Reflection time: did we work well together?

on APRIL 8, 2018

We’re on-schedule for finishing construction in two weeks (!) and I can hardly believe it. Phase one will be a totally liveable house with water, appliances, floors, walls, windows and electricity. We have a short list of phase two items, but I think we can have most of that completed in the next 5 months or so. It mainly consists of the niceties like pool, steam room, AC unit, pizza oven, landscaping, etc. The only one that we’re moving to phase 2 that I would have preferred to get done in phase one is the stainless steel backsplash for the kitchen. I think we’ll be okay for working that in a bit later.

But let’s take a moment to reflect on how all of this went, and nothing is more illustrative of the way we have worked together as a couple as this round door

building the courtyard doorway

When designing, Switch insisted that we have a round door as an entrance to the courtyard. After much debate, we made a deal. He gets his round door and I get everything else.

In theory, it sounds like a great deal and it has provided us with many jokes along the way, but in practice, of course it doesn’t work that way. Anyone who has built a house knows that there are hundreds of decisions that need to be made along the way, so I can’t really be there for all of them. Luckily, I have my trusty “power of attorney” down in Mexico, Switch. While we don’t agree on everything, we do on most. I also went through a few early moments of letting go. It was important early on to realize that I couldn’t make informed decisions for everything. Sometimes you just need to be there and see the space.

So, there are a few pieces that didn’t go exactly like I thought, but they are pretty minor. I wanted the tile to go all the way to the walls in the bedrooms, but we’re doing a concrete border (see the pic) because the room footprint would have required us to cut tiles and someone’s OCD (*cough* SWITCH) wouldn’t be able to handle it. My argument was that the tile will look like it goes under the wall, but I promptly lost that argument.

bedroom with tile

Some of the things came out wonky (or not as we expected) because neither of us were there. The two notable ones were a fireplace without a hearth bench (fireplace goes all the way to the floor), and one pesky light box in the ceiling that isn’t centered over the dining room tile “rug”. The fireplace will be fine the way it is and I actually like the cleanliness of the lines, but the light box is another issue. We decided to do a light fixture swagged over from the box, which means we’ll have to make or buy a lightweight one, but it was a great compromise. I happened to be there and we were literally redesigning major features of the house, when we came up with the idea to swag it over. Crisis averted!

I’m excited for the round door and everything else. The timing is working well and I just bought a ticket to move the cat down at the end of May. There are several more logistics to take care of, but there is a plan and it is coming together. I will leave you all with a few more pictures of the house. So, so close! <3

bodega where we lock up all our stuff when we’re out of town

half bath – look mom! we have floors!