Stonebrook Home: Beginnings

In early 2019, the itch began.

Our entire married life was peppered with packing up and moving to a new location every 1-2 years for Cory's medical training and work, so it wasn't a huge surprise when, after living in our current neighborhood for 3 whole entire years, we felt the urge to move.

The hard part is that the neighborhood we live in is far and away the BEST neighborhood we've ever had! The homes and grounds are lovely, and the people more so... But, the harder part is trying to do a family of 8 with a small shoe closet for a kitchen pantry, a laundry room that isn't actually a "room," but a glorified closet, and a kitchen that my parents laughed out loud at (the storage situation and functionality of the space ain't pretty).

So, there we were... just uncomfortably itching away.

Cory had dreamed of designing and building a home since before we met in college when I was 19 and he was 22. (That's another story... maybe I'll share it one day.)

I wanted something already built. It seemed 1,000% easier than building, and waiting a year or more for a home to be built was not my idea of a good time.

So, we started casually looking on Zillow... like you do... and I fell madly in love with an exiting home that was listed fairly close by.

We walked through it, and never have I ever felt such a connection to a house!

It was crazy.

I could literally see myself and our family living there and loving it. It seemed to be designed with our family in mind, which made sense considering the owners had the same number of kids as we did. The neighborhood was beautiful, and the location to schools and trails and shopping and work, ideal.

We reached out the following day to discover that the homeowners had accepted an offer from a different party just that morning, and I was so disappointed. This was before Covid and the crazy ride the housing market went through, and they hadn't gotten an offer in months, so they jumped on the one they had in hand.

Our timing was off by hours, and boy did that sting at the time.

Now, we see that timing as a blessing.

Fast forward several months, and after having looked through and simultaneously dismissed several other homes... we started entertaining the idea of buying land.

I came across a listing for a 1 acre lot (Cory's desired acreage), in a beautiful area near the mouth of the canyon. It was a corner lot in a gorgeous neighborhood, and it had been on the market for a long time for no good reason that we could determine. The lot was flat, and for the foreseeable future, our backyard neighbors would be horses. The price seemed reasonable. Not a crazy good deal... but reasonable... at $385,000 for the acre.

... Which... Ha! If you know this area of Utah at all, you know that we basically won the lottery on timing in this instance, as the market went bonkers not even a year later.

We debated, went back and forth, walked through a few more homes, made waaaay too many pros and cons lists, and finally felt solid in our decision to purchase the lot and start tentatively designing a home for our family.

We closed on the lot in August, and started working on house plans, telling ourselves we could always just sell the lot if we wanted to.

After reaching out to a few architects and builders, we signed agreements with Carrick Home Design for the architectural plans, Davies Design Build for the building of our home, and Stacey Slaney of Manifold Interior Design.

They have been the dream team!

When Covid hit, we put any serious house plans on hold, as the entire world seemed to shut down. We wavered. Big time. We nearly listed the lot, and we even reached out to get quotes on costs to remodel our existing home.

But, in the end, we recognized it was a band-aid.

We knew we'd always wonder, "What if?" We knew there'd be some regrets.... maybe a lot of regrets. Plus, you know... Cory's bucket list.

So, we put on our adulting pants, firmed up our resolve, and went full steam ahead, breaking ground in April of 2022, and documenting the progress and design inspiration on Instagram, where Stonebrook Home first came to be.

Stonebrook comes by its name from our choice of exterior material, and the location of our build.

While, Instagram has been fantastic for documenting our build, and for branching out to share designs that inspires me, along with deals I find online for the home and family, I have found that my captions are essentially novels, and I can't share all of the details that I'd like to and have it make sense on that platform. Hence, the desire to start this blog: 1.) So I can write at length, and 2.) so I can prevent the eyes of my social media followers from glazing over hard-core and forming cataracts.

That's probably not a thing... but still...

And, one of the best things is that there are no regrets!

We loved the design process with the architect.

We've loved every little bit of progress of the build.

The million decisions that come with making this house our home have been a joy to make... even the hard stuff adds to the experience.

Seeing as how I was firmly on team "buy an existing home," I've had to eat a significant amount of crow, because it has been the most wonderful shock to discover how much I love everything about building and designing our home!

And it will truly be OURS... built with our family in mind in every room, corner, and detail.

So much love will have been poured into Stonebrook before the kids even sleep their first sleep inside it, and I am so thankful.