THE END

We're in, We're done!! The past couple of weeks we have been moving over our belongings from the home on Homer to our new home. We passed our occupancy inspection and our final electrical inspection. Yeah! We are meeting new people in our area and have attended our new ward several times. There are great people here that we are excited to get to know. Everything is new and a little weird feeling but Viki and I commented to one another yesterday that it is getting to feel natural to drive to this house as our home now.

It has been an interesting, busy, frustrating, and exciting 6 months. I can't say that I am sad that the building process is over. One of the most commonly asked questions that I get asked is, "Would you build again?". My answer is certainly not any time soon. The most common reasons that I have heard to build are that you get the house you want where you want it and you get more house for your money. As far as the first reason: We got as much of the house that we wanted that we could afford. It is true that we were able to get the house in the location that we wanted. However, more house for the money may not necessarily be the case. With the current economy this is a close call as without sweat equity I think we could have found a better value in an existing house.

As far as reasons not to build, we heard that the process is hard on a marriage, stressful, and building always goes over budget. Yes to all of those! I don't think that building itself creates new problems in a marriage but it does bring out or accentuate the differences in a couple in the way they reason, solve problems, and make decisions. Having these differences highlighted in our relationship throughout the building process has been challenging. Thank goodness we have eternity to embrace how the other thinks as there remains room to improve in this area. Building is stressful especially if you like to be involved and want to stay within a budget. There are decisions to be made about every aspect of a house. The very simple seemingly inconsequential to those that have a bearing on the functionality of a home all tend to wear you down after a while. Everyone told us to expect to go over by 10% of original building budget. I blew this off thinking that we could certainly do better. Again, without sweat equity we would probably be 10% over the budget, primarily because nobody works for free, changes in the plan usually increase costs, and original building budgets are based on building a house to code or with the use of base model fixtures, carpeting, etc. Any decision away from base model materials increase costs.

One highlight of the building process has been our dealings with the Bank of Commerce. Initially, I locked our loan rate at 5.125%. At the time we were 60 days out from closing and I got worried that rates were going to begin to rise. About a month later I got a call from Connie at the Bank of Commerce. She told me that she had renegotiated our rate down to 4.875%. What!! There was no obligation on her part to help us out, but she did and I am grateful. I am sure that she has saved us thousands of dollars over the life of our loan.

So, while I don't plan on building again I do feel grateful for the house we have, a marriage that is still intact, and the many learning experiences that I have had throughout this process.