The number one question we get about our remodel is: When will it be done?

The short answer is we don’t know. How can that be? Well… we started planning this project in 2009. We hoped to be long done by now, but circumstances (and insane neighbors with easement issues) forced the plan to change at least twice, so that the design process itself took four years.

We are doing this project on a shoestring budget. We don’t have a lot of money, we have a Morgan– a skilled worker with an uncanny knack for picking up new skills as they are needed. Working on a project of this size with an essentially one-man crew means that it takes a whole lot longer. I got home from work a couple of weeks ago and he was moving gravel with the excavator: scooping up a bucket, dumping it into a wheelbarrow, getting out of the excavator, moving the wheelbarrow to distribute the gravel, and climbing back into the excavator. It’s not the most efficient way to get the job done.

We have probably another six months before Morgan has to start working for other people to make money again. We hope and pray that at that time a good portion of the main stuff will be done, but it’s really hard to know. There have been delays (permitting, waiting for our excavator or materials to show up) that have put us probably 2 months behind our dream schedule, and things often take twice as long as we hope they will. If we basically double the time that we hoped it would take, we will probably be done in the late spring of 2016.

“Done” is quite a concept as well– I think of this as the beginning to so many projects. We finally jacked the house up! Now we can fix the plumbing, the electrical, finish the landscaping! So, when you say, “When will it be done?” I think you are asking me when we can throw our housewarming party. I don’t know, but I do know it’s going to be fun.