Gap fill and wrap up?
OK - will try and fill in some gaps and wrap this one up...
The original plan from way back in the beginning was to build the shop, learn from fixing up the mobile home, build the house and be debt free-ish and close to self sustaining. (and keep up with too many hobbies along with everything else.)
We paid to have the shop shell (pole building) built and I did most of the internal additions and electrical wiring. We were hoping to live temporarily in the shop while building the house - but that did not work out and we purchased a used fixer-upper trailer to live in while we did the prep work for building a house and completing a number of fixer up projects.
I learned a couple of things while building in the shop and fixing up the trailer. These are not new concepts, but sometimes it take experience to really understand.
1) there is limited time available.
2) Your health deteriorates if you work non stop.
3) I can only get so much done in a reasonable time.
We went from the idea of building a house ourselves as we had time and money, to getting a "dried in" shell to finish ourselves as we had time and money, to finally going the normal mortgage and builder route.
The reasons for the change:
1) Using just our time (keeping full time jobs) would push the completed house out to possibly past retirement age. (I learned a lot about how slow things go when building solo)
2) Paying someone to build a dried in shell for us to complete ourselves also had the time to finish issue, and banks did not want to loan if we were going to do the finish work.
3) Our jobs settled in and we felt confident that we could swing a mortgage without undue risk and get into our house in time to enjoy it before passing on...
So we met with multiple builders to review our floor plan that we had worked out with architect over a few years. We also indicated that we wanted to incorporate the wood that we had harvested from the property into the house, and that we did not want the "standard" level of quality during the build (and we understood there would be additional cost involved). We advised that we were living on the property in the trailer, and that we would be viewing the progress on a daily basis.
Most of the builders were clear that they were not comfortable with the situation of having us reviewing progress each day, being closely involved, wanting higher quality, and using wood we had prepared.
After a number of interviews we finally got two builder options and decided on one who seemed to understand and was willing to work with us. We started by clearing the area behind the trailer in 2015.
The floor plan was to have a great room/kitchen/eating/office main area with cathedral ceiling where we mostly live, and a master bedroom/bath, a guest bedroom, and a library for the better half who let me build the dream shop.
Also a garage that is at the same floor level as the house so no steps to deal with. (we wanted the design to be workable as we get older and probably have to deal with wheelchair access) Doors are all 36 in wide and layout supports walkers and wheelchairs.
The builder had some good ideas on modifications and adjustments on our plan that we agreed on, and the build started with an ETA of nine months.
After the foundation was poured we started to run into the usual builder/contractor issues: delays, anger of being called out for shoddy work, unresponsiveness, etc.
While the builder understood what we wanted, he just sent the crews out with no idea of the changes or quality requirements. We constantly had to stop the crews to keep issues from happening -or to fix things that were done wrong. (like moving the front door over a few feet because they thought it should be...
)
>>> will continue on next post.