Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and all those new beginning happy start fresh sentiments. We have been busy and we promise to bring you up to speed on what we are working on with the house at the present moment. But for now, we are going to continue our look back to just over a year ago when we found the team to bring our vision to life.

After our failed attempts to discover how to get the ball rolling, we decided to start talking to people that knew how to go about building a house. That still meant we needed to zone in on what we were going to build. When we started evaluating our list of must-haves, it became apparent that we weren’t necessarily focused on traditional requirements but more on the feeling and the function of the space. We emailed several builders, but those didn’t pan out.  We met with a builder that has done fantastic work in our area. We left the meeting feeling discouraged and misunderstood. Our dream home isn’t a standard 3 bed/2 bath all brick home with a giant complex roofline.

One day while browsing the Indianapolis subreddit, a picture of a modern house was posted and the poster asked for recommendations for an architect/builder in the area that could design something like it. Being Reddit, there was someone that knew the architect that designed the home, and then there was another recommendation for Neon Architecture. And the rest is history! End blog!

Neon seemed exciting because they seemed different. Most of the work displayed on their website was for a much more urban setting than where we would be building. But it was clear that they were more thoughtful with space and creative with materials compared to other builders. After a brief email exchange, we were invited to tour the building site of a home they were finishing not far from our own. At our first meeting, we were excited to see they were using solar power for the house. They were the first to admit that it was their first time taking on a solar project and that there was much to learn to improve it. It was also different to see a home that devoted space to living areas, rather than walk-in closets and cavernous bathrooms. We left the house tour feeling excited and started dreaming of the possibilities. 

At the next meeting, we were invited to tour a house they had recently completed, called the Tetris House. This home was in the heart of Indianapolis and very different from our “neighborhood,” but I love houses and will tour them anytime and will love doing it. The Tetris house was fascinating. The use of layers of levels to maximize a narrow lot and to create divisions in space that didn’t use walls. The partial basement level felt just as light-filled and open as the vaulted living space. The mechanics of the home were all kept in a center column and greatly reduced the distance that plumbing and heating would have to travel from the source. But most importantly, the Neon team was all there, hanging out together, lounging on the living room-sized white couch like a family we were being invited to join. Josh and I left to go to a local deli and split a sandwich and continued dreaming. 

We had found our architect and builder.

This was starting to get very real!