The Berger family has been celebrating since closing day. Their visions for a picturesque home site outside of a traditional new home community truly came to life. Tara Berger and her husband Stephen partnered with the Drees Build on Your Lot team to build on a three-acre picturesque site that was once home to a vineyard.
Tara, a nationally-recognized event stylist and entertaining expert, documented her home building journey, sharing every step along the way with readers of her popular blog One Stylish Party. If you missed her past posts, you can catch up here:
- The beginning of the build + the Design Center experience + design and style tips
- Build on Your Lot considerations + construction prep and progress
Since settling into her new home, Tara has reflected on her journey and shared her experience building on their own lot.
Reflecting on our home building journey
By Tara Berger
Now that the dust has settled from our big move, I am excited to share the details about closing on our new home! We have officially made it to the finish line of our home building journey, and looking back now, the time truly flew by. We could not be more grateful to Drees Homes for making our dream a reality.
The final stages of construction
In my last update, we had just finished up cabinetry and trim work in our home, and were moving onto painting, flooring, countertops and other final touches. It was right around this time that our Builder was able to lock-in our closing date. While we had a general timeline of when the home would be complete when we broke ground, it definitely became much more real once we had a concrete move-in date.
During the final weeks of construction, there were many crews of workers that were in and out to install the finishing touches on our home. The flooring installation was a huge game changer and completely transformed the space from looking like a construction site to a real home. Another one of my favorite installation days was when our two-story stacked ledgerstone fireplace was complete! It is a true showstopper, and adds so much texture and visual interest to our family room.
Inspections
It was also during this time that the house began a rigorous set of internal and external inspections. Drees truly left no stone left unturned when buttoning up the details of our home. From minor paint blemishes to caulking and testing lights and appliances, we were so impressed by the level of detail in making sure the construction of our home met their extremely high standards.
As with most construction projects, it came down to the wire to wrap everything up, pass inspections and obtain our certificate of occupancy to hit our closing date. But no matter what was going on with the home build, our Builder always remained calm and focused, while working tirelessly around the clock to get it all done in those final weeks. He even joked that he would sleep at our house if necessary to ensure we hit our closing date!
Closing celebration
About a week before our closing date, we had a final walk-through with a Drees Customer Care Rep. This meeting took about two hours and was spent walking through the house in detail, learning more about the mechanicals and going over all of the warranty information.
And just like that, closing day arrived! It was exciting, emotional, and honestly, a bit of a blur, so I am incredibly grateful that we have a video from our closing to remember this special day. Here’s a peek:
We have now been in our home for a few months and still pinch ourselves that we actually get to live here!
I know I have said this many times throughout our journey, but we truly feel as though we could not have picked a better builder than Drees to build our forever home. We are thrilled with our spacious, family-friendly Ash Lawn floor plan, the quality of craftsmanship and that it only took months (not years) to make our dream home a reality. We also love that we did not have to sacrifice on location since we were able to build on our lot.
Learn more
Tara plans to continue documenting her new home journey as she fully settles into her Ash Lawn. You can following along for future home tours and entertaining tips on her site One Stylish Party and via social media (@onestylishparty). You can also check out Drees spaces she has styled below:
- Patriotic parties at home
- Fall in love with autumn entertaining
- Savvy Thanksgiving setups
- Fan favorites party approaches for the big game
- Valentine’s Day at-home date nights and Galentine’s Day entertaining
To learn more about building a Drees home of your own, visit dreeshomes.com and select your location.
Stylized shoot by Brittany Gidley Photography