Jumping in again, deciding to build a second home

In case you missed our big announcement, we are expecting 2 new additions to our family. A baby in the spring, and a vacation house mid-December!

This is my more in depth post about our reasons behind deciding to build a second home. It's not quite as simple as I explained before "we got antsy when this house was done", but it is a part of it. Our kids are currently 2, 4 and 6, and while we thought a vacation house would be somewhere off on the 10 year future, we realized that if we could pull it off, having a house for our family now, at this stage, would make more memories and have a big impact on our lives. This is assuming that teens *might* not want to spend as much time with their parents and little ones do:)

We drove up to what I call "ski country" last October, just after I'd finished nursing our youngest, for a fun, no-kids weekend. Being trained as architects, we naturally wanted to look at land and houses "just in case". After building our house through the great recession, I was also adamant that we be able to afford a second home, without threatening our current house, private school tuition, charitable gifts, etc.

Well, we fell in love with empty land, and the idea of designing another house ourselves. This time we wanted something different, not the classical modernist house we have now, rather a "true" modern, or "capital M modern" house. (look that was an architecture school reference)!

courtesy of Brick LLP

My main theme was "glass box in the woods". We are lucky enough to have an amazing view from our current house, so I didn't need that. I wanted a level-out yard that kids could play in, lots of trees, nature, snow play potential and less "stuff". This time around, I didn't draw the plans up in AutoCad, I drew plans on graph paper, handed them to our friend and architect, Rob Zirkle of Brick LLP, and sent links to a Pinterest board for a modern vacation house.

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Doing it all at one time, also let me fully indulge my Type-A self, and I made an excel budget for constructin and soft costs, as well as one for furniture. So over the last year I've been pinning, stalking, buying, and hoarding collecting items for the new house. Currently our mudroom and storage are full with pots and pans, sheets, nightstands, sleds, everything I will need in the new house. More on my process later. Feel free to browse my Guest House Furniture board for ideas about what I bought:)

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Jessica