Reflections on Building Our House

Our life has been crazy the last five weeks, well crazier then than the last 8 months I should say.  All of it has been too busy.  We don’t esteem busyness, so we haven’t been proud of how booked we have been.  However, we had a Dec. 12th move-in-date and over the last 5 weeks we laid all the floors, painted the whole house, hung all the trim, cleaned, and worked with other tradesmen to get it finished.  But, we moved into our new home this past Saturday.  Here are some thoughts I have on the overall building process.

• It has been the biggest undertaking in many ways of my life.  Getting a Masters of Divinity seemed easy compared to this!
• It is exciting and frustrating.  You have days that seem to go so perfectly and other days that it seems like everything goes wrong.
• I learned a ton.  I learned so much about construction, the industry, and myself.
• I was impressed with what we were able to do.  I have an incredible wife who did lots of what she called “man’s work.”  From picking up and moving all the scrap lumber, to laying mortar for tile – she was impressive.  The kids did a good job of hanging with us and getting out of normal routine.  Austin turned into a little carpenter.  He learned how to use the finish nailer and nailed all of the baseboards.  I learned to do all kinds of things I had never done before.  I tiled for the first time, worked as the general contractor, did the trim in the house, cut a cultural marble vanity top, and did tons of shoveling.
  

  Austin was worn out on Friday night when we stayed late working and moving living room furniture.

  

  Austin worked hard on his own shoveling dirt around the back steps.

• It seemed I was always having to dig.  I wore our shovel and post hole digger out digging for various reasons.
• I messed up miserably when it comes to communication regarding electric lines as we cut lines and water lines way more than we should have!  Don’t even ask about all of that!
• Also, all the things people tell you about building that you think will not be the same for you, well you are naive!  Your experience will be similar to everybody else’s, which is why most folks say they will not do it again, including me!
• I gained a greater appreciation for help.  We couldn’t have accomplished this project without so much help.  Our family members have helped keeping kids, working with us at the house, and multiplying our hands.  My sister-in-law Ashley has been with us every step of the way helping.  Church friends helped us clean and move in this past week.  I had too much heavy furniture, but several guys gave me all day and moved lots of stuff!  One brother in Christ, Gayle Russell, who was my old neighbor, worked tirelessly helping me in the construction.  He taught me how to tile, painted, and cut most of the baseboards for Austin to nail and for the wood floor.  He was really ready for me to leave the neighborhood I guess!
  

  A group of friends came and helped us clean before moving in one night.

• Everything costs so much!
• We have too much stuff.  It has been a lot of work to move everything to the new house!
• I love our tankless water heater (it is wonderful to not worry about running out of hot water!).  I think I am really going to like our geo-thermal heat/air unit.  It works well, and I hope the energy savings will be very significant.
• We didn’t like feeling like the house was all-consuming.  We didn’t like being out of routine and having to work so much on nights and weekends.  We are ready for normalcy!  I had saved most all of my vacation, expecting this finishing work all year.
• We are excited to be out on the farm.  So far it has been great.  Just watching Landon chasing birds around with his BB gun and the kids all riding the pony makes it feel like it was worth it.  Austin is already taking care of the animals, which he has been trying to do when he was able for the last two years.  Now the watch is on for winter lambs which judging from the size of their bellies will not be long.
• But I have to go finish moving.  I still have an attic and garage to move over from the old house.  By the way, having a walk-in-attic with lots of storage may be my favorite part of this house.
  

  Our first night in the new home. Selfie in front of the tree!