

Sometimes the only time we have to work is when he’s home from school and I’ve got a couple days off, so we’ve been taking him outside to play in the sandbox or climb his tree house while we work. It’s definitely not easy (or particularly safe) to try to cut and stain wood while keeping your eye on a rambunctious, curious three-year-old. Since we don’t have a bevy of local friends to help us – and really, Brandy is too picky to let anyone else work on the house anyway; I’ve tried! – we’re trying to play with the munchkin and work on the house at the same time. Not so fun for R.A.D, and far too distracting for us to be safe. R.A.D loves his school though, so having him attend even just a 3rd day per week would go a long way toward us having more attentive build time and R.A.D getting to spend more time with his friends playing and learning. If my mom were alive he’d be with her as often as she could stand it (which was pretty often!), but my dad still works and has other obligations to attend to. It’s a hard thing to build a house in the best of circumstances, but when you also have a little one to care for while doing so you can bet the difficulty level will more than double.
Just a quick nod to truth- construction inevitably takes longer than you planned on, costs more than you had budgeted, and presents lots of surprises.
This is perhaps as important for the DIY builder to understand as how to use tools or how to read a set of plans.
Life happens while you build.
So true. You just don’t know until you’ve actually done it. Takes the same skills to build a tiny as a McMansion, just fewer materials 😉