Guys, WE.ARE.MOVING!! We bought a fixer upper and are about to commence on a massive renovation/addition in Fairfield, Connecticut.
Logistics
We are moving along with the sale of our current home privately, we’ll be moving into the CUTEST rental ever on April 1 in our new neighborhood until our house is ready, and baby boy is due on May 4 🙏🏻Those prayer hands are real, right now!
Why are you moving?
We found this home back in December and after casually looking in that area for quite some time, we felt like this was the one. The location is just PERFECT. It’s within walking distance to the beach AND the elementary school, and the area as a whole has the community we are looking for. I actually went to Fairfield University, which is less than a 5-minute drive from our new home, and even lived at the beach when I was a senior there! I always admired this exact neighborhood and dreamed of what it would be like to live there as a family. Ironically too, my mom was born in Fairfield and took her first steps at the beach right near our house!
When I say good community, imagine this…riding your bike to the ice cream shop + deli, Friday night movies at the beach in the summer, kids littering the streets, walking to school, Halloween parades, concerts in the town green type thing.
While Fairfield was always in the back of our minds, when Brian was commuting to NYC, it didn’t seem like a reasonable choice. Since he’s been working with me from home, the idea started to come up more and more and began to feel like a reality. That’s when I started looking at Zillow 🙃
The house is indeed a project, but I was hoping to find something just like it so that we could put our stamp on it. The good part about this house is that a couple years ago, they had it lifted to meet the flood zoning, so the foundation was set. It’s SO exciting to be able to build this house in our vision, and we’ve got an AMAZING team helping us along. We meet with our architects, builder and design team up in Fairfield almost weekly, and for the past few months have been working on putting our plans together to be able to present them to the town to meet various zoning regulations, and to get a building permit! There is SO much involved in this process, the paperwork is like a full time job! Also, the mortgage process with a construction loan – yeesh! Brian has fully taken over this for me so thank God for him!
Telling the kids
We’ve started to gently introduce the idea to the kids, and at first, Brian was a no-go. The idea of moving houses doesn’t bother him so much, it’s more moving schools. Of course he’s very comfortable after nearly completing two years at his current school, and I know there will be a bit of an adjustment for him. For this reason, we decided moving soon would be best. We can get him into the spring sports in Fairfield, and he’ll have the summer at the beach to meet the neighborhood kids. He’s definitely on the sensitive side, so we’re being pretty strategic about our approach. Grace is an easier sell, she’s a bit more of a “go with the flow” kid, and she doesn’t have as strong “roots” down in the school yet. She’ll be able to start kindergarten at her new school in the fall which is another reason we decided it’s a good time. I think the longer we waited and put this off, the harder it would get to move.
We’ve been taking them to all the places in our new neighborhood on the weekends, like the skate park, school playground, walks on our new beach, the ice cream shop, deli, etc… We brought them over to see our rental house, which by the way we found via the neighborhood facebook group which is pretty cool, and they both LOVED it. They chose their rooms, asked if they could have the same bean bags the current owners had, Brian even said to the owner, “this glass of water tastes SO much better than the water from our house, thank you”, lol. We’re going to keep them in their current school until June, it’s about 25 minutes away which isn’t terrible. Pretty sure the kids in our school have that long of a bus ride, or more? Brian can lift the load while I prep the house and for baby! My parents will be home from Florida by then too, so they’ll be a big help.
How I’m feeling
I’m actually feeling really good. It’s kind of a lot to think about happening all at once, but we’ve got a lot of support from friends and family, and I’ve got Brian, who has been great. I’m pretty restricted at this point in pregnancy due to the placenta previa, so that is what it is. I’ll point, they can reach and lift, and I’ll wrap and place in box 🙂 I’m doing everything I can to stay calm and healthy during all this transition. I’m eating healthy, going to bed early, not taking on more projects for work than I need to, taking any outside pressure to be here or there off my plate, I’m using my oils for allll the calm vibes and to help with sleep, and just started acupuncture which I just realized today… I think is working! It’s been three weeks and I seem to be less irritable and stressed. So odd but I’m definitely going to stick with it until we’re out of this craziness. I’ve been seeing Sarah Swanberg at Indigo Wellness.
What’s Next
Besides packing, making sure the sale of our house goes through, and moving… continuing to make headway on our new house. I mentioned our team earlier, we feel SO lucky to have these fine people on our side working with us to make our dreams come true.
Our Team
Our architects, Christian Rae Studio. Gary and Christian have been AWESOME. Architects are amazing how they take your words and bring them to life!! We’re going to take you through our meetings with them in our next IGTV so you can see the 3D renderings of the house. Highly recommend them if you’re looking for architects.
Our lawyer, Dennis Bujdud, incredible guy. Truly, the best of the best. You’ll meet him for like two seconds and say this guy is GOLD. Super laid back, makes you feel so at ease with everything.
DeRosa Builders. We’ve been working with Mike DeRosa and he’s been a GEM. He showed up before we even put an offer on the house to give us his feedback and has been literally holding our hand every step of the way. He comes to all our meetings, and is a great sounding board to have when we start talking numbers and what’s doable, i.e. “Liz I know you want a cedar roof but you know that’s triple the cost of asphalt”, things like that. It can get real, “dreamy”, if you will when all the creatives like myself, Gaelle and the architects get going, so Mike (and Brian) are usually there to take us down a notch.
Gaelle Dudley of GLDesign who is helping me with all of our design and decor selections. We haven’t quite gotten there yet, but she’s been super helpful at our meetings with the architects in steering some of the random design decisions that if you haven’t built a house before, don’t come naturally. She totally gets my style and we just get along so well so it will be really fun to do this alongside each other.
Our realtor, Jenny Walsh has been amazing! She’s a total SWEETHEART and I love her. If you’re looking for a realtor in Fairfield County, she’s your gal.
Okay, lots more to come! Please tell me in the comments, what and how do you want to see all this home content? Weekly blog posts? Instagram stories? IGTV? All of the above?!!