Yes, if you read my last post (…a fool for a builder…), you know now that I was my own builder. You know how they say that a man who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for an attorney? Well, it’s more than a little relevant here.
Like so many things, it’s my mom’s fault. See, my mom raised me to believe I could do anything. I don’t mean that she threw around generic platitudes like you can do anything you want to do if you just set your mind to it. No, my mother actually believed that I could do anything. And while it didn’t instill in me any great sense of confidence, or prevent me from becoming completely neurotic about my various ineptitudes, it did predispose me to go ahead and try despite my obvious shortcomings. My mother’s encouragement set me up for more than one collossal failure. And I am still learning what an incredible gift that is.
So of course, when I found out that there was a way to be my own general contractor and build my own house–well naturally I decided I’d give it a go. I mean, if such a thing were possible—if in fact other people managed it, then certainly I could, too.
Nevermind the fact that I had no experience whatsoever. I mean, I painted a room once. No–twice. I’d painted two rooms. Okay, I didn’t actually paint the second one–but I did stencil little fish on the wall. And…that’s pretty much it. But that didn’t matter–there was this company, and they gave you this binder with everything you needed to know to do the job. How hard could it be?
Before you answer that, let me set the scene: at that time, I had three children–ages 8, 4, and a nursing newborn. I was homeschooling the oldest in a 30-year old, 600 square foot 2nd floor apartment with a non-working oven and only one functioning stove burner that consistently set off the smoke alarm. And I had a loaner baby at the time—a 2 year old that I babysat full time, whose mother decided it was time to start potty training. Oh, joy.
Yeah, in hindsight I can see the obvious insanity here, too. But at the time it seemed like a really great idea. I had this vision of myself standing at the jobsite, wearing a pink construction helmet, being totally in control of building process. I’d hire the subcontractors, oversee the bricks & sticks (my house has no brick; I’ve just always liked the way that sounds), and get my fingers meshed in every aspect of the process—every last duct, joist, and faucet.
Now, back when we got married almost 20 years ago, I promised The Hubby that I would never let him get bored. Of all the well-intentioned promises I have reneged on in the past 2 decades, that one has remained untarnished…much to his dismay. The Hubby lives in justified fear of five little words: “Honey, I have an idea.” That simple phrase from my lips will blanch that man’s face. Which is an amazing sight, given the fact that he’s hispanic and is normally a nice, caramel color.
So when I announced my newest “great idea,” The Hubby ignored it, hoping it would go away. It only made sense, I argued. After all, he had certain requirements in mind for our new house–none of which we could afford…unless I acted as the general contractor, effectively eliminating the costs associated to the middleman. Not to mention the fact that nobody would be as ruthless as me when it came to bargain shopping for fixtures. This wasn’t just some harebrained scheme, it was my way of giving him the house he wanted.
He finally sensed that I wasn’t taking my teeth out of his leg on this one. “Okay, but I have a full time job,” he told me. “I am not building this house. If you do this, you’re on your own–I can’t help you.” Yes, of course, I understood completely. “I’m not kidding,” he assured me. “This is your job, leave me out of it.”
Pretty much everything after the word “Okay” was blah-blah-blah at the time. Energized by the challenge ahead, I set to lining up subcontractors. And everything went great…until right before they poured the slab.
Now, if you’re not familiar with the building process, let me just say that “right before they pour the slab” is pretty much right at the beginning.
Here’s the set-up: I am terrified of tornadoes. This is not an irrational fear in the state of Texas. Pretty much from March through October you can count on any precipitation event being accompanied by at least a tornado watch, and often by an actual tornado warning. And most people who’ve lived in Texas very long at all have had at least one near miss, in which a tornado has touched down within a few miles of where they were or where they should have been but, due to divine intervention, were not at the time. I actually encountered an actual tornado as I was driving through West Texas about 10 years ago. Funny thing about West Texas, if I were going to build a road straight through a region fondly referred to as Tornado Alley, I might put some bridges or some ditches somewhere along that road. If you are ever caught in an actual tornado in Tornado Alley, all that advice the weatherman drilled into your head about lay-down-in-a-ditch will be pretty useless….
Where was I? Tornadoes….oh, now I remember. So, being that I have actually spent several hours laying in a bathtub with a toddler during a tornado warning, I decided I needed a tornado shelter. And I didn’t want one of those outside jobs, where you have to actually leave your house carrying a 4 year old at midnight in a raging storm, only to have the storm pass benignly overhead. No siree, my shelter was going to be fully accessible from inside my house, so that at the first sign of inclement whether I could toss all of the kids down the hole to wait it out. I found a contractor and had the plans drawn to sink a prefab unit under the master bedroom closet. Perfect. Except that the guy who came and dug the hole and dropped the prefab unit into the dirt put it in the wrong danged place–a fact that wasn’t discovered until after the piers had been dug and the rebar run, and just before the slab was poured.
Hey, I went into this realizing that it wouldn’t be a cakewalk. I assessed the situation, and after deciding that tearing up all the rebar and re-drilling the piers wasn’t an option, we just kind of redesigned the master closet and the kitchen around the new position. No problem.
Except that the new position ate into my kitchen, obliterating half a wall of planned storage. I coped. I moved on. (I also never dealt with the storage problem. To this day, it’s just a wall).
More little things arose here and there, but I dealt with them. Every day I dragged my kids (3 of my own, 1 borrowed-baby; Mason hadn’t been born yet. Yet being the operative word…) to the jobsite to check on the subs. Funny, you’d think I was the first general contractor to ever ask a trim carpenter if he could stick around until she was finished nursing the baby….
But like I said, I dealt with the minor crises as they arose. And then a not-so-minor crisis arose. As luck would have it, from the time “they” (the people with the magic binder) worked up my budget to the time we were actually hiring subs, gas prices had shot up, along with the price of virtually every necessary building supply and service. So somewhere around the time I started soliciting bids for the interior work, I realized there wasn’t going to be enough money to finish the house, at least not at the rates the subs were quoting me.
I had only one option: I had to find some cheaper subcontractors.
Two cheaper subcontractors, to be exact. One of them had really cute knees. And the other never did get that pink construction helmet….
…to be continued….
