Tuesday, August 16, 2011

"Aren't you glad you didn't build from scratch?"

This question was posed in a comment for one of the posts.
Aren't you glad you didn't build from scratch?
I've had these thoughts for a while. The answer is, I don't know. I think so.

Without a doubt the most agonizingly difficult part of this -- worse than being behind schedule, dealing with errors and poor communication, and being displaced in our house -- has been the difficult and at times compromising decisions we've had to make. (Sadly that part is far from over too.) I am no decorator. I don't have the ability to always be able to look at a few components out of context and visualize what a space is going to look like (or, more importantly, "feel" like)  with it all put together. The final result is usually something of a surprise to me. Obviously that can be good or bad. These decisions are for the most part permanent. Yes, anything can be changed for enough money, but for all practical purposes we are redefining what this house is, and what it will be. We'll have to live with it, and when we eventually sell it these things will influence that outcome, while at the same time adding relatively little tangible value.

Trying to build a whole custom house, from scratch, with no template to base anything on would have been extremely difficult in this way. So yeah, on some level I am glad we didn't try it. We seriously might have lost our minds in the process. On the other hand...would we have ended up with something closer to what we want? No way to really answer these questions until it's all over and we get enough distance from it to have some perspective.

Right now we make decisions, and make a leap of faith that most will turn out okay.

But yeah, right now I'm glad we don't have 50,000 more little ones to make, and then remake again when a percentage of them don't work out.




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