House

In February 2001 Trevor and I signed the papers to build our first house. We were super elated. We had become extremely weary of living in cold, dark basement suites with noisy upstairs neighbours. This was going to be ours!
The decision process was very easy; we knew where we wanted to live and how much money we had which gave us two options for builders. There was one house with each that fit out budget so we picked a favourite and that was that. It was a 900 square foot split level with two bedrooms, one bathroom, kitchen/dining room and living room, no garage. To us it was practically a castle. The builder had allowances for each particular part of the house and since we couldn't afford any extras the selections were minimal and easy. We chose the cabinetry out of three finishes, flooring and paint offered a few more options , and lighting - the only thing we upgraded slightly on. I think the decisions for everything were made with only a few hours of our time. The rest was standard stuff with our package.Trevor and I were rather naive throughout the whole affair but we ended up with a house we absolutely loved. I bawled for weeks after we moved out of it.

• This past summer we embarked on another house building venture but this experience has almost no similarities to the first one.We are contracting the building ourselves and the decisions we've had to make seem endless! Since we are just over two months from our estimated completion date a mountain of selections have needed and still need to be made. It's fun but the pressure of getting it done is weighing on me because we have so little time! Siding colour, trim colour, roof colour, window sizes and types, door styles, door knobs faucets, bathtubs, sinks, toilets, lights, where to put lights, switches, phone jacks, cable outlets and I could go on. Each item seems to have a million and one variations! To make matters worse our custom cabinet maker friend had to back out on us last weekend due to his wife needing a surgury (she also has MS). He found us someone else do the job but it means we're back to square one with explaining the design and what we all want etceterra. In terms of our timeline we should still be okay but the cost will increase.

Here's where we're at:

• The exterior is 80% completed. The front siding is not up because the supplier ran out of a major part of the siding in our selected colour and had to be order more. That's why I dont' have any pictures yet because the best part - the front - isn't done!

• The interior "guts" have been in progress for the past few weeks. By "guts" I mean plumbing, heating and electrical - not much to show for these componants so not worth more pictures. We're being held up by our heating guy currently who keeps coming up with lame excuses as to why he hasn't come yet. That's what sometimes happens when you use a friend of a friend that used to be a friend! The "guts" should be completed this week.

• Drywall should be commencing in a week or so and then visible progress will be available shortly thereafter.

• This week our front steps/landing and driveway are being formed and hopefully poured with concrete - weather permitting.
• We need to decide our cabinet colour, counter top, and backsplash in the kitchen and bathrooms within the next two weeks. Following that we must choose flooring and paint colours because by mid to late November we should be ready to paint. Trevor and I are doing all the painting ourselves. GULP!! It's all good, we actually don't mind painting. Just keep me away from corners and edges, rolling the big blank walls is much safer for me. (I'm a messy painter!)
  

We are having a great time with this process and get increasingly more excited to live in this house!