While finding resources for building our house, we have looked at the usual resources such as Pinterest, Houzz, and good ol’ Google. We have also found a few other websites that have been great places of inspiration and advice.

Reddit

The home building subreddit is full of people like us that are dreaming of building a home, alongside architects, builders, and trades workers that have everyday real life experiences working on construction sites. Some of my favorite posts are people sharing their floorplans and asking for advice. 

My Simply Simple

I found this blog by looking at area builders’ websites. This modern farmhouse was built in Indiana with owners with similar interests to ours, such as energy efficiency and passive design. They also were interested in thinking outside the box regarding square footage and using different appliances such as induction ranges and heat pump or ventless dryers. I mostly follow them now for their adorable little girls and beautiful garden. 

A Modern Mountain Home

This website was found on Reddit but we have looked at it so many times it gets its own link. This family documented their entire build process from start to finish. I’m sure they aren’t the first but their advice is practical and it is incredible to see how the project evolved from start to finish. 

One takeaway from A Modern Mountain Home is how they continued to go out while saving money for their house. They went on house-planning date nights. Instead of dinner and a movie, they would go to IKEA and browse cabinets or visit a store to look at lighting fixtures. Josh and I have started to do similar things. 

One of our first home planning date nights was to IKEA. We have decided to use IKEA kitchen cabinet boxes and are probably going with another company to do more custom-look fronts. There is something fun about going to the store and opening and closing drawers knowing that the same things will someday be in our own space. We have also learned quite a bit about what we like and dislike. For example, we both love drawers in the kitchen except for under the sink! It may be what IKEA offers but we would much rather have a large open cabinet than the pullout drawer they offer. 

Another fun place we have “discovered” is Indiana Design Center. This is truly a dream-world kind of place. We were excited to visit Fergusons because we want to do an induction cooktop but, it has been hard to find them in big box stores. Fergusons had a wide selection, and it was really neat to finally get to see them in person and be able to make comparisons. They also had a wide selection of automatic opening toilets, which we both found very amusing and unexpected when we walked past. 

The next place we visited is more of a date day because they are only open 8-5, Monday-Friday, but that is Lee Supply, and they might be my favorite. We found this place by talking to an interior designer at the Indiana Home and Garden show.  She was a designer who worked on the interior of the shipping container home constructed for the show. We really liked some of their lighting choices and asked where the fixtures were purchased. Despite their limited browsing hours, they have a huge selection of things we have only seen there. We spend an entire afternoon taking pictures, oohing, and ahhing over things we can’t afford.