Sure we like marketing, and some days we’re so busy we eat, sleep and work marketing. But we do find a little bit of time to have a life outside of the office as well. So stay tuned for regular updates from our new segment “Get to Know the Team.” We guarantee you’ll get a close up look at what we’re really up to when the email’s off. (Who are we kidding – the emails never really off.)
Melinda’s Money Pit – One Nail at A Time
Hi All – it’s Melinda reporting in from the construction site. Yes, my life has literally been under construction for the last year. In October of 2015 we broke ground on a custom home. Some say dream home…some days I say nightmare.
Construction is not for the faint of heart – especially when you choose to tackle much of the work yourselves. With my husband in the trades, and that North Dakota farm girl, can do attitude I walk around with, we chose to go it alone – not just for the money saving advantages, but also for pride in a job well done and that homesteading spirit that you can say you built your own home.
It is not joke when we say it is blood, sweat and tears. There have been all of those things and sweat equity is real. I currently don’t need a gym membership despite the high intake of soda and pop-tarts. I have moved more lumber than I care to think about. It’s like a really dirty version of cross-fit without healthy people cheering you own and no tall socks. And that lumber, well it seems it’s always in the way for the current job, no matter where you put it. The tears, well they are in the form of frustration and injury, but I’m happy to report, despite the occasional blood – there have only been two emergency room visits and both were fairly minor and we haven’t run out of band-aids from the original box.
The process of building our new home is both rewarding and frustrating at the same time and not unlike any big project at work. (Even though my marketing work has never resulted in crushed fingers, a smashed head, slivers, bruises, etc.). Here’s a few of my top takeaways from the experience.
- Make Friends With Those Who Can Help: I make a point of becoming friends with as many of the contractors we work with as possible – and also every person at the lumber yard, from the estimator and logistics coordinator to the fork lift driver and delivery person. (I even bake them cookies every once and awhile). Being friends with them humanizes you – during the good and bad times and they’re on your side and ready to help. Your problem is now their problem. They help you troubleshoot issues and they cheer you on when you are tired and need a champion. This is generally good advice in life. We have lots to learn from everyone around us and we can get more done when we respect everyone and work together.
- Ask Questions, Most Importantly Ask Why: My husband is in the trades and my farm girl upbringing gives me decent handyman skills. (Did you know: I also taught high school ag). That being said, I’m not an engineer, or a carpenter, or an electrician, etc. I don’t have all the answers and I ask a lot of questions while I seek the answers. I also find for every question there are a lot of different answers so it’s important to ask why. More often than not – the answer is because it’s the easiest way, not because it’s the best way. The more informed you are, the better your decision making can be after you have all the facts.
- Plan, Readjust, Plan Again, Sometimes Wing It: I’ve been pretty type A all my life. I used to have schedules and spreadsheets for everything. Over the years I was able to let a lot of that OCD go and achieve a more normal balance on planning and staying organized. When it comes to building a house…the best laid plans are always a moving target. Delays happen, weather happens, things go wrong, plan A, B, C and D fail, needless to say you better be prepared to think on your feet and adjust accordingly.
- Do More Than Required: My Mom and Dad taught me at an early age that anything worth doing was worth doing well. You never got to half-ass a job on the farm. If you didn’t do it right the first time and you got called on it, you could expect that you would be doing it over no matter what time of day it was. What I’ve learned through this process is that even the best of contractors do about 95% of the job and cover up the shortcuts. Because we are doing a lot of work ourselves – we find the mistakes/shortcuts and need to fix them before moving on. The worst part is, you come to realize that if you have lots of contractors, each is ignoring the others 5% of unfinished work and covering it up and moving on. Don’t be that guy – take pride in your work and finish what you start. Our progress is a little slower – but I’m confident I’ll be proud of the end result.
- Do What Others Say Can’t Be Done: A lot of things in life are hard. You know, those big, bright, shiny, seemingly unattainable goals. Do them. The worst that will happen is you fail. The best that will happen is you succeed! Plenty of people from the lumber yard, to builders to our architect told us we couldn’t build a house on our own. We didn’t know what we were doing, it was too hard, the list went on. Some even suggested we could paint, but we wouldn’t want to do more than that. I love a good challenge and I love proving people wrong. We have overcome many challenges and didn’t need an experienced professional to tell us the way it should be done. In fact, we’ve solved some problems with good old fashioned common sense that left some of the professionals scratching their heads wondering how we should proceed next. Thanks Dad for all those lessons in common sense and problem solving. I didn’t know they’d come in so handy in life when I was an angry teenager.
I hope learning about my construction project will give you a little insight into who I am and how I work. I’ll share more learnings and pictures soon. But if you’d love to talk building new houses, (or remodeling old houses – we’ve done that too), or marketing, or just about anything I’m all ears. Looking forward to occupancy hopefully very soon. Fingers crossed and usually out of the way of the hammer.
