What Not To Do When Building A House

{First things first-- in the last post I explained how Blogger and I are arguing like small children over the ability to upload additional pictures. I've been using Photobucket html code to implement the pictures into my blog to bypass Blogger, but Photobucket and my blog design width are not friends. The pictures upload larger than what you can see, resulting in off-centered pictures. If you'd like, click on the image to be linked to the full image. Sorry! I'll figure it out one day :D }


Yo.

So, ya'll saw the hole for our house in this post HERE.

They poured the foundation yesterday, and I'm very thankful. Don't get me wrong. But, uh, to give you an idea. . .  this is how our conversation went on our way home from checking it out.

Me: "Honey, think of it like this. It's just like when you get your hair cut and you get home and cry because you think it's hideous. Then, a couple days later, you get used to it and it's not so bad anymore."
Husband: {looks at me like I'm crazy and puffs air from his nostrils like a rabid bull ready to charge}
Me: ". . . I'm going to run to Wal-Mart for a few things when we get home. . . okay?"
Husband: "Okay. I promise I'll be alive when you get back. I won't kill myself."
Me: "Yeah. Don't hang yourself from our foundation, deal? Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

. . . .

Let me show you what I mean.





This is the view from our basement window, everyone.



That is INSANE. To keep from weeping, we decided to joke around. Thus the concept of being able to dangle from the foundation was born, as well as talking about starting a new trend of "lifting" your house the same way you lift a truck.


{image source}

. . . .

When we were in our pre-construction meeting, we were informed that most every house in the neighborhood had a five-foot dig. Five feet is the minimum a foundation can be poured in the ground. Some pros of such a dig are that you have a lot of natural light in your basement {because your windows tend to stick out of the ground a lot} and you rarely, if ever, flood your basement. Some cons are that you run the risk of having a zillion stairs to your front door and that you have a humongous blob of cement looming above ground.

"Well," we said, "If everyone else has one, we may as well have one, too."

Yeah.

Not so much. Misinformation is an enemy when building a home for the first time because you have no idea what is true or not.

But don't you worry about a thing. We'll have lots 'o light in the basement. And an elevated planter box in the front yard to hopefully distract the eye from the twenty yards of cement. I'm totally taking the neighbor directly behind us a plate of brownies the day we move in to say "Hey. We're your new neighbors. Sorry for completely ruining the nice view you had goin' on from your backyard deck. Oh, and sorry our house blocks out the sun. We didn't mean to. . . honest."

So, before your pre-construction meeting, don't be shy to stealthily measure your neighbors' foundations with a measuring tape. And count their stairs, too. Because when you tell your builder that you DON'T want very many stairs and you DON'T want an inclined driveway and he says you won't, then you'll have your own word to believe as well. Don't take their word as law. Mistakes happen. You don't want to realize that you have both of the things you didn't really want after it would take thousands and thousands of dollars to fix.

. . . Somebody hold me.  :)