Waiting for Christmas morning

I had so much anticipation on December 23rd that it was probably driving Mr. Big insane. Usually I would be asking 20 questions about the the gifts to come...does it have a color? how big is it? can I touch it? does he have the same questions back to me? (at which time he usually rolls his eyes...)

But alas, this year it was all about the house. You see, a good buddy of ours called on December 23rd to tell us that we had walls. Walls! After planning and planning and planning, it was so exciting to know that we would return to walls! The rest of the two week holiday was great, but there was a certain eagerness to see the house.















Well my friends, behold above the sight that we saw as we drove up to the lot today. This is the view of the front of the house. Not only were the walls up, but the slab of the garage should be poured any day. Great news!















We quickly circled to the back of the house (above) and hopped up to the slab to check out the interior. What a great sight!

That is, until we noticed that a wall was placed in the wrong place, the piping for a bathroom was off, a french door was incorrectly aligned, and a window was the wrong size. ? All of this in concrete. Yikes. In the two weeks, we (or more appropriately I...) didn't consider that things will go wrong. For a while, it felt that Santa left us a lump of coal.

In the end, we spent a good hour with our general contractor (who was out of town when the above occurred) at the site. He reassured us that everything would be taken care of at the builders cost and that he would carry forward some other logistical queries that we had. It really reinforced the importance of face to face communication. We all seemed to leave the meeting in a much better place and on the same page.

Throughout the planning process, we received many "words of wisdom" by others who have built homes. "Things will go wrong". "If you can make it through building a home, you can make it through anything." And the list goes on. It appears that we encountered our first serious stumbling block and good communication got us through with flying colors. Mr. Big is adamant about communicating well and he was right as usual.

Before leaving, we sat at the "future front door" feeling very good about where everything is at. We're still way ahead of schedule and the modifications won't put us behind. Most importantly, our builder reassured us that we can always share our concerns with him throughout the process.

So the anticipation didn't leave use with the equivalent of a Christmas tree and twinkling lights, it wasn't coal either.