I've definitely learned to be more careful...

When I was a little girl, I always dreamed of building my own home. Well, not doing the actual physical work of building it myself, because I hardly think any seven year old girl ever dreams of being a contractor. Tool belts and butt crack pants just never appealed to me. But the whole idea of designing my own home from scratch, from the floor plans to the tiles to the kitchen to the closets was something I always wanted (despite the fact that I never ever had any aspirations to actually become an architect). Now, however, I’m learning the truth to the phrase “be careful what you wish for” – because now that I have a house to design (well, all the innards, the architecture was done by someone who actually knows what they are doing), I’m realizing what a huge job it is.

“The devil is in the details” is another cliché I am quickly beginning to understand. There are so many things to making a newly built house move-in ready, if it wasn’t for the fact that my in-laws already had everything in mind I think my husband and I would screw up royally. From bars on the basement windows to fireproof doors on the boiler room to closets, bathroom accessories, and all the other bits and pieces that magically appear in finished houses, we gotta come up with everything. And after the initial picking out of flooring, paint, tiles, and whatnot - which was relatively exciting - the rest of it is just getting a bit tiresome, especially when you don’t have any clear idea of how exactly you want things to be. The kitchen was relatively easy – I knew what I wanted there, and aside from picking out which of the various kitchens different places had designed for us, there wasn’t much to that. But all the measuring, speculating, and trying to decide what goes where in bathrooms and bedrooms and living rooms is getting to be a bit too much.

The kitchen is finished, for the most part, aside from some finishing touches by the kitchen place, the electrician and plumber hooking things up, and buying chairs for the table. That is one giant necessary hurdle crossed. On Thursday we outfitted our upstairs bathroom, but not entirely. We decided to go with a family acquaintance carpenter for our bedroom furniture and cupboards, since what we have here is designated for the guest room (because by god, with a huge bedroom I’m going back to a king sized bed). But the carpenter can’t make plans until we find our mattress, since we can get two sizes in king sized mattresses here, and we will pick from whichever one is most comfortable for us. We aren’t even going to worry about the living room and dining room until after we get moved in, because those aren’t absolutely necessary. And I suppose small things that don’t matter too much can come along in the future because we don’t need the perfect towel holder before we move in. But this is our house, and we want things to be the way we want them. We screw up on a major purchase and that is that, we are stuck, for a few years anyway.

I’m sure this whole business is stressing me way more than it should, because I am some kind of freak of nature who gets uber stressed by things, from the tiniest, most insignificant things to the biggest, most important things. Despite all this I am super psyched to finally move into our own house, with all the innards designed exactly to our specifications. I can only blame myself, or my husband, for what I don’t like. Our view is spectacular (see below), the breezes are pleasant, the birds are always singing and the traffic is non-existent. It will be a little piece of heaven compared to city life. But for now, I just gotta get through the hard part.