Never had a baby, but it sure feels like I’m incubating something big. A and I have dived into the process that – shamelessly – people tell us will test our marriage (at the Home Show last weekend an insurance agent told us that 73% of married people who build homes end up divorcing because of it – nice! Thanks!) and our sanity. We’ve both been losing sleep over it, and every day it seems that there are more questions to be answered (do you want the storm water capture system to drain to the street or the alley? Gosh, I don’t know – how about the street? Well, that’s much more expensive. Well then why didn’t you just recommend that in the first place?!), and another check to write ($3,500 for the survey that showed that our garage was three feet onto our neighbor’s property; $135 to submit the pre-permit application application to the city; $700 to have the walls and floors tested for asbestos (we’re positive! Awesome – we get to spend more money for abatement!)…blah, blah, blah.
The end result is going to be phenomenal – I really can’t wait. The features we’re most looking forward to: central heat (21st century, here we come!); a new sewer line (what should go down will go down!); and the chance to – after eight years – share a bathroom with my spouse. Sigh. How romantic.
But in the interim, we’re loving getting slapped in the face by the mortgage crisis (we’re good people, I swear it. We can make the payments. We will make the payments. You want people like us), and trying to broker interaction between our architect and contractor…one of whom does not use e-mail or autocad, the other of whom isn’t so big on e-mail. I have a feeling the universe is trying to tell me something.
Last night as we sat in our cozy little living room, A asked if we might just miss the place a teeny tiny bit. The answer is yes – we will forever have hilarious stories about having to hang blankets over interior doors to keep the heat contained (wow, that was so ghetto!), having to cook in the kitchen with hats and mittens and fleece on, having to sleep outside when the temps hit 100 because it was hotter inside the house than out, the creepy moldy ceiling we tore down in the bathroom, and plumbing that our plumber wanted to take pictures of because it was so screwy. It’s been a real first home experience. Yes, we’ll miss it, but I think it’s about time for a grown-up house.
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