Welcome to our house building diary.  As I write this, we have just entered into the fall season of 2013, but we’re going to go back in time a few years as this story starts in January of 2009.  We had been living in Siren, renting a house from a friend and also running our business – Starwire Technologies – from the same house.  The location was great, and only having one rent check for both an office and living space had many benefits.  One of the side effects of running a business out of our home became apparent, and on one memorable Sunday while we were lounging in our pajamas, the dreaded *knock knock knock* came from the front door.  The window on the front door did nothing to prevent the person at the door from seeing us in our weekend attire, and we had no choice but to answer the door and take care of business.

That single event was the tipping point, the moment we knew it was time.  The business, ready or not, needed to have a real office, one which could be truly closed in the evening and on weekends.  A real office would finally allow us to have a personal life where we wouldn’t have to worry that a stranger might walk into our living quarters any time of day, any day of the week.  The only problem we faced was financial.  While the business was only 2 years old, we were running in the black and making a little bit of money.  But most of that money went towards covering the businesses own expenses, so we still weren’t collecting large enough paychecks to afford to continue renting a house just for the two of us.

By May of 2009, we finally found a solution.  Rather than continuing to pay rent, we came to an agreement to purchase 20 acres of the land where Joe had grown up, with plans to build a house some day.  Until “some day” arrived, we still needed somewhere to live.  We ended up moving into the basement of Joe’s Dad’s house, and started building a 3-stall garage with an apartment inside of it.  The well was drilled, septic tank installed, slab was poured, walls and roof built, electricity hooked up, and by that fall we were all settled into our new apartment.

And now all we had to do was build a house… Some day.

Click here to start reading the whole process starting with building the garage!