5 Tips for living in a home while you build.

I called the bank today to give them a date of when we will be done on our house! Oh what a wonderful feeling! 517 days of building! This is going to be a happy holiday for us!

For four months we lived in a camper while we got the house closed in. The minute we had a functioning bathroom I told Ash I was ready to move in. Having three kids in a two room camper was starting to work a number on my nerves. So with a toilet and bathtub and a running sink in the kitchen we moved our things into the house. There wasn’t even insulation on the walls yet. It was the end of September so we had to hurry to get the drywall up before it got too cold.

Its amazing how you can make the best out of hard situations when you are determined to have fun. Last Christmas with drywall mud streaks all around my livingroom, the kids and I got so excited to hang our 9ft tree. With stacks of lumber covered in tarps, right outside my front door it wasn’t picture perfect but we just focused on the good and to us, the house looked beautiful.

Now as I am about to start decorating this weekend in a finished house, I am so grateful for all the progress and HARD work Ash has done to get us to this point.

5 tips for building a house together while living in it.

1- Don’t do it. (Kinda kidding but kinda not) Seriously, that was both Ash and my answer. It is HARD! However, in situations like ours, where we didn’t really have an option, I would say just give each other as much grace as you can. It was so frustrating for Ash to have to work on a project the night before, and then I would sweep up or move tools that I thought might hurt the kids or (the kids hurt the tools) and then when he would come home from his day job and want to get back to his project he would have to find all his tools again. It was stressful for both of us. Just do your best and talk to each other about what you plan on doing so that you both are understanding each others side.

2- Try to pick an area that you can keep a “tool table” set up so you can always have a place to put things, and then you know the #1 place to look for them. (No promises that they always will be put there but it does help)

3- Try to focus on one room and finish it (as much as you can) before moving onto the next room. It is very motivating to see progress in the little areas.

4- Dream together. It is so important to keep positive. At times it can seem like you are drowning in drywall dust and mud, but keeping our focus on the progress we HAVE made and reminding each other how beautiful it will look in the end was our biggest motivation. Often in the mornings as Ash drank his coffee before he left for work and it was just him and I, enjoying the early morning quiet, we would just talk. I think it is what kept us so close through it all. Communication is always the key.

5- Do take times for a break. Ash worked insane hours (50+ a week often) at his day job so it was hard for him to always work on the house in the evenings. Some days he just came home and fell asleep on the living room rug before dinner, and than wake up to eat only to go right to his bed for the night. There were a lot of things we have put off just because we needed to focus on the house. In the summer we did take some days here and there to go to the river to just relax. A day to just get away from looking at “work” was very refreshing. All those hard days are about to pay off when we can put up the tools for good and I can stop washing paintbrushes.

Trust me, there were days where we would be grumpy with each other, but for the most part I think we both just knew we didn’t have any other options in this time of our life so we just kept pushing forward.

Here’s to a week of wrapping up the biggest project we have completed together!