a shared closet, then you know what I'm talking about. We were living on top of each other and we were outgrowing our beloved Old Town, Alexandria, VA apartment.

Needless to say, the search began....

We didn't really begin seriously looking for a home until we stumbled across a development in Woodbridge, VA that seemed to promise everything but a boat at the end of the sea oats lined lake on their website, but unfortunately, after a visit, it wasn't quite what we were looking for. Following that, we looked at a townhouse in Old Town that seemed too good to be true, but when we toured it, it was less than lackluster and we quickly moved on. From there we shifted focus to the 'burbs, which as you can probably tell from the title of this blog is where we'll end up. At first, the choices seemed overwhelming with so many suburbs outside of D.C. and wanting to have a combination of active community, nice/affordable home, and good place to someday raise a family, but eventually, we narrowed it down to Loudoun County. As one of the fastest growing and affluent counties around D.C., we decided it was the place for us.

For more on Loudoun County click here: http://www.loudouni.com/business/2010-03-09/forbes-says-loudoun-county-richest-county-america