The Top 10 Things I’ve Learned Building a House

It’s been a journey to build a new house. It has SO MANY emotions that go with it. From the stress to the excitement to the decisions, WOW! Throughout the process I have learned ALOT. So I have come up with the top 10 things I’ve learned building a house. *Gabel Construction out of Fremont, Ohio were our general contractors.* Other sub-contractors include Lotycz & Sons Flooring, Tiffin Deluxe Services (heating), WAZU Concrete Pumping, and Grant Decker Construction (concrete).

It takes a village. Just like it does to raise kids, it takes a village to build a house. You CANNOT do it alone. From babysitters to extra hands on projects, you need help. We were VERY lucky to have a contractor let us do a lot of the work, to save money. So A HUGE THANK YOU goes out to my parents and Austin’s parents. EVEN if it was taking the kids for one night, man did it help! But those 4 individuals did way more than that. From the electrical work to tiling the shower to putting in our septic, the list goes onnnnnnnn! This house would not be possible without the help from our parents. 👏🏼
Building a house with toddlers is HARD! 😥 WOW, I can’t express this one enough. There were nights I just wanted to cry because I struggled with this. They always wanted to help, which is great. However, there are some things that children REALLY shouldn’t do. So Austin and I found the “excitement” in some of the littlest jobs for them. *one of my favorite things about being a mom.
I also struggled with mom guilt, extremely. When I got the “We never get to do that because mom and dad are always so busy!” from my 6 year old, I wanted to cry. 😭 It was hard. But guess what? We managed and made it memories for our family. *We ate pizza in the house (on the ground, sitting on cardboard) when the walls were just studs. That’s a core memory.
A house is never done. I’m realizing this as we were moving into the new house with an unfinished pantry, unfinished closets, the list goes on…… I also understand that once you own a home, there’s always going to be a project. Welcome to home ownership Diana. 🤪
It’s a test on your marriage. Someone told me once, before we started building, “If you can withstand building a house together, you can last through anything.” I GET IT! This process has been a journey…Austin and our general contractors have been amazing to work with and I cannot express how thankful I am to have them. They have literally brought my dream to life. 🏡
Moving is stressful. I can’t express this one enough either. I came off of a busy photo season RIGHT into packing. In fact, I finished editing my last fall session TWO DAYS before we started moving. Talk about stress. But we managed and chugged through it. 📦
Watch your health. Building a house puts so many decisions on your family. We were VERY lucky to have a contractor let us do a lot of the work, to save money. Did we save? Absolutely! HOWEVER, that put more stress on Austin. There was a point in time that Austin got bell’s-palsy from that. An unexplained episode of facial muscle weakness that is caused my stress. He’s fine now and it’s gone, but don’t forget about your heath.
Hard work pays off. Excuse my French but we have worked our a**es off for this house. We brought this property (14 acres) in 2018 and couldn’t wait to build in 2021!! Then COVID hit and ruined our plans. Fast forward 2 years, Gabel punched the numbers again and we both agreed, we were going. 👏🏼
It’s never a perfect time to build. You have no idea what the prices are going to do in 6 months. They could go up or down, same with interest rates. I knew if we waited longer to build, there was a SMALL potential that prices could fluctuate…but since 2018, we had 2 children and we had fully out grown the rental house. It was time.
Enjoy the process. Don’t overthink the small things and do your research on the big things….and I wish you good luck. If we made it through, you can too! ☺️