7 Ways to Make Building a Home Less Stressful

I intended to blog about building our home every step of the way. But then things got STRESSFUL.

As my sister said, “I always heard that if your marriage can survive building a house, it can survive anything. I never knew why—until now.”

The mistakes, the setbacks, the costs—it’s a lot (especially when, in the meantime, you're living in a ridiculously expensive, yet tiny, third-floor apartment with a toddler). My realtor tells me it’s normal to have a long list of fixes toward the end of construction, and my husband says, after 13 years of dealing with contractors at work, he's learned that mistakes are the norm. 

But still: Walking into your house and seeing your kitchen pendants hanging out in la-la land, nowhere near centered over the island, is troubling. As is discovering that your garage doors have been stained the wrong color. Or that your crazy-expensive marble bathroom tile—the splurge item you were super-pumped about—looks like your toddler laid it. 

Ugh.

Only two weeks to go! 

So would I build again? Yes—but next time, I’d be armed with these seven tips for making the process go a little more smoothly (and keeping my mental health intact):

Expect mistakes. It’s not a matter of if—it’s a matter of when. So walk through your house with a critical, unemotional eye, almost like you’re a home inspector, not a home owner-to-be. That way, you’ll be able to flag mistakes without getting flustered.

Walk your house regularly. Because our builder is working on a handful of houses, he isn’t visiting ours on a daily basis (like I think he should be!). That leaves the walk-throughs up to us. When you visit, bring a print-out of your selections along to compare what’s been done with what you chose (hint: during the selection phase, photograph everything!), along with a measuring tape and a camera. Taking pics of mistakes makes it much easier to show your builder where the issues are.

Don’t stress over the small stuff. Builders hate when buyers bring up the little stuff—wall dings or a drip of paint, say—because these things WILL be fixed. You don’t need to point them out, unless, of course, it’s closing day and it still hasn’t been repaired. Save your complaining for actual errors: incorrect colors, for example, or poor workmanship (as with my bathroom floors).

Don’t assume anything is correct. When I was signing off on my selection sheet (the document that lists every finish and fixture), I focused my attention on the items I’d upgraded: Was the tile the one I’d chosen? Did they remember to paint the master bath cabinets dark gray? As a result, I missed an error: While the rest of my faucets are brushed nickel, the one in my laundry room was listed as chrome. So now I have a chrome faucet in my laundry room—because it was my fault that I didn’t double-check the finish.

Don’t skip the home inspection. Every inch of our house is under full warranty for our year, so we figured we’d have the home inspected after six months, once it had settled. But then we talked to our soon-to-be-neighbor, who found that getting the builder to make repairs after closing was much more difficult than before. Now, we are going to have our home inspected before closing, ensuring any repairs are completed before we've signed the papers.

Communicate via email. Yes, face-to-face meetings or phone calls are more personal—but emails give you evidence. If there’s a dispute with your builder about what was decided, or who promised what, it’s always helpful to have a paper trail. 

Find joy in the small things. If I’m making this process sound like three months of torture, it kind of has been—but I’ve still tried to keep my emotions in check: I’m lucky to have the chance to build exactly what I want. With that in mind, I’ve tried to find joy in little things along the way: The landscapers planted four trees instead of the expected three! My herringbone floor turned out exactly as I envisioned! My neighbors are super nice! Bottom line: Don’t let the mistakes steal the joy from your dream home. 

Destination Dallas: Construction Update!

We had a meeting with our builder last week, and he had some good news: Our house has officially reached the halfway mark! The framing is done, the electrical inspection happened yesterday, and the insulation will start going up on Friday. So far, the progress has seemed slow, with few changes each visit, but that's because the work has been mostly electrical, which doesn't exactly have the visual wow factor (except for Frank). 

Even so, it's fun seeing the house built from the ground up. 

One feature of the house that we loved was its two garages. It's not uncommon to have space for three cars in Texas garages, but often, they're what's called a "tandem" garage, where one bay is extra deep, allowing you to park two cars one on side. I much prefer having two separate garages, one with two spots, another with just one. We plan to use the single-car garage for Frank's workshop, unless, of course, I prove incapable of swinging my SUV into the two-car garage. 

For me, the interior's the most exciting part. Walking through the framed-out house, I have been able to get a better sense of the layout and the scale of each room, which allows me to imagine how I'll place my furniture (and decide what new pieces I need!). 


The photo above is a couple weeks old, but it shows the study, which is right off of the foyer, through the double door opening on the left. There's also a guest bedroom with a bathroom, a mudroom, laundry room, and a powder bath at the front of the house.

I was initially a little skeptical of the octagonal foyer, but now that I'm seeing it underway, I love it! It's spacious, unique, and will be the perfect showcase for my herringbone wood floor.

As you go deeper into the house, there's the dining room on the left, as well as a media room, a windowless space designed for a projector screen. The rest of the rooms have huge windows, one of my favorite parts of the house, to let the bright Texas sunshine in!

Study on one side, dining room on the other.

The pipes sticking up on the left are where the kitchen island will be. Frank is walking through the eat-in kitchen area. 

Although this picture is a little dark, you can see my favorite features in our living room: the cathedral ceiling and wall of windows. The next photo is of the same space (looking toward the kitchen), but much brighter!

It seems I forgot to photograph the rest of the house, so I'll have to save that for the next update! 

Destination Dallas: Our First Homebuilding Debacle

Oh, almond windows, how I loathe thee. 

I suppose it was bound to happen. 

For weeks, I’ve been obsessively pondering every square inch of our new home (while "watching" Beauty and the Beast, I was actually mulling over my foyer flooring). But it wasn’t until this weekend that I noticed a single word, buried in the contract, that sent me reeling: almond.

I was flipping through the thick document, trying to find the dimensions of the living room windows so I could start thinking about curtains, when I spotted it. Somehow, I'd missed it before: Our windows are not white, but rather almond (or, as the builder calls it, “sandstone”). Panic quickly ensued. 

Our paint color on the left, window frame on the right.
(The paint color is grayer in reality than it looks here.)

One room in our current house, the sunroom, has cream-colored window frames, and before we found out we were moving, I devoted a lot of time and mental space to figuring out how to disguise them, replace them, or paint them. Now I’m going to have not just off-white—but sand-colored—window frames in EVERY ROOM OF MY HOUSE. 

The sunroom of my current house, in all its cream-colored window glory.

Our builder and designer discussed with us every other detail of the home—whether the front door, the door knobs, the flooring, the outlets—but for some reason neglected to mention the almond window frames. My builder's explanation: Everyone in Texas now uses them—they’re designed to blend with the earthy-colored exteriors—so they don’t even consider it worth discussing. That leaves me to add “non-white windows” to my list of Texas real-estate oddities, alongside (mostly) non-white ceilings and textured walls. 

In the model home, the beige windows do seem to blend, even with gray walls,
so maybe I'm being overdramatic? Only time will tell!

Unfortunately, by the time I noticed, the windows had already been installed, and we’re not about to fork over thousands of dollars to change them (according to the builder, they’d just have to be trashed or donated to Habitat for Humanity). My last hope is that they can be painted; we’re waiting to find out if doing so will void the warranty. Otherwise, I’m just going to have to rely heavily on curtains, blinds, and shutters. This is where I would insert a sad face if I used emojis, although my sister has been one source of solace, offering her own home-decorating crisis as a lesson. 

When she installed bamboo blinds, she fretted for weeks over the long cords dangling in front of her windows, and beat herself up for not spending a little more money for the cordless version. But eventually, she stopped noticing the cords entirely—and suspects I’ll do the same. So here’s hoping that my ugly windows eventually “disappear”—even if they can’t physically be replaced—and in the meantime, I’ll file this away as a lesson for the future: Don’t ever assume anything when building a house.