In the words of Charlie Brown, "Good grief!" That's how we feel about this past month (long story), which in part explains the blogging hiatus, but the home stuff is going great! Four meetings and numerous preliminary plans later, we are still in the designing stages with Joel. Meetings have been going very smoothly, I might add. Joel's stoner attitude keeps us from feeling pressured. (Yes, you read the sentence correctly.) Seems his favorite phrase is, "That's cool." Truly, the man is a genius, though, and will be well worth the money. We have nailed down the interior design plan. The exterior is a cake-walk compared to the interior. We have printed off, torn out, and copied numerous pictures of housing exteriors from the Internet and magazines. As far as exteriors go, we are wanting something rustic (think the mountains of North Carolina) and sort of craftsman-like (envision Oregon). Slap those two together and.....voila!
Building a home is a(n) ______ experience. (Many adjectives could fill in this blank....both positive and negative...mostly positive, though.) Most importantly, Noel and I are learning how to better communicate even if sometimes our 'communicating' is simply practicing restraint from pinching the other's head off. We are learning that we each have to compromise. We are becoming a stronger team. Give me a 'W!' And we are taking this at our own pace. Often times it's said that the devil is in the details. I equate building a house to planning a wedding. You can fret over every tiny detail, or you can focus on the parts that are REALLY important to you and deal with the details as they come. Now the perfectionist in me cringes when I say that details aren't important, they are...just not right now. We are not so naive to believe that our 'final' floorplan is really our 'final' floorplan. Construction opens a whole new can of worms. Earlier this year, I read in a book a statement that forever changed my thinking: Enjoy the process. So simple yet so profound.
As we get further into this process, it will become even more important to remember that this doesn't have to be a big stress bucket. We should have completed plans by the beginning of June. We just have to decide when to start erecting this thing. (OMG! Did she just say erecting?! Why, yes, I did.) According to the contractors we've interviewed, most have guess-timated a construction timeframe of about 5 months, weather-permitting, of course. Just another decision in a long list of many. We'll keep you posted, and hopefully no more hiatuses. So sit back and enjoy the process.
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