Thursday, June 14, 2007

Are you excited?

Those very words dropped from my delightful wife's mouth the other day.

"Excited about...?"
"The possibility of jointly owning/building a duplex?"
"Yeah, very excited about that. Not so much about the [expletive deleted] amount of work that lies ahead."

It's hard enough moving into a new abode. The packing, unpacking, painting, cleaning, culling and keeping your toddler away from the dangerous implements of moving; box-cutter, shrink-wrap, ice-pick, hatchet and chainsaw (maybe this is way our stuff always gets damaged, I've got to pack differently!). Add to that the complexity and run-around of buying a house and you can see why my enthusiasm is tempered.

Now fold in the uber-complex process of building a duplex from the ground-up; gawd, I'm surprised I have soiled myself.

Deep down I'm very excited about this. I have visions of our ground breaking party, clinking glasses and champagne, moving in next to cool neighbours and good friends, and the wicked house-warming party we'd have. But I also have visions of permit offices, zoning applications, the city design committee, contractors, sub-trades, scope management, risk, issues and cost over-runs.

So I'm up for the challenge, but you can't blame me feeling overwhelmed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Tell me about it! I'm wondering where on earth we're going to live while the duplex is being built. Anyone looking for a family of housesitters with a dog? Hmm... didn't think so.

About the work, I have to admit -- I'm pretty excited about planning what my future living space is going to look like. (Dealing with the process, not so much. But dreaming of beautiful rooms? All over it.)

Because we've always lived in a rental property, we've never been able to customize our living space to our own personal wants and needs. And so I've never bothered putting my thought or effort into our interior design. (Hence the fuschia pink bathroom with the mustard-yellow linoleum floor we inherited from previous inhabitants.)

I don't have high-end tastes or anything. I just like the idea of being able to say, "I want open concept!" and actually making it happen.

Oh, and about the ground-breaking party? It's going to ROCK. I'm also looking forward to the house wrecking party, too!

Heh heh heh...