A cautionary tale for those of you considering building a house.

Lisa and I used to schedule a date night once a week.  But the last 6 months have really been something, and we haven’t had a single one in all that time.

It started with the Thomas Fire in December, and then the Montecito debris flow in January.  Then in January we decided to get more directly involved in our house project to move it along to a more speedy and cost-effective completion.  And, at this stage of construction, it just takes an enormous amount of time to make all the decisions you need to make for the finishes, whether you are managing the schedule or not.

Since January, we have literally been all in on the house project.  We have spent just about every spare moment doing something related to the house, and it looks to continue for another couple of months.

My mother, upon hearing of our lack of date nights, or any other real leisure time for that matter, started insisting that we need to have one.  To prove her point, she sent us a check to cover the cost of a nice dinner. 🙂

Well, we finally got out a couple of nights ago to a lovely French bistro near the Santa Barbara bird refuge.

It was great to have a little break away from the house and the kids.

As a side note, the local nick name for the bird refuge is the “bird refuse”.  The bird refuge is a decent size body of water that is prone to algal blooms every couple of years, which cause a nasty rotten egg smell.  Luckily, this night, the smell was normal.

In any event, the last 6 months have given us plenty to think about regarding a project like ours.  Lisa and I both agree we probably wouldn’t do it again, knowing what we now know about what it takes in time, effort, and money.  And if we did, it would be a considerably smaller house.  My ambitions of having lots of space got the best of me on this one.

We’ve been at this for five years and three months now.  It started in March of 2013 with the historical report on the property, and then moved into an 18 month process going though the single family design board.  The back and forth with the plan check process took another year.  The years to total in planning and permitting.

We broke ground in March of 2016 and are just finishing our 27th month of construction, probably with two more to go, and then a little bit more to finish the landscaping.

The cost is going to come in at about 25-30% more than we originally budgeted, and that is with some stuff taken out, like a pool.  Time wise, we originally planned on 24 months from start to finish, but it will likely come to 30-32 months until we are totally complete.

Perhaps we will feel different once it is all done and we are living in it, a perspective I’ve heard from at least one other that has gone through the process.  From our current vantage point, still in the thick of it, it seems we might have been better of finding a house to remodel.