We thought we had a great idea…
Several months before we were to make the move back to central Indiana, we decided on our initial house plans: we were going to get a prefab cabin put on our property and pay for it in cash, no loans involved. We don’t like being in debt. It personally stresses me out. Our long-term vision was to live in this small cabin for several years while saving up aggressively to be able to build a slightly larger, custom house debt-free. We’d still keep the small cabin, but use it for visiting family/friends (and maybe our own occasional shenanigans). We had come across a local Amish building company that made lovely little prefab cabins and found one that we liked, coming in at around 560 sq feet. My parents were even sweet enough to visit the builders and walk through the model we were interested in. Everything seemed fine.
We made our way back to the midwest (I still think it’s weird that Indiana is considered the midwest) to stay with my parents for maybe 2-3 months while our cabin would be built/delivered/etc. Then, we had our first conversation with the county that our property falls within. I’ll summarize what we were told: any new construction must be at a minimum 1200 sq feet if it’s single-story, 900 sq feet if it’s multi-level. No exceptions. It doesn’t matter that we’re on a relatively spacious 2.75-acre plot out in the country surrounded by corn fields and cow pastures. It doesn’t matter that we’d be building a larger home in a few years that would meet that minimum size requirement. Our reasoning and perspective did not matter. In fact, we were informed that there was already a lot of red tape to work through just to have a house at all– the property is zoned for agriculture. We were blissfully unaware of this fact when we bought the land several years ago. It’s been SUPER FUN reading through land ordinances and various requirements since then. Gross.
Embracing this new challenge, we altered our house plans to now pursue the “forever home” that was originally going to wait a few years. This was a big deal for a couple of reasons: first, we were no longer able to do this debt-free; second, it was going to be much longer before we had a house to move into. This meant we wouldn’t be able to start on our homesteading projects until later, and that we’d be staying with my parents for longer. Thankfully, my parents are incredible; they love Jesus and it shows- they’re so generous and gracious about Jeremiah and I being extended house guests. And I mean EXTENDED house guests. Thank you, COVID-19, for delaying everything and making this house-building process go on forever. So, I’ll leave you with this adorable sketch that Jeremiah made (and signed! he’s so cute) that captures some of the elements of our forever home.
Until next time,
Holly