Blessed

Tags

blessings, builder, new home, priest

As I explained to my builder, I’m that crazy lady who finds symbolism in everything and prays for all good through all processes. And blessings. I pray for blessings. Like, All. The. Time. So it made perfect sense in my mind that when the time came to build our house, I would have the property first blessed, and ask for a special blessing on my builder and all the people who will work on my house.

(I can also get really carried away with things. I haven’t yet on this project, but give me time.)

The way I see it, we are blessed to be able to build. We are blessed to be healthy and surrounded by family. We are blessed with peace. It’s only right to want that for everyone else.

So I called the priest who married me and Dom. It has been our custom over the years to include Father David in all the beginnings of our lives. He catechized me, confirmed me, married us, blessed our first home, and baptized our first child. I hoped he wouldn’t think I was crazy for wanting him to bless a patch of grass. He graciously agreed to what amounted for him to be a two-hour drive and an overnight stay at the Catholic Center.

Then I called my builder and shared the idea with him, asking that he come to our lot on Wednesday for a blessing on him and all the workers he would represent. He sweetly agreed.

And so it was that at promptly 6:30 last night we all gathered at my in-laws’ house, traipsed next door, and prayed for God’s blessing on all those who will come and go at this address, on the home that will soon stand, on the plans that direct how it is to be constructed, on the builder himself and on all those who will work to make this home a reality.

Now we can really “dig in.”

Letting Go

“You never conquer a mountain.  Mountains can’t be conquered.  You conquer yourself – your hopes, your fears.”

-Jim Whittaker

We are in the final plan stages.  Our builder is drawing up the final set and putting the finishing touches on what will be the instructions for building our home.  My head is spinning.

During the month of February I have taken off work three days for the express purpose of working on the new house or getting the old house ready to sell.  Each day was exciting and exhausting.  The most exhausting aspect, aside from personally hand-selecting each and every inch of flooring and wall covering, is the letting go of what we know, what we are sure of.  I am a “sure thing” kind of girl.  I don’t gamble.  I don’t take risks.

I haven’t gotten very far, either.   I’m like the tortoise in the fabled race.  Sloooooow and steady.

I have wanted to build a house for the past decade, plus some.  I have not wanted the stress and the details of building, and I didn’t think we could really afford to build anyway, so I let it ride for years upon years.  Until now.  Now we realize that house ain’t gonna build itself.  And we will never know what we can do until we try.  So here we go.  This is where it gets scary.

I really like the house we are in.  I think my son’s room is too small for him to grow up in, and the master bathroom is too small for me and hubby to both use the mirror at the same time, but other than that I love my house.  I love that I have created everything favorable about it.  From the two “sitting rooms” as I call them, with their fancy crown molding, stellar baseboards and suede textured walls to the whimsical harlequin diamonds I painted on our daughter’s bedroom wall.  I love the freshly painted den and the new “reading corner” my mom helped me create just this week.  I love my new oven and my new dishwasher.  I love my front flowerbeds with the wall of bricks that I spent all summer setting until it looked just right.  I love the old nursery, which is now a catch-all room for everything we don’t want to deal with right away.  I love the two walk-in attics. I love that this is the very first place my children entered when we left the hospital after each birth.  I love the memories and the smells and the wide backyard.  I love this house.  As I pack it up and prepare it for someone else to love, I feel a little nostalgic and misty.

So I reach for the floor plans of the new house and gaze at the drawings of my children’s quality-sized bedrooms and the master bath where hubs and I will have OUR OWN sinks and mirrors.  I foresee my kitchen, with an incredibly awesome island and gorgeous dark wood cabinets.  I imagine the house, standing tall and proud under two large oaks with my kids skating around the driveway while the sun shines, our dogs wagging their tails as they run beside them.  I think of that, and I cannot wait to see it.

So this “scary” will all be worth it very soon.  It is not a mountain I have to conquer.  It is myself.

The Day that Mabel Ate the Bar

I’m a nerd. I’m blogging about my home building, so you probably already had me pegged as a nerd. If you follow this process for long, you will soon be rolling your eyes and wondering how in the world I hold a steady job. Just like Dom rolled his eyes at me the other day when I made little model drawings of my furniture and placed them all over my floor plan to make sure we had enough room for the individual pieces.

“What in the…? Oh my God, you’re not really doing that, are you?” he asked me in disbelief.

“Does it look like I’m really doing this?”

“You’re…you’re drawing and cutting out our furniture?”

“Each piece is drawn to scale, too. Cool, huh?”

“Whatever makes you happy, I guess. Geez!”

“Say what you will. I don’t want to get into our brand new house and find out I don’t have room for the ottoman that goes with that chair.”

“The ottoman you just measured while my feet were propped up on it?”

“Yes, that would be the one. See how nicely it fits in front of the fireplace? Your tootsies can stay warm.” I smiled sweetly and pointed to the newly-furnished floor plan.

“Jeeesus,” he sighed.

It never takes too long for Mabel, our rambunctious black Lab, to become interested in whatever I’m doing. Even if I can’t hold her interest, she is at least going to investigate until she is satisfied that my life is more boring than hers before she returns to her nap on the good sofa.

So there she was, sniffing around the coffee table where I had the new home rolled out in all its glory, complete with my little color-coded furniture cut outs neatly arranged in the appropriate rooms. She huffed once and the furniture moved. Her eyebrow raised and she huffed again. At the same time, I flew toward the floor plan to keep the tiny paper pieces from blowing all over the place. Note to self: Mabel’s huffing and my flying do not a calm atmosphere make.

Almost in slow motion, the paper bar, representing the actual bar full of the liquor I would soon consume in exasperation, skittered upward like a confused snowflake and tumbled gently down within Mabel’s gaze. Her mouth opened slightly, and faster than a Louisiana alligator she gobbled the bar – right out of thin air.

“Mabel, dammit!!!! You ate the bar!!”

I heard a snigger from the Hubster, who kept his gaze focused on the television. “Why don’t you just draw another one?” he asked, without looking my direction.

I glared at them both, called him a name, called Mabel worse, and rolled up my floor plan.

Fast forward six weeks. We were at our builder’s house talking about the plans in their present stage when I asked about putting electrical outlets in the floor of the family room.

“Sure, but our placement has to be precise,” he said. “I need you to mark exactly where you want them, considering where your furniture will be. I suggest you measure all your furniture and…”

I beamed with excitement while Dom groaned. “I have all my pieces already drawn to scale and color coded. Dom thought I was crazy for it. But, it’s a good idea, right?!!”

“It really is! You have to do that – everyone does. It’s the only way to really know where everything is going to fit, and we need that in order to make sure the plugs are in the right place.”

So now I do have to draw another bar. Such sweet justification.

Dreamy Enough

Saturday we acquired our third drawing of the home. Hopefully, the fourth drawing will be “the one.” Am I building my dream home? No. But I will be able to dream in it. That’s enough for me.

We are already well over the square footage limit we had set for ourselves, and that means more everything – lumber, sheetrock, brick, cement, paint…cost. So as we watch the plan grow, we find ourselves weighing absolutes in order to save on space.

My dream home would probably be between 4,000 and 5,000 square feet, mostly filled with closets and nooks. This ain’t that house. First, I can’t afford my dream home. I can’t afford the cleaning crew I would need to maintain my dream home. It is what it is.

This house will have several things that I find comfortable, and will lack a few things that I find comfortable. Three things are certain – it will be better than what I have now, it will be mine, and I will love it.

So, How Big IS This, Ya Think??

Dom and I agreed this year that we would buy each other house plans for Christmas, so we have been diligently calculating and measuring and thinking out loud about what this home should look like.  The draftsman we were introduced to turned out to also be a licensed builder and a genuinely great guy.  He has printed out two plan revisions so far and we are still drawing.  The square footage that we were aiming for has already been shot through the heart because of my unwillingness to feel like I’m cooking in my den – I need to feel a separation of spaces.  That’s just me.

 

Suffice it to say that I have NO CONCEPT of square footage.  I’m the lady who looks at her current home and says crap like, “Well, if we could just move the top story to the ground and have it all on one level, then there are rooms we don’t even use, so trade off that space to make the bedrooms bigger, and voila!  See?  I don’t need a house any bigger than what I already have.”

 

Architects and mathematicians fear me.

 

We showed our lot to our builder over the holidays.  He seemed pleased that it’s large enough to not impose any restrictions on the layout of our home.  Then I showed him a picture of the kitchen I want.  He threw his head back, laughed, and told me my lot wasn’t big enough for my kitchen.

 

He was kidding.

 

I think.

 

No, he was.  I know this because he returned to his computer and drew it precisely as I imagined.  He rocks.

 

Now that we have a layout that I am thrilled with, we just have to make sure that we have little things like backpack space in the exit hall, room in the garage for Dom’s worktable and closet doors wide enough to walk a laundry basket through without shimmying.

 

It’s the little things that drive me.  And apparently, little things make for a bigger house.

 

Onward!

Baby Steps

Well, I kept wondering what in the world I was going to do with this site.  I guess this idea is as good as any.

 

My husband and I are planning to build a house.  This will be the second house we will have purchased, and we are quite certain it will be the last.  We do not want an extravagant home, but there are several amenities we will include if they are affordable.  We have a square footage limit of 2500 sf, just because I really don’t want to be responsible for cleaning anything larger.  We have a 2500 sf home now, and with four humans, two dogs, two rabbits and one fish tank, we can create a fair amount of clutter.  All critters will be moving with us to the new house, which will be situated next door to my in-laws.

 

About the in-laws: yes, I can really do this.  Fourteen years ago when we were gifted the next-door property, I was unsure I wanted to start raising my family right under their watchful eye.  But they are top-notch in-laws, in that they truly stay out of our business unless invited and kindly expect the same in return.  Easy enough.  Now that the kids are pre-teen and our parents are aging, I feel a sense of peaceful responsibility in the idea of being next door to them.

 

I made the first phone call this week to a person with building experience and know-how.  Dom and I will next meet with him and the draftsman that he uses and trusts.  From there the draftsman will sit down with us and our paper-napkin drawings and hopefully bring our plans to life, or at the very least, blueprint paper.

 

For the purposes of sharing the process with you, the reader, I will likely use first names when referring to the people hired to help this process along, but I do not plan to give details of the professional people involved, out of respect for their privacy.  I WILL, however, state the names of any professionals with whom I am fully satisfied and who give me their express permission.  I will not call by name any professionals with whom I am not satisfied.  My mission here is neither to build up nor tear down local professionals with my blog.  My mission is simply to write about the experience.

 

I also do not plan to divulge costs here, as I find the overt mentioning of the price tag of one’s home to be ill-mannered.  If I share cost information at all, it will likely be in the form of percentages or standard supply cost-per-unit.  This blog will detail the experience of building and share the progress along the way, and – more than anything – provide for me a much-needed outlet for my stress and overbearing supervision of what I’m sure will feel like the birth of another child.

 

I have been told that building a house can destroy a marriage.  I do not take that lightly.  I have asked and re-asked my hubby if he thinks we are ready for this stress, just to be sure neither of us enters blindly into dangerous territory.  Quite honestly, we feel prepared and secure enough in each other to embark on this journey.  And we plan to pray A LOT, for I believe that being spiritually in tune with each other and our purpose can only help a stressful situation.

 

So, as my three-ring binder of ideas and plans quickly fills up, let’s see what this journey unfolds…