Wow. It’s been a month since I have written anything! I guess this whole mama-of-four-while-building-a-house is kicking my butt. Time really means nothing to me anymore. It is amazing how a day can feel like a year, and a week can seem like a second. So anyway, if you have been waiting on the edge of your seat for an update on my life (sarcasm), here it is!

The Tree HousE is coming right along. Luke and I are still married and mostly like each other despite this stressful process, and I call that a win. Of course, per the usual, we have had a couple setbacks over the last few weeks, so I think I will divide this post up into two categories, SUCKED and NON-SUCKED.

First, what SUCKED:

1. Another one bites the dust. I wrote in my last house update that our plumber dropped our project just a few weeks before we needed him. Shortly thereafter, our HVAC guy did the same thing. It is very difficult not to take these types of things personally, especially when it happens twice in a row. And maybe there was a personal problem that we weren’t aware of — not sure. However, you can imagine that curve ball really threw us off and caused a lot of anger, frustration, and worry. It was back to the drawing board, again. Luke spent the next couple of weeks calling more plumbing and HVAC companies, most all of them recommended by friends, in a desperate attempt to get someone who would want to take on our job. Thankfully, after more than a few dead-ends and hiccups, we believe that we have the right people who can help us. Fingers crossed. Eyes crossed. Legs crossed. All of it…crossed. We cannot take another round of “starting over”….but we will do what we have to do.

2. Rain, rain, go away. More rain has slowed down the process of getting the exterior finished up. Weather issues are always so frustrating because there is nothing anyone can do to make them better. You just have to wait it out. Luke has stopped checking weather forecasts in order to avoid depression.

But…what NON-SUCKED:

1. We have siding! It is so exciting to see the actual color of the house! We picked a two-tone look. The majority of the house will be white. The rest will be a dark gray. We are using fiber cement siding for a nice, clean look. We are loving the way it is looking so far.

2. All interior framing is done. Basically all of the interior framing is done. You can walk through and see all of the rooms and closets. This has been so helpful in seeing how the house will look and measuring how everything will fit. As soon as we can get subcontractors in, we will be that much closer to dry wall.

3. We picked vanities, faucets, and other fixtures for our bathrooms and kitchen. It feels so good to make decisions, and I have found that making decisions inspires more decision-making. It is easy to reach “paralysis by over-analysis,” and that is definitely something both Luke and I struggle with. We like to research and analyze everything before making the leap — and sometimes you just have to go for it. You can only talk about things so many times. So, we chose vanities, sinks, and faucets for our bathrooms and kitchen, and it felt good! And we (mostly) agreed!

4. We bought new kitchen cabinets! This was not really in the original plan. The original plan was that we would use the existing kitchen cabinets and refinish/paint them. This was a great plan until our kitchen layout changed slightly, and we realized that we needed to have three cabinets (two corner units and a sink unit) custom made. Luke tracked down a cabinet maker, but even that person couldn’t make new cabinets to match the existing style. It was looking like it was going to cost too much money and be too much effort to get cabinets made to make the existing cabinets — on top of sanding them down and painting them. We decided to go ahead and order new cabinets for the kitchen and then reuse the old kitchen cabinets in other areas of our home (laundry room, office, garage, etc). We took advantage of a sale at The RTA Store over July 4th weekend, and we were able to save 22% off the total price of our cabinets. We went with this cool gray shaker cabinet. Originally, I had my heart set on the marine blue kitchen cabinets I have seen all over Pinterest, but I realized that for our budget, I needed to make a compromise. These cabinets have a really interesting look and will be perfect for us, I believe. The idea behind this site is that you buy everything “ready to assemble” (RTA) and “do it yourself,” but for a little more money, you can get the cabinets pre-assembled, which is what we decided to do. Luke’s plate is already quite full. Adding cabinet assembly to his list of tasks might send him over the edge.

So, it appears that we had more “non-sucks” than “sucks,” and for that, I am grateful. This has been an up and down process since the very beginning, but we get more excited by the day as we continue to see progress.

Alright, things are getting exciting now.

If you drive by the site, it actually looks like a house. While we still have a long way to go before we can live there, we are inching closer and closer.

We have enjoyed seeing the rooms in the house take shape. We can actually envision where furniture will be placed, which is exciting. I can’t decide which room in the house I am going to love the most, but I think it will be a tie between the great room and our master bedroom. I am in love with the tall ceilings in the great room, but I think the large windows in our bedroom will reflect nature’s beauty in all four seasons.

For as much that seems to be going right, we also have had our fair share of setbacks and pitfalls as of late. Remember how months ago, Luke lined up all the subcontractors through a process of lots of emails, phone calls, and site visits? We thought we had all of our ducks in a row, but last week, the plumber decided to pull out of our project. I am not going to share this plumber’s name publicly, but I will happily share it privately if you are in search of a plumber. Because this person waited until 2 weeks before we actually needed his services to back out, we are now in a pinch and starting the bidding process over again. A second company that we already had a bid from (but decided not to go with initially) decided to increase their price by $4,000 just because we needed them on short notice. It is so irritating that some people think nothing of causing a giant inconvenience to others, even after a commitment had been made. And now, because of no fault of our own, we might be forced into paying a lot more money for the same services, or at the very least we are experiencing a lot of stress. I am 100% certain we will get it all figured out because we have no other choice. Luke is meeting with more plumbers this week, and I am praying the right person takes the job (and for the price we had budgeted).

There’s always something with a project like this. For example, the tape that goes around the windows to seal them started peeling off because it isn’t compatible with the brand of house wrap we are using. A couple of windows arrived in the wrong sizes. We had to order more roof trusses because we were short a few.

It’s all part of the process. Nothing goes as planned, and that’s alright. I tell myself daily, “Everything is fixable. Everything is figure-outable. Nothing is an emergency.” This helps to keep me grounded (and to keep Luke grounded, which can be very challenging as he is shouldering most of the stress).

For now, we are thankful for the dedicated crew of builders who have put up with us so far. We are thankful that they work when it’s hot, when it’s raining, and when they probably would rather be doing something else. We are proud of how far we have come since we began in February, and we are so excited to think about where we might be by August.

Here are some photos from the last few weeks!