My husband, Matt, and I are building our new home. This is the fifth in a series of who-knows-how-many. I’m writing from the perspective of a buyer, and an agent, since I am both in this case. If you’d like to read previous posts, you can find them here – parts one, two, three and four.
THEY BROKE GROUND!!!!!!!! I was away, visiting friends in Portland this last week, when Matt called me, beyond giddy, to exclaim, “They started our house!!!!!!” Thank Heaven, I thought to myself. I trusted the builder and the team to do what they’re supposed to do. and so I figured it would start when they were ready to start. BUT SOMEONE in the family (my beloved, Matt) drove by the site every day to see if they had begun. And when they hadn’t, I’d receive frantic texts, “Do you think the deal has fallen through?” “Shouldn’t they have started by now?” My colleague and I found this so amusing the other week that she suggested I text him back that she had a client she wrote up after we wrote our offer, and her people are supposed to be in by Christmas. So, I did, and he called, all in a dither. Who says real estate isn’t fun??? 😉
One interesting thing about this entire enterprise is that I am truly understanding some “truisms” about real estate. I’ve heard time and time again that the footprint of the house, the raw outline against the ground that one sees at the beginning, looks impossibly small. On a two-story, there’s always a little consolation, “Well, we’ll have another entire floor.” But in a rambler, like ours, what you see is what you get, and it looks like we’re going to leave 1718 square feet for…1718 square feet again! The bedrooms and living spaces that looks enormous on paper, look tiny when laid out on the lot. When I look at the outline on the ground, and I envision moving around in my future home, it feels like I’ll only need to take seven steps to cross from one end of the house to the other. Such is the power of perspective.
I think I have one or two more posts in me about this, until we get closer to completion of the project, and then I’ll probably resume a weekly update. Thanks for reading along and sharing our excitement, and your ideas. It’s been an awesome experience, so far.