When are you going to build?
Dave and I are getting asked this question on a pretty consistent basis.
I have to smile and say, “Cobbler’s shoes.”
For those of you who may be new to this blog, I’ll give you a short update.
My husband is a contractor/carpenter. I’m an interior designer/artist. We make a pretty good team.
We’ve been remodeling a once bank-owned property for 4 (or is it 5?) years. A few years ago horses came into our lives (a long story for another time) and we changed our plans to accommodate. Last year (or is it 2?) we bought 5 acres of horse property. We built an outdoor arena (because those are more important than houses, right?) and have been making plans to build an adorable modern farmhouse to go with it. I’ve even showed you our plans for this 1100 square foot house. (We’re over big houses after losing one in the recession). We have three kids and two fur-babies.
Now that you’re caught up on our history, let’s talk about that new house we are going to build….some day.
It turns out we have some trouble with changing our minds.
After we’d polished and loved and worked through the perfect house plan, Dave decided he needed to nab up a few cheap building lots before prices started climbing. It’s not a bad strategy when you’re a custom home builder. It opened up more options for us. That’s also good, but now we continually confuse each other with debates on how to build, sale, and make money. We’ve taken our perfect house plan and turned it into three versions we could possibly build…from cheapest version to the dream version. (In other news, our dog ate one of the plans. It happens).
Ultimately, we want to live on our horse property with ZERO debt. None. Nada.
Debt is stupid.
It also turns out that we’ve gotten really comfortable with our cheaper-than-rent mortgage on our current home. Every time we start talking about building, my INTJ personality blows up. I have the grandest visions of what it can be, while my simultaneous critic comes out and says “You are going to make this house too expensive to live in. You like a little house payment, remember?”
To complicate things further, we’re opportunists. If we were able to nab up another place for cheap that we could renovate, we would do that too. We have our eyes on one such place. It would take a miracle to fall into place, but I’m a big believer in miracles. If we got it for what we wanted, we could be debt free NOW.
Well, after we sell our current house.
We ARE selling our house this summer. That’s one thing we know. If you know of anyone wanting an adorable, gambrel-roofed house in Wyoming, send them our way. It’s pretty darn cute.
So are we building?
We’ll be building the rest of our lives.
In all seriousness, I’ve done a ton of working on my insides over the last 5 or so years. We lost Kaycee. We’ve been building our businesses and rearing kids and life is messy. It’s good too. Healing has been happening, and I’m grateful for the people that have helped us along the way. One key thing I’ve learned through all of this is that I love freedom more than I love houses. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again:
Debt is stupid. We need so much less than we think we do.
Whether we build or renovate, it will be beautiful. It will be smart.
I’ll let you know when things start to happen.
Bravo!