Dan Warning and Sarana Lee, a Homewood couple, spent the last two years building a three-bedroom house from scratch at 18462 Dixie Highway in Homewood. They officially marked it for sale with an open house on Sunday, Aug. 31.
Warning and Lee said there used to be another house at this location, a stone’s throw away from Southgate Shopping Center, but it was demolished about seven years ago. They bought the vacant lot from the Village of Homewood and formed the company Building Buddies LLC to helm the new house’s construction.
The couple said it almost feels like they live in the house, considering all the time they’ve spent working on it, but they live elsewhere in Homewood. Whoever buys the property will be the first to live in it.
Warning, an automotive technology professor at Joliet Junior College, was the project manager for the construction. Lee, a middle school English teacher, was the business manager. She handled the finances and contacted contractors to help with the construction. She also assisted with tasks such as painting the walls.
“The village has been really great. We got a lot of help from the Building Department, the village engineer and the arborist,” Warning said. “It’s been quite the journey. There are a lot of moving parts to building a house and it takes a lot of teamwork.”
“People would come by and say, ‘it looks so good,’” Lee said, describing the support they received from the community.
Warning and Lee said that after a contractor laid the concrete foundation, they got to work. Listing what they built, they mentioned the structure of the house, the electrical, heating and cooling units, the windows, the floors and the interior finishes, adding that local contractors installed the bricks, the roof, the drywall and the plumbing.
The three-bedroom house has a deck, a recreation room, a living room, a kitchen with new appliances, storage spaces, two full-sized bathrooms and one smaller bathroom.
Kisha Wells, a real estate agent with Signature Realtor Services and a personal friend of Warning and Lee, gave tours of the property to potential buyers at the open house.
“I’ve been here in some of the earliest stages of them building. I think I’ve come about two or three times before it’s actually finished,” Wells said. “This is really exciting for me to be able to sell this home for them. It’s my first new construction.”
Molly Richards, a Glenwood resident, took a tour of the house. She said she found out about the house because she goes to Life Church in Chicago Heights with Lee’s mother. She said that during its construction, she’d pass by at least once a week and observe how far Building Buddies was coming along.
“The house is beautiful. It’s spacious. It’s ready to move in,” Richards said. “You can sit in the kitchen or on the patio and look at the traffic on the main street.”
Warning and Lee said they recently purchased another lot on Kedzie Avenue, and Building Buddies is on the path to construct a second house.
