Getting Our New House Finished!

Here is a slide show of pictures taken at our homestead this past weekend!

It is hard to believe that it’s been three years since we originally contracted to get our house built.  What we have been through in the meantime has taught us a lot!  If I was going to go back and change anything, it would be to have a lawyer review the contract we got from the first general contractor.  That one step would have saved us considerable time and frustration.  Please note for anyone looking to spend a major sum on a building.

Having said that, I am now very happy to be working with a new contractor!  The contract specifies a time frame for the work and has a liquidated damages clause if the job goes over.  We did have to add a “Hold Harmless” for the new engineers so they wouldn’t worry about getting sued for the work that has already been done, but I was willing to do that since all the previous work was inspected by the county.

Unfortunately, I am still working with a lawyer to get a settlement from the original contractor, but that is at least moving forward and should reduce my costs to finish the house.  On the plus side, we are now expecting our house to be done this summer!

The new contractor has already poured the apron for the driveway and a patio for the back of the house.  He added a nice tile design for the patio which will eventually be part of our outside kitchen and dining area.  A good friend has already given us a colorful hammock which we plan to hang between the supports for the porch.  My husband is excited to start using his workshop to build things we can use in our house or elsewhere on the property.  We have a tree already picked out for a swing!

Now you may be wondering how this works given the current situation in the world.  When the shutdown was announced, my husband and I both lost jobs we had held for over a decade and worked at remotely.  The business we supported did live events which obviously couldn’t be held with “social distancing” and “groups of less than 50” or more recently “less than 10.”  We did attempt to promote webinars as a replacement, but the responses we received were not sufficient to hold off the inevitable end to our positions.  When things get back to “normal” we may get some work from that source again, but our bills can’t wait.

We are reinventing ourselves with the skills we already have.  I have decades of experience in the educational field and will take that online as a tutor.  My husband has processed many types of data and will leverage that for new sources of income.  In a way, the change is good and should give us more time to invest in our property.

Given our reduced income situation, the first thing we did was cut out any unnecessary expenditures and reduce the payments we need to make until we have steady work again.  Then we set out to promote ourselves through an online platform for people who work remotely.  Lots of applications later, we are making progress on getting new jobs lined up and providing the skills that are needed.  We will use monies set aside for the house to get it completed and then build our reserves back up. 

Lastly, we are using all this additional time to get our current residence ready to rent.  That means painting the walls, cleaning the floors and appliances, and looking for anything that needs to be repaired and handling it!