Today I want to bring you a post I have been meaning to make for a while, our home build timeline. I’ve been wanting to condense our home build process onto one master post. This way you can see the flow of our home build and anyone else who is looking to build with Wayne Homes or anyone else for that matter, can see what our process and timeline looked like. Warning: this will be a long post!

When we were looking to build, we honestly didn’t have a clue of how long the process took or what the steps were. We did lots of searches for blog posts and build timelines for Wayne Homes and found a few helpful ones out there, but overall there weren’t many. For most people who blog their build they get so wrapped up in the build that they trail off on the blog. I wanted this blog to be a repository of help for those who were like us when we first started.
Choosing a Builder
I didn’t start blogging our process at the beginning. In fact I rushed to get the blog back up and running before I had planned. I had a different blog before this one that had a slightly different focus and the transition to this one was rushed because I knew I didn’t want to miss blogging the build in real time. So our process for narrowing down which builder we were going to use is not up here.
I will tell you that we had a consultation with four different builders in less than 2 weeks and made a decision of who we would go with within a month. One we ruled out right away because of a lack of professionalism on the part of the consultant. Another we ruled out because their price was inflated simply because they managed all aspects of the build and they didn’t seem to be listening to me when I requested a custom elevation with certain features. They didn’t seem to be able to think outside of their box.

The final two really came down to the consultant, and which company could give us what we were looking for. There are builders out there that say they are custom home builders, yet seemingly discourage anything that’s not a simple swap of materials. They tell you they need to talk with the team that makes changes to get you a quote, but seemingly forget about those changes. We signed a contract with Wayne Homes at the end of September.
Buying Land/Selling Our House
After we chose a builder and signed a contract, our next focus was on selling our current house and finding land on which to build our new beautiful home. The selling of our existing home and purchase of our land is not the focus of this post so I will skip most of that, but during that time frame we also met with the design consultant.

The process of selling our home and buying land added about 3 months or so to our timeline. We are a bit risk adverse so we did not want to start building the new house until the old house was sold. We were in the process of buying our land while our house was on the market. The purchase of the land took about 2 months and the house sale was finalized about a month and a half after that. This took us into the middle of January.
Design Consultation
What do you think when you hear the title, design consultant? I pictured someone who would sit with us, get a little idea of what we were looking for and help us navigate through the options available to find our style. Yeah….no, that’s not what happened. We realize later that we were probably the beneficiary of a design consultant who already had one foot out the door and was phoning it in. This part of the process was the only place we were truly disappointed.
Our design meeting kind of went like this:
Design Consultant: This is the lighting package that comes with the plan, is this good enough?
Us: Uhh, I guess? What are the other options?
Design Consultant: There’s some other options in this binder, but this is what comes with the plan. Are we good?
Us: Uhh, okay? I guess we can upgrade it later.
This kind of scenario replayed itself for hours. We didn’t get through it and she said we could just finish up what little was left on the day of our construction meeting. Once we left, we realized we just weren’t happy. We didn’t get to see all the options, we thought of things we hadn’t even gone over that weren’t on the end of the list for next time and in many things we felt we were just railroaded into accepting whatever was part of the base package because she didn’t always have prices or other information we needed to make an educated decision.
Being Our Own Design Consultants
In the end we decided to go back on our own to the design studio…not once, but twice. We spent several hours going through everything we had gone through with the design consultant. Slowly and methodically we went through every singe option to make sure we were happy with our choices. We sent emails and more emails to get prices on the upgrades we were interested in, and even went to the manufacturers websites for some items to see all the options available.
In the end I am pretty happy with 99% of our choices. I can tell you though if we wouldn’t have went back on our own and really looked at everything and how it was going to go together instead of feeling pushed to accept the basics….we would not have been happy at all. So don’t let yourself get pushed around or sped through the process. This is your dream home, you need to be happy with the options you choose!
This should take us up to the point I started blogging about the build, so without further ado here is our condensed home build timeline.
Home Build Timeline
Pre-Build
- September 30th, Initial Contract signed with Wayne Homes
- November 11th, Color Appointment with Design Consultant
- November 22nd, Appliance Appointment at Big Sandy Superstore
- November 24th, Land closing
- January 12, Pre-Construction Meeting
- January 12, Sold our previous house
- February 5th, Waiting to close on the construction loan
- February 7th, Finally got the approval to close on the loan
- February 21st, Loan Closing
- February 23rd, Zoning Permit
- February 28th, Land Prep Work
- March 7th, Initial Dig Date Set
- March 12th, Land clearing ourselves?
- March 22nd, Staking out the House
- March 23rd, Mowing the Meadow
- March 31, Driveway Started
- April 6th, Re-staked the house
- April 7th, Foundation Survey
- April 9th, Tree removal for electric line
- April 12th, Paid for Electric line connection and estimates
- April 17th, Septic Permit
- April 18th, Updates
- April 21st, Lot Prep
- April 24th, Electric Update
- April 25th, Dig Delay
- April 27th, Excavation surprise
- April 29th, Field Camera Positioning
Build
- April 30th, Day 1-Dig Day!
- May 1st, Day 2-Small Delay
- May 2nd, Day 3-Footer Forms
- May 3rd, Day 4-Footer Forms Finished
- May 4th, Day 5-Footers Poured
- May 7th, Days 6 & 7-The First Weekend
- May 9th, Day 10-More Gravel
- May 14th, Days 13 & 14-The Second Weekend
- May 17th, Day 18-Basement Wall Forms
- May 18th, Day 19-Concrete Trucks
- May 20th, Day 20 & 21-Basement Walls
- May 21st, Day 22-We have a Basement!
- May 22nd, Day 23-Zoning Inspector
- May 24th, Day 23-25-Weatherproofing and Tree Cutting
- May 25th, Day 26-Backfill and Tree Cutting
- May 29th, Day 28-There’s a turtle in the Basement!
- May 31st, Day 32-Framing Lumber
- June 1st, Day 33-Framing has Started!
- June 4th, Day 36-Framing Day 2
- June 6th, Day 38-Framing Day 3
- June 9th, Day 42-Framing Days 4 & 5
- June 12th, Day 45-Framing Days 6 & 7
- June 14th, Day 47-Framing Days 8 & 9
- June 18th, Day 51-Framing Complete, Days 10 & 11
- June 19th, Day 52-Updates and Style Decisions
- June 21st, Day 54-Meetings and Rough Ins
- June 22nd, Day 55-Rough Ins Day 2
- June 25th, Day 58-Plumbing Inspection and Basement Look
- June 27th, Day 60-Fireplace
- June 28th, Day 61-Windows & Doors
- July 3rd, Day 66-Slab Prep
- July 6th, Day 69-Electrical Walkthrough
- July 7th, Day 70-The Logs
- July 9th, Day 72-Electrical Day 2
- July 11th, Day 74-Electrical and Logs
- July 12th, Day 75-Electrical Day 5
- July 16th, Day 79-Siding!
- July 17th, Day 80-Well Drilling
- July 18th, Day 81-Inscriptions
- July 21st, Day 84-We tackle insulation!
- July 29th, A Long Week
- August 1st, Day 93-95-Progress
- August 2nd, Day 96-Septic and Drywall
- August 3rd, Day 97-Septic Finalized
- August 6th, Day 100-Drywall Taping
- August 6th, Drainage (From day 97)
- August 11th, Day 105-Ceiling Texture
- August 14th, Day 108-Priming
- August 15th, Day 109-Cabinets and Trim
- August 16th, Day 110-Cabinets and Trim Day 2
- August 17th, Day 111-Cabinets and Trim Day 3
- August 21st, Day 114 & 115-Cabinets and Trim Continued
- August 23rd, Days 116 & 117-More Trim
- August 24th, Day 118, Paint and Stain
- August 25th, Day 119 Mailbox and Paint
- August 26th, Day 120, Painting Progress Pictures
- August 29th, Day 123-Miscommunication?
- August 30th, Day 124-Final Electric
- September 1st, Day 126-Ethernet
- September 4th, Day 129, Countertop and accessory package Install
- September 5th, Day 130, Garage Door Opener, Radon Prevention
- September 7th, Day 132-Pre-Walk
- September 8th, Day 133-Hard Floors
- September 11th, Days 135 & 136-More Hard Flooring
- September 13th, Days 137 & 138-Shower Tile & Final Plumbing
- September 16th, Days 139 through 141-Fireplace, Shower Fixtures, DSL , Well Chlorination
- September 18th, Day 143-Trim and Carpet
- September 21st, Day 144 through 146-Odds and ends, Final Paint
- September 23rd, Day 148-The Last Weekend
- October 2nd, Day 149 and Beyond-Gravel, Appliances, cleaning crew, final inspections, closing day, lingering issues and moving in!
Parting Thoughts
Over all our build went fairly well. We had a large build and some delays due to weather and contractor availability as the weather had a lot of people backed up. We noticed one contractor in particular though took advantage of when our field manager was on vacation. This didn’t cause major issues but our stone around our fireplace is directly on our LVP instead of on the subfloor because of this issue. Whenever we update the flooring this will mean the flooring around the fireplace will have to be cut in order to remove it. Not a major issue, but definitely due to a contractor not showing up when they were supposed to be here.
If we had to do it all over again we would still pick Wayne Homes. We were blessed with a great new home consultant and field manager and those two people made all the difference in making our dream into a reality. If anyone is reading this who is contemplating building with Wayne Homes and has questions or just has questions about the build process in general, don’t hesitate to post a comment or message me through my contact me page or on my Facebook page.
Thanks for reading!