Accomplishment!

We're done!  Well, not done with the cottage of course, but done with the "shell", which was our before-the-snow-flies goal.

It is pretty cool to think that we went from an idea for what to do about this.....

...to permits to demolition to surveys to excavation to foundation to frame to sheathing to siding to roof to this..........

......in 7 months. 

The actual time from when we "broke ground" to where we are today was just under 3 months, and that's counting a month delay in the roof materials.  Pretty great for a rag-tag group of folks with no official building skill, very limited budget, lots of conflicting pulls at our time and an abundance of will.

There's still a ton of work to do. This is the current state of the interior:

Formidable frontiers of house building still to conquer: HV/AC, plumbing, electrical, insulation, drywall, paint, flooring...and on and on.  Somewhere in there we need to do a new well and septic system.  But, even though there is lots of work ahead of us, we are allowing ourselves a moments guilty pleasure of being thrilled and really proud of what we have done. 

Reflection
I had the pleasure of doing a 4-min presentation on this project at a work event recently as part of a 3-day conference.  I almost didn't do it...thinking "who could possibly be interested in my little project?".  Well, I was wrong.  For the following 2 days I was inundated with support and questions.  Here are a couple of quotes:

"We are looking at houses to buy right now and I've had dreams of buying a place and finishing the basement.  I didn't think I could do it, but if you guys can build a house then we can definitely do that."

"Your story reminds  me of the place my family has. All the memories, and now our kids' memories.  I loved learning about what you are doing"

"I love hearing about every word of this project...it is so inspiring"

"I know you must realize it...you are building the embodiment of happiness for you and your family."

That last quote has been echoing with me ever since.  It distills -- like I haven't yet been able to -- the purpose of this project. Happiness. Its not about getting out of the bad mortgage, increasing our property value or even the cottage itself.  Its about the memories we are making while we build it, the memories we will have enjoying it when its over.  Its about people who will visit and share it with us and the legacy it will hopefully represent of being able to do something like this, with people we love, even though we didn't know how to at first. 

It also let me try to be okay with happiness as a reason for doing this.....for spending all this money, time, energy, worry.  I don't have to rationalize it in some formulaic way to justify the decision to do it.  I don't have weigh the cost and benefits or determine the ROI.  We are going for optimal happiness and that's reason enough.

Thanks for reading
Sarah