Everyday We're shuffling...

One of the reasons I started blogging was to share the good the bad and the ugly parts of building. The hope was to help others and to highlight that none of this came easily. To build our dream home has been a huge sacrifice for our family, our finances, and sanity. The irony is that before this journey we have always been pretty conservative, careful about what we spent and how much we save. We knew going into this that it would be a huge risk but a big pay off. We also knew that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and long term investment that we couldn't pass up even if the "timing" wasn't exactly right. Is there ever really a perfect time to do anything?

So you ask how do you GC the building of a custom home, keep your day job and run a household? The answer is simple, you don't (not simultaneously anyways). It's a constant balancing act and shift of focus. Honestly it's enough to give a person whip lash. There have been days where I'm surprised we don't need to wear a neck brace. You just have to take it a day at a time and sometimes even hour at a time. Even if everyday feels like groundhog day and you feel like a record spinning around and around.

From day to day we all wear different hats, wife, mother, father, co-worker, daughter, son, sister, brother, friend etc. To achieve our goal we had to throw one more hat to our pile the general contractor hat. This extra hat has required our time and focus every day for the last 9 months and counting. On the way to work, lunch breaks, on the way home from work, late at night and on weekends. Suffice to say it's been a significant commitment. My husband even extended his work week to 6 days and has spent every Saturday since we broke ground in December working a full day at our job site.  Our daughters have learned that weekends aren't just for ballet class and play dates. Weekends involve trips to the lumberyard and job site.

Even though it has been challenging to weave general contracting into our daily lives we have learned and continue to learn a great deal. The hands on skills my husband has learned by working on site are preparing us for the maintenance that comes with home ownership. Managing the sub contractors and the financials for this project have built up my management skill set. Dragging our girls to lumberyards and bath and appliance stores has given them more opportunities to learn to behave in public and to be patient. Most of all we have learned to appreciate what we have and what we are building.