Anything happenin' yet?

..... or in other words, have we started building our house?

No.

BUT, we have a verbal quote from our builder (Major Hurdle cleared) with the written contract ready to sign, and we have met with the excavators who SAID they can start in a little over a week!!  Should we get our hopes up?  No.  But we have.

I had a set-in-stone vow when the plan of moving all kicked off a year and a half ago ..... to NEVER build another house ourselves (been there, done that).   But with an eye on our budget and the determination to stay out of debt, we have decided to have our builder get it to a point of extreme unfinished-ness (post-sheetrock, pre-everything else inside) and closed to the weather.  After which Husband will don the contractor's hat, take the helm, and git 'er done.

Back in 1985 (when I can retroactively apply dates to occurrences in our lives because I was still having babies and our last one was born that year) we bought a couple of acres, set up a temporary mobile home, and commenced a ridiculous plan to build a home for our family with our own bare hands, paying for it as we go.  (Do you hear the fairies hovering above, warning "Don't do it, you fools!"?)  Husband was serving as a Mormon bishop (similar to minister) at that time, with a full-time job, plus we had four young children with one, as mentioned above, still in Newborn Stage.  And not long after that, we started a new manufacturing business.

A very young Husband on a very steep roof.

Reality set in quickly and we could see that if we wanted our children to grow up in this house, they were not going to wait the 20 years it would take for their silly parents to build it.  So we hired contractors and, long story short, eighteen years later, when we tired of mowing those two acres and decided it was time to move again, we finally finished up the trim in the upstairs bedrooms so that we could put it on the market.

We hadn't started the landscaping yet, which was worse than building the house.  Sorry about the poor picture quality.  The scanner wasn't hooked up and this is a phone-photo of photos.   

Never again, I said.

Till now.

Our reasoning is thus:  Husband is now mostly retired and has time.  Children are grown and launched.  We have funds.  We are still healthy.  And we both think shopping for light fixtures, cabinets, tile, flooring, appliances, etc., is a lot of fun.  (We're weird that way.)   Hopefully this will save enough money so that we can also build a shop, pave our driveway, and after selling the Beast, buy another smaller trailer for future travels.  Are the fairies hovering again?  Are we insane?  Probably.  

I guess we'll see.