One of our favorite parts of this land that we bought, were the trees. There are a few pine, but mostly iron wood and maple, with a few bass & popple thrown in for fun. It took some time to figure our where we wanted the house located. Since we have deliveries, we needed to be fairly close to the road. As much as we would prefer to be back farther, where we couldn’t even see the road, it wouldn’t be a nice thing to make a delivery guy walk a good 500+ yard with a hand cart. 5 or 6 times for one delivery. So, we settled on the back of the house, which is to face the road, be about 95 feet, or so, from the right -of- way (which is about 30 feet away from the edge of the road). Yes, once the leaves are all off the trees we can see the road, but it’s not a clear shot. So it’s fine.
Before we had purchased the land, we had already drawn up the layout for the house. It’s a good size at 40′ x’ 80′ 2,300 sq ft house, with an 8′ front porch. At first, the porch was going to be the entire 80′, but we ultimately decided on enlarging the garage to be big enough for 2 cars, so now the porch is “only” 56′ x 8′. It has 3 very large bedrooms, all of them being 16′ x 15’/ Several people are surprised that we have only 3, but the boys share a room, as do the girls, & that’s enough. Besides, I don’t think we need something bigger! 2/3 of the building is for the house & 1/3 is for Adam’s commercial kitchen + 2 car garage.
There were certain things that I wanted in the house. Thing such as: the children’s bathroom being accessible from each of their rooms; that we have our own bathroom (we haven’t had that since Maacah was a baby!);that we have a half bath as well; the entry wall to be wide enough for people to leave their shoes there, yet not have to trip on them; an open concept layout, with no walls between the kitchen or dinning room or living room; & a big enough laundry room, with adequate amps, to have 2 washers & 2 dryers. I mean, we’ve lived with our this stuff so far, but if you’re building your own house, why not do exactly what you want?!
This is not the final layout, for this doesn’t show the 2 car garage. Just imagine that garage outside wall is pushed out the the very edge of the porch. And our bathroom we switched places with the closet , with both rooms going horizontal within the room, instead of the vertical they are now. And the 10×24 concrete pad at the bottom there is the walk-in cooler/freezer.
It was an exciting day when the company came to cut down the trees. Although it was kinda sad to see them go, we kept the largest of the maple trees to be right off the porch. 
And so on to the next step!