Welcome to the official website of A House We Built!
We are a husband and wife team who designed our forever home from scratch together. Now that we are moved in, we are currently in the process of styling, decorating, and continuing many design/building projects around our house that are turning this house into our forever family home.
To give a little background on us – we are high school sweetheart millennials. We got married in our early twenties and have always been working towards a common goal we shared of designing and building a home together.
Originally, when we were first starting this journey, we weren’t sure if we were going to build a house or buy one. But we knew that a house and a place to put down roots was something we both wanted. For many years, we worked hard as we could while saving as much as possible and spending very little. We never bought anything fancy, didn’t go on any expensive vacations, rarely ever ate at restaurants, and generally lived simply and as far below our means as we could to help us save. So, for us building this house has been the result of years and years of hard work and saving. And we loved those years! It wasn’t a sacrifice. We knew we were working towards a goal and we really developed and appreciation for minimalism and simple living that has stayed with us even now that we have our house. When we were finally ready to start on our home project, we did a ton of research on buying vs building and ultimately decided that, for our situation, building a house made the most sense for us because it allowed us to truly design and customize every inch of our home from idea to reality.
We designed this house from scratch together in 2016, we then broke ground the following summer, moved in the summer after that, and are now working hard on projects that make our house into a home. We also work from home so this house functions as both our family home as well as our office space.
Our house design is admittedly quite weird compared to more “normal” or traditional houses. We created a tall, 4-story design because we decided to build “upward” rather than “outward”. This gave us tons of space while keeping a smaller footprint and making a more minimal impact on the forest and local wildlife around us. We broke many traditional ‘rules’ in our design but our house is a very true reflection of us personally since we designed it around our specific needs and preferences. If I were to ever give one piece of advice regarding designing a home it would be that (unless you’re intentionally building to sell the house, which we were not), then always design what YOU love, not what you think other people will love.
Currently most major construction projects (like building walls, electrical, plumbing, etc) in our house are complete but we’re still doing a lot of ‘cosmetic construction’ and also decorating, making furniture, built-ins, artwork, etc to make our styling personalized in a way that is a true reflection of us and what we love. Our “To Do List” has dozens of projects we want to complete around our house both inside and outside! We have at least 2-3 projects (ranging from small-ish to very large) for every single room in our house, including some spaces that we have never yet shared! Honestly, if we ever got to the point where the house was truly ‘done’, I think we’d be sad lol. There’s something incredibly satisfying about designing, building, styling and decorating your home. We like to think of it as the ultimate creative nesting journey!
On a daily basis, we are most active on our Instagram page (@ahousewebuilt) where you can follow the latest daily updates we share on our whole house building, styling, and decorating journey.
Sources for almost everything in our home are shared on this website.
- Our website roadmap or menu bar can help you navigate to any room you want sources for
- Our homepage also has a recap of everything in one place.
Our Tutorials section is where we share how-to guides on projects we’ve done. There’s a wide range of tutorials that cover construction, furniture building, art projects, and DIY decor! Full list here.
Our Recipes section is where we share our favorite foods. We love to cook and bake! Full list here.
Our cleaning section is where we share our cleaning routines, minimalism tips and cat-related sources.
We have 5 rescue cats we adopted (2 sets of bonded siblings) that rule our house and we share lots of cat tips in our Cat section. It includes everything from a tour of their cat room, to training tips, how to introduce new cats to the family, how to cope with cat allergies, our cleaning routines, and lots more.
We are happy to answer most questions that we’re asked but please do read our homepage first or navigate to a room/tutorial of your choice via our website roadmap as most of the time the questions we get asked are already answered there since our sources pages are very thorough and detailed.
Our home is not for sale and we have chosen to not share our house plan. Since we designed our house ourselves, it is fully custom and we feel it is too personal to share. We appreciate your understanding.
And don’t forget to follow our Instagram page (@ahousewebuilt) to keep up with our daily progress!!
