The construction loan is closed, and the building permit is posted! Both of those things have been such a long time coming, and so many hours have gone into them, that it seems like those things should both feel like huge accomplishments. And if this were a normal year and a normal build, they might be. But even for the amount of time and effort that went into them both, the next hurdle is just looming so large it’s kind of overshadowing them both for me at the moment.
The building permit involved hours and hours of drawing different floor plans on my laptop, setting 2 or more different floor plans next to each other and deciding what we liked and didn’t like about each of them, deciding on something and then changing it a week later, and arranging the bedrooms and space in our minds as many different ways as we could. It was a several months long process. Ultimately being able to translate what we wanted for the architect to draw the construction plans is an amazing feeling, and now to have the building permit in hand is a huge blessing.
Likewise the construction loan took FOREVER it felt like. So many rounds of document, verifications, paystubs, analyzing our debt to income, saving every penny we could for the down payment, waiting for underwriting, appraisals, and trying to walk the fine line of house value with construction cost. Remember, there aren’t a lot of 9 bedroom ranches out there, and our new neighborhood has pretty low property values, so the fact that the appraisal was even close to our estimated build cost was amazing.
It’s also worth remembering that one year ago we still hadn’t even considered moving. The conversation didn’t begin until summer, and even then it was just a “maybe someday” kind of discussion. So all things considered, being less than a year from the first serious steps toward building is probably pretty good.
We’ve climbed several hills on this journey so far, and I want to be grateful for each of them and I want to draw faith from each one, because the next one feels like a mountain compared to the foothills we’ve been traveling so far.
I don’t mean to make it sound ominous, I’ve just been reading the news a lot lately, and whatever algorithm that tracks my news browsing habits have latched onto the fact that I am reading articles about the construction industry and construction costs, so those articles are being served up in my news feed frequently. And if you haven’t read those articles right now, I’ll summarize – it’s all doom and gloom.
Lumber costs are up over 200%, and that’s if you can even find it. Supply chains are wrecked by covid shutdowns, so more shortages in other materials could be follow. I’ve heard rumors about impending shortages and cost increases for plumbing materials and windows. Yesterday I read that the average cost of building a house is $37,000 higher this year over previous years. That’s for a normal, average house! What will that mean for ours?
Trying to build a 3800 sq ft house, my lumber budget was already huge. And now to double it? And what happens if I start running into shortages of other materials along the way?
I’ve been told “You’re crazy trying to build a house this year.” And that’s probably true. But I’m not sure what other option we have. We can’t stay where we are without going crazy, when we took the extra 2 last fall we anticipated moving out of our house in the near future to relieve some of the space pressure we are feeling. We also have one teen who is waiting on our independent living bedrooms already. We haven’t even broken ground yet and one of the bedrooms is spoken for by a teen in residential who is going to need it.
The construction loan and building permit are done now. Could I put those all on hold and wait? What are the chances that lumber is going to come down in the near future, or even the not so near future? One of the articles I read proposed that maybe by the end of 2022 it would come back down to a reasonable level, but I suspect that nobody really knows and it’s all just guessing. So if I sit on it for a year and try again next year, what happens when prices are still the same and now we’ve delayed for no benefit?
My budget was made and approved before the most significant of these cost increases, so had I built last fall I’d feel much more confident we could have finished within our budget, or at least close to it. But this year? I’m not so confident. I believe that cost overruns are a part of every build project, so probably everyone deals with this at some level, but this is 2021, and it feels like uncharted territory. What if I missed my opportunity?
What other corners can I cut to keep costs down? Take out the driveway and put in gravel instead, go for the single zone furnace instead of 2 zone system. Cheap flooring? Unfinished kitchen cabinets and basic builders laminate countertops? Maybe we can get bathroom fixtures from the recycled building materials store.
I’ll admit, I’m kind of freaking out a little bit. I don’t want to reach a point where work has to stop because we can’t afford the materials to finish it. Didn’t Jesus say something about a wise builder considering if he can finish project or not? (That’s in Luke 14, by the way, and it includes the bit about how everyone will make fun of you if you run out of money on your project. So, yeah.)
So there’s your update for this week. Excavation should be beginning within the next day or two, and then we are off and running. I’ll just be over here counting the cost.
Right now I’m thinking about how far we’ve come, and I’ve been reading back through the blog from the beginning to remind myself of some of the ways that God has shown up already. I truly, truly believe that this property was meant for us. I think God held on to it, waiting to list it until we had figured out what we needed and were fully ready to jump on it. It came at just the right time. That means something, doesn’t it? Not that we have the perfect plan or that we are going to execute it perfectly, but that it’s all headed somewhere and there is a purpose to it. And I hope that in another year we’ll be posting about all the ways that God came through and figured all these details out that I’m worrying over.
That’s what I’m hanging on to, because the next step we take is a really, really big one.