John gets credit for this post’s title. He recently said the ride we’re on is like a pendulum, swinging from sheer bliss (OK, that’s my word) that our build is underway, to utter panic about a range of potential mistakes and problems.

Here’s a rundown of what’s furrowing our brows:

1. The height of the building.
Now that the rest of the ICF forms have been Lego-ed on, we can see the full height of our basement walls. The top of them is where the main floor starts. And holy moly.

Of course, the base of the building will ultimately be underground, so the roofline won’t be as far from the ground as it seems now, but it’s clear at this point we’ll be looking down at some fairly mature trees. Some people like a view from on high, but we’re both uneasy about ostentation and want to feel like we’re living in a tree house, not a castle. Given we’ve always planned to have a walkout basement, the height should not come as a surprise to us, but it’s one thing to imagine, and quite another to actually see. We had also hoped the natural topography of the property would allow the building to nestle in a bit more. We’ll see. There’s landscaping ahead.

2. The size of the rooms.
This is really my bugaboo. And I realized the other day it’s far too late to be worrying about whether this bedroom is too small, or that closet will hold enough sweaters. Instead of fretting, I need to trust in the design (and all the comments I’ve heard from others that we’ll go back and forth thinking spaces are too big and too small until we’re actually setting up furniture) and celebrate the fact that this past weekend I was walking around, looking through spaces that in a few months will be windows. I could actually see the view we will have from our basement family room, and we are so fortunate we will soon be living there, looking at this:

3. The weather.
We’ve been incredibly lucky so far. While it seems we as a species will soon be living on a ball of fire, it couldn’t be a better fall for pouring concrete (+10C this past weekend!). This Monday was the second of our three pours – the basement walls were topped up and the Sonotubes* in the garage floor were filled. It got too dark to pour the crawlspace floor as planned (it feels like bedtime by 5 p.m. these days).
*Maybe we’re not using the brand name Sonotubes and instead “cylindrical concrete forms,” but I’m not embarrassed to say I thought those things were “sauna tubes” and asked John the other day what the heck they had to do with the Finns…

As well as the final pour, which will give us the basement and garage floors, we need the weather to hold up to get fill moved in so the giant equipment that will be used to hoist timbers in March will have a flat and stable base.

This is our garage before the tubes were filled:

4. The office window.
A decision was made last week to eliminate a window from what will ultimately be my office space. Our builder put the idea to John, and I guess it seemed like a good one at the time… I might have made the same decision in that moment if I’d been there. We’ll never know.

But we do know how I feel about it now: very, very unhappy.

It wasn’t until the entire basement was fully prepped for the concrete – Fox Blocks tightly stacked, rebar inside them, and what looked to be a lot of work overall – that I stood in that space and discovered this feeling. It was like I was in a cave – a sensation made worse knowing I should be looking at trees and water, not a wall. Yes, there are two other windows in that room, but due to its odd shape, I won’t see out of either of them while sitting at my desk, unless I turn around.

I tried hard to tell myself, “It’s only a window,” but I could not get over it, even after John said it was too late to pull the blocks apart before the pour. Delaying the concrete wasn’t an option either.

It could be the many hours of marking and report cards I recently survived making me so emotional about this, but if I’m going to endure that kind of torture six times a year for the rest of my professional life, I want it to happen in a pleasant room. And one with a good view.

It turns out concrete can be cut, and that’s exactly what’s going to happen next week. Extra rebar was put in in anticipation of this surgery, and soon we’ll be able to forget our first, but likely not last, backwards step.

…

I could say the combined stress of school and our build isn’t getting to me, but I don’t have any other explanation for adding Sirius’s Symphony channel to my favourites in my car, or for taking to playing Enya at home while I cook instead of continuing to enjoy a steady stream of home reno shows each weeknight.

The pendulum swings.

**Weather Update: In the process of writing this post and finally getting it online, winter arrived… more photos and news on where we go from here to follow soon.