It’s been several months since I’ve reported about our house building journey because due to bad weather we’ve been at a standstill.  The crews started the dirt work for the foundation or our house and then there were months of above average rain and all work stopped.

You can read about our house building journey by clicking on the links at the bottom of this post or clicking on Let’s Build a House at the top of the page.  I’ve also included a link below to a post about the record breaking rain.

Click on the links below to read my posts about the record breaking rains and the floods at the area lakes.
Rain, Rain and More Rain
Lake Life
Lake Texoma’s Historic Lake Level
Water Flows Over the Spillway at Lake Texoma

Of course, the next problem was waiting for the lot to dry out after the rain finally stopped.  There were large puddles all around and the heavy equipment kept getting stuck in the mud.

Have You Seen the Concrete Man?  (To the tune of “Have You Seen the Muffin Man?”.)

For the last few weeks, the Muffin Man song has been going through my head (but I replaced Muffin Man with Concrete Man).  The rain and floods caused so many delays that home builders are months behind.  Many builders aren’t taking any new clients for at least 6 months.  This means that trade workers are in high demand and can choose which jobs they want to work.  And of course, they want to work the jobs that pay the most.  It’s been rumored that some project managers are offering incentives to the trade workers to get them to their jobs.  In fact, many builders are having to watch their building sites closely because some unscrupulous builders are trying to entice crews with extra money to come work for them.  Doesn’t seem fair — does it?

Waiting Again!

It’s been 35 days since it last rained in our area; but we are still waiting on the concrete crews to work on our foundation.  The crews started the dirt work 6 months ago; so the spring rains really made for some long delays.  There has been some work done; but not on a very consistent basis.  After the crew finished the dirt work, a crew worked on part one of getting ready to pour the foundation.  Then, the plumbers completed phase one of their job — putting out the PVC pipe and getting the water hook connected.

Next, it was time to wait for the inspection on the work completed to that point.  After the inspection, the crew didn’t get back to work on our house until this week.  They are finishing the next part of the foundation.  If the work meets the engineer’s approval then the foundation should be poured this Monday.

Hopefully, I’ll be positing photos of the foundation soon and maybe even  –as our builder says — a foundation with “sticks in the air” (the walls going up).

We’ve tried hard to stay positive during these long delays.  I will admit that there are days that our builder has his hands full reassuring me that our house will get finished.  We never expected for it to take a year and a half (or longer) to design and build a home.  After all the delays though, I just can’t convince myself that we will really get it finished.  This is to be our “Forever Home” — the home where we will start phase 3 of our lives and grow old together.    In my mind, I’ve decorated our new home for the holidays and our family and friends are visiting.  Yet, I realize that it probably won’t happen.  It hurts my heart to think that there will be another Christmas holiday that we won’t be in our home.  We’ve sold the home our children grew up in and are staying with our son.  Until our house is finished we are stuck in a sort of limbo land with all our belongings in storage and unable to continue with our plans for the rest of our lives.

This quote by Wilhelm von Humboldt has become my new mantra. I really am trying to be positive and I can’t wait to share the next part of our building journey.

We’ve also tried to make a point of enjoying some of the benefits of our new community.  Taking the kids to fish at the kid’s fishing pond and swimming in the lake have been enjoyable activities for our family.

Thanks for stopping by my blog. I hope you’ll come back regularly. You can follow my blog even if you’re not a Word Press member. — Enter your email in the box on the top right of the page to receive my blog posts by email.

You can read about our building a home journey by clicking on the links below or by clicking on Let’s Build a House at the top of the page.

Living in My Dreams

I’ve also included a link to a post about the record breaking rain.

Rain, Rain Go Away.