You Should NOT Build a New House if… (Part 6) You Insist on Perfection

Are you like me? Do you like for everything to be perfect? When you see a pothole in the road, do you want it filled in immediately? Or better yet, have the road repaved? When you see a hole in a shirt, do you want it to be repaired quickly? Or better yet, have the shirt replaced? When you forget something, do you want to bash your brain in to teach it a lesson? Or better yet, reroute your neurons so they no longer take the wrong exit or run into a ditch?

I hate imperfections. You’d think that after having put up with many imperfections in my almost 61 years of life, I’d be used to them by now. But I am not. In fact, I think I hate them even more now than I used to. If my aversion to imperfections continues to grow, then by the time I reach the age of 75, I may have to be put into pure white sterile room with no doors disturbing the walls’ perfection. And please leave me a gun so I can blow my brains out should the wall paint ever begin to crack.

If you are a perfectionist like me and you want to build a new house, you have two choices: blindfold yourself each time you visit the house or DON’T BUILD IT!! Well, actually there is a third option, but it won’t be easy. It’s the option I opted for. Get it through your think head that there will be many imperfections while building the house and just GET OVER IT! Whew, it’s hard to say, let alone actually do. It will require a lot of mental energy, so be sure to carry a portable generator around with you while construction progresses.

I could tell you about the time I visited the house and discovered they had put water and drainage lines in a wall where no water or drainage was needed, but I won’t.

I could tell you about the time I visited the house and discovered someone had knocked a hole in our freshly installed sheetrock, but I won’t.

I could tell you about the time I visited the house and discovered that the newly installed kitchen cabinets were partially covering one of the can lights, but I won’t.

I could tell you about the time I visited the house and discovered there was a hole all the way through the partial wall above a column near the dining room, but I won’t.

I could tell you about the time I visited the house and discovered a leak at the water line to the laundry room and how I visited many more times over the following weeks and it was still leaking, but I won’t.

I could tell you about the time I visited the house and discovered that some workers had pulled their van up beside the house on wet freshly laid sod leaving a trail of ruts behind, but I won’t.

I could tell you about the time I visited the house and discovered that the wrong French doors to the library had been installed, but I won’t.

I could tell you about the downspout near our bedroom window that has a leak on the upper elbow that creates a continuous thunking noise when water drops hit the lower elbow, but I won’t.

I could tell you about the dirt and mud flowing into our yard from a neighboring empty lot during a downpour, but I won’t.

And the reason I’m not going to tell you about these things is that I know you too are a perfectionist and the very mention of these things would make you squeamish or even make your blood boil. I simply cannot bring myself to do that to a friend. I’m too much of a perfectionist.

You Should NOT Build a New House if… (Part 5) You Have a Busy Schedule

Imagine you are at work and preparing an important report for your boss. The deadline is the end of the day. Suddenly your phone rings, jarring you from your intense concentration. It’s the builders of your new house. They tell you that the carpenters are at your house and need for you to come by and make a few important decisions. You tell them that you are busy today and ask if you can meet them tomorrow. The answer comes back. No, they will be on another job for the next week or so, but they need to order supplies based on your decisions. What do you do?

Fortunately, I never faced such a dilemma (or should that be dilemmum since it’s singular?). Why? Because I was retired. Oh sure, I was still doing part time work, but my schedule was pretty flexible, so I never really faced having to decide between whose demands I should heed first. But let it be known that if you work a full time job, especially one that requires long hours, you will probably face these types of issues frequently.

You’d think that if you hired a builder to handle the day-to-day interfacing with contractors, and you’d made many decisions ahead of time, you’d avoid these changes-need-to-be-made-and-a-decision-is-needed-immediately types of issues. But NOOOOooooOOOO! They still come up. So if you’re planning to build a house and you work a full-time job with rigid hours, plan ahead about how you’re going to handle them when they come up.

Sometimes making decisions well in advance doesn’t even ameliorate the situation. Kathy and I had picked out our hardwood and tile months in advance of when they would be installed. And guess what? When the time rolled around to order the flooring, both had been discontinued. So, it was back to the drawing board. Not being artists, this was difficult for us. Yet we had to decide all over again on different flooring.

It’s not just when you’re called that you need to break away from your regularly scheduled routine and go to your under-construction house. Many times you just want to be there to see what’s happening. You don’t want a mistake to go unseen until it’s too late. Usually we could simply go to the house at the end of the day and investigate what had been done and make a punch list for the builder. Other times it was best to be there while the workers were there to discuss things before they got started. For instance, one day we went by after the painters had been there and discovered that they were beginning to paint one wing of the house the wrong color. Fortunately they had only painted one room incorrectly, so it wasn’t that big a fix. Even so, had we been there before they started we could have saved them some time.

Besides me being retired, we were fortunate in another respect. A neighbor across the street from our new house was fairly diligent about keeping an eye on what was being done during construction and filled us in on anything he felt was not right. Many people dislike neighbors who stick their noses into other people’s business, but in this case, we liked it.

We are pleased to report that essentially all the mistakes we discovered were able to be corrected. However, there was one that could not be fixed without major work. We have many pocket doors throughout the house. One separates a hallway from the laundry room. While inspecting the house late in the game (about 13 minutes and 15 seconds into the fourth quarter to be precise), I realized that that door opened and closed roughly. There was something wrong with the rail it hung from. We had the door guys look at it. They messed around with the rail as best they could, but could only improve its functionality by a minor amount. They said the only thing more they could do was to tear out the wall and replace the rail. I just couldn’t believe it. You’d think that if we can put man on the moon (we can still do that, can’t we?), there’d be some type of limited charge directional dynamite or C4 that would knock out the door and the rail without doing harm to the wall so that they could be replaced. But apparently there is not. I guess I’ll just have to wait a couple of years for 3D printing technology to come up with a solution.  

You Should NOT Build a New House if… (Part 4) You Expect the New House Will Be Perfect and Solve All Your Problems

Up until we built our new house, Kathy and I had only lived in one house…for 30 years. We lived in an apartment for a little over two years after we married, at which point we decided it was time to invest in a house instead of paying rent. We looked at a lot of houses and found few that we liked at a price we could afford. The real estate agent kept pleading with us to look at a particular house in Oak Hills subdivision. Inexplicably, we believed it was too far out. Not in a hippy sense, but in a distance sense. In actuality, it was only two miles further out from where we had been looking. Commuters in Atlanta would laugh their heads off at the idea of two miles making any kind of difference in commute time. Ah, but what can I say. We must have been distance challenged at the time.

Ultimately we did go look at the house in Oak Hills. Upon first looking at it and seeing the size of it, we were pretty certain it was out of our price range. But fortunately, the man of the house had already been transferred to another city by his company so he and his wife were looking to sell as soon as possible. In fact, when we put in the obligatory offer that was lower than the asking price, the sellers actually countered with a deal better than our own offer. No, the sellers were not off their rockers. The better offer happened because the man’s employer decided they would pay for all the closing costs so he could get moved more quickly to his new city. Needless to say, we accepted the offer.

The house was quite big. 2000 square feet of living space on the first level and 1400 square feet more in the basement. It was a wonderful well-built ranch-style house. There was much to love about this house, but also a number of things not to love. Those latter things didn’t really bother us at first. We were just glad to be out the apartment and into our own home. But over time the stars faded from our eyes and we began to become more critical of our dwelling place.

One of the biggest issues was the kitchen. It was galley style and quite narrow. If more than one person was working in it, a bit of bumping and shoving could occur. Also, the dishwasher and the refrigerator could not be fully open at the same time since they were positioned opposite each other. You wouldn’t believe how often I could only crack the refrigerator door open slightly to put something back. It would have helped greatly if I were skilled at popping my shoulder and elbow out of joint. Also, even though the kitchen had a fair amount of cabinet space, it wasn’t quite enough. We had to store some of our kitchen items in the basement and drag them upstairs when needed.

Speaking of dragging things upstairs, another annoyance was bringing in the groceries. Our garage was in the basement under the kitchen. Upon returning from the grocery store, we’d have to make several trips up and down the steps to put things away. We also had a deep freeze in the garage, so whenever we needed a frozen item from it, we’d have to make that pilgrimage to the basement. When we were younger, we did not consider this a problem. But as we grew older a strange thing happened. As hard as it is to believe, over time the steps got taller and increased in number. In fact, by the time we decided to move, the number of steps was growing exponentially. Things were getting totally out of hand. Some people said it just seemed like the number of steps were increasing and getting steeper because we were getting older. We weren’t so sure about that. I threatened to install a dumb waiter. Kathy wouldn’t go for it. She said that if we were to get a waiter, she wanted a smart one that could speak.

Don’t get me wrong, the basement had its advantages. We went there when tornados showed up. We also had a large room down there with a pool table. And no, we did not use it as a fancy eating table like the Clampetts did in the Beverly Hillbillies.

My hobbies require frequent use of a computer. Kathy’s hobbies involve using a sewing machine, a serger, and scrapbooking equipment and supplies. At first we had the computer equipment in a room in the basement while Kathy had her stuff in a room across the hallway. But eventually we were both using computers so much we decided to move the computer room upstairs to our guest bedroom. We didn’t have overnight company too often, so it worked out fine using the basement entry room as the guest bedroom. The problem was there was no room for Kathy to put her hobby stuff upstairs. You might say, “So what?” But you see, Kathy and I are part of that rare breed of husband and wife that actually like spending time together. We wanted to be able to work together, but we couldn’t with that arrangement.

Another problem was that the laundry room was very small and right next to the kitchen. That was fine for people who like to wash clothes and dishes at the same time. We didn’t. Also, our dirty clothes were stored in our bedroom at the opposite end of the house. With no room for sorting the dirty clothes in the laundry room, we would do so in the nearby den. It was kind of weird watching TV over mountains of clothes, although it did give us a sense of being in nature.

Another annoyance was the size of the master bathroom. Apparently it was designed and built as a torture chamber for claustrophobic family members you hated. There was only room for a sink with limited counter space, a toilet, and a shower. If your spouse was on the toilet as you were getting in or out of the shower, you’d have to hop over them like a rabbit. One had to be careful not to trip over the toilet sitter and thus rip the shower curtain down.

There were a number of other issues I could mention, but enough complaints. You get the picture. Admittedly, these are all first world problems. Many people around the world would just stare at us in amazement should we mention these problems to them. If you have no indoor plumbing or electricity, you’re not going to be sympathetic to someone complaining about the size of a laundry room or master bath. I get it. But on the other hand, I do live in a first world country and I refuse to have third world problems. If I think the toilet seat in the third bathroom in my house is a bit hard to sit on, I’m going to complain about it. I’ll leave complaining about third world problems to those in third world nations. My ancestors already did that type of complaining years ago. That’s why they built this country up to be a first world nation. They wanted their descendants to complain about less important things than they complained about.

We considered remodeling our existing home, but we didn’t like the idea of disrupting our home life during the process, and we knew no amount of remodeling could correct the “garage in the basement” issue. Also, if we removed all those extra steps that had come into existence from nothing over the years, there would be a huge gap between floors. So, we decided to go on a search for another house. A real estate agent friend of ours helped us out. He showed us quite a few homes, but none met with our approval. We had already decided that if the other house had a number of obvious problems, we weren’t going to go through the process of selling and buying and moving to just shift to a house with its own set of issues.

The real estate agent finally realized that there was only a small chance of finding an existing house that we were willing to switch to. So, he told us we needed to consider building a house. We were extremely leery about doing this. We had heard a number of horror stories about this process from others; some that almost made me wet my pants. However, we agreed to meet with some builders. What could it hurt, except for our pocket book, if we decided to go that route? As it turned out, we already knew one of the owners of the building company as my wife had taught all his kids in school. So, we started on a positive note. After several meetings with the builders’ architect, we made the scary decision to sign a contract and have them build us a house. We took an existing floor plan and modified it to meet our needs. Well, at least as far as we could determine.

As Kathy and I told people of our decision to build, a number of them told us: “When you build a house, you can correct the problems of an existing house, but you’ll just introduce new ones that you didn’t even consider.” Deep in my heart I knew that was true, but it was still disconcerting to see it play out in reality.

Our new house is on one level, except for one small step from the garage up to the laundry room. What were we thinking letting the builders put in even one step? We already knew how those things could proliferate based on our experience with the old house. However, that step is what allows any water draining from our cars to be blockaded from running into the house. In our old house, the garage was level with the basement living area. Occasionally when we parked our cars inside the garage during a heavy rain or snow, the water would drain off them and run over to the wall, go under it, and soak the carpet on the other side. So with that one small step we had one problem solved. You might say it was one small step for man, but one giant leap for problem solving.

Our kitchen is now BIG. No running over each other. Well, except when we are all trying to get to the sink at once. There’s plenty of cabinet space so we can keep everything we need right there. We do still have the deep freeze in the garage, but it’s just a short distance from the kitchen and we don’t have steps to navigate to get there…except for that one I mentioned earlier. We now have a large laundry room so dirty clothes can be separated there rather than in the den. We have a LARGE master bath. There are two sinks so my wife and I don’t have to compete for usage. We have both a tub and a shower. And the toilet is in its own cubby-hole so you don’t have to be a rabbit to get to the shower.

Our old master bedroom had two small closets. This was always a nuisance. Kathy couldn’t store all her clothes there, so had to keep some in the basement. I won’t mention navigating those steps again. Whoops! I guess I just did. Hey, even I, the man, could not store all my clothes in my closet. And I didn’t even have very many clothes, at least by first world standards. Our new house has a LARGE walk-in closet that can comfortably store all our clothes. It’s very nice.

My wife, son, and I are book junkies. In our old house we had bookcases scattered throughout the house, both on the first level and the basement, to hold all those books. We decided to correct that problem by having a library in the new house. It would have floor to nine-foot ceiling shelves for storing all those books. Well, except for our son’s books, which he wanted to keep separate in his bedroom. Add pocket French doors, a table, and a couple of recliners, and we also had a reading room. Nice!

Yet, as our friends predicted, we did introduce a few new issues. Not as many. Not as troublesome. But issues nonetheless. In our old ranch style house, the rooms were well separated. But having been influenced by many different HGTV shows, we decided we wanted our new house to be more open concept. This is nice in many ways, but does have its disadvantages. In particular, NOISE! It’s hard for anyone to do anything in one room without the noise disturbing others in another room.

In our old house, the bedrooms and kitchen were on opposite ends of the house. In our new house the living space is centrally located with the bedrooms surrounding it. For instance, our kitchen is right next to the master bedroom. And even with a wall between them, the blender and garbage disposal and even the cabinets doors closing, can be heard in the bedroom. If you are a light sleeper and you are on a disparate schedule from your spouse, this can be a problem. Also, in our old house we had pressed wood countertops. They were well made and had lasted for years. They also absorbed the impact of dishes being set on them. In our new house, at the recommendation of many people, we installed granite countertops. They look elegant, but talk about clanging as dishes are set on them. We could open our doors and use the sound as a substitute for a church clock tower. Once you adjust how heavy handed you are, this noise can be minimized, but it was still disconcerting initially.

We had installed some hardwood and tile in our old house, but the den remained carpeted. However, carpet is a dirt trap no matter how much you vacuum. We decided to go with all hardwood and tile in the new house. While this is nice for cleaning, it can be hard on your feet if you like to go barefooted in the house like I do. Also, the sound from the TV echoes more, making it harder to understand conversations while watching all those romantic Hallmark movies. Closed captioning is a good solution to this problem, although I have noticed that on some shows the words aren’t on the screen long enough for me with my slow reading skills.

We were so looking forward to having a covered patio since the old house had an open patio. Then we could grill even when it was raining. Well, that’s what we thought. As it turned out, the smoke likes to congregate under the patio ceiling when the grill is sitting on the patio. This is okay if you have X-ray vision that allows you to see the food on the grill through the smoke, but unfortunately I am not from the planet Krypton. Also, I was concerned about discoloring the vinyl ceiling over time. So, I have to roll the grill onto the grass away from the patio. Not going to do that when it’s raining. It wouldn’t be prudent. Oh well, at least we can sit outside when it’s raining…unless, of course, the wind is blowing the rain sideways.

There are a number of other issues, but I’ll just mention one more. There is not as much storage space in the new house as the old one. But we put a positive spin on that one. We decided that if we didn’t have enough storage in the new house, then we had too much stuff! We relinquished ourselves of much of our stuff before we moved, then more after we moved, and are still looking to get rid of more. You have probably heard the old saying, “The person who dies with the most stuff wins.” That’s not true. Dying with a lot of stuff is easy. Dying with a minimal amount of stuff is hard. Those that do that are the real winners.