Why does it take so long to build a house? Everybody who embarks on a construction odyssey eventually asks this question. I'm one of them.
The reasons for building are compelling, and mostly come down to choice. Being attracted to an already-built house means it probably reflects most of the buyer's tastes and preferences. Until the buyer moves in and decides to replace that worn vinyl kitchen floor, and by pulling it up unearths a linoleum floor, on top of a tile floor, on top of pine, none of it in good enough shape to expose without calling in professional help. So what starts out to be a simple transfer of furniture and belongings into what seems be a move-in-ready structure becomes complicated. Once you start customizing, it's hard to stop. Until you run out of money.
Building our house from scratch means we'll be getting the windows, doors, flooring, plumbing fixtures, kitchen appliances (black stainless steel!), countertops, lighting, and configuration the way we want (within budget). It will have showers, not tubs. A spacious porch. Cables instead of traditional stair railings. A dog run. A central green space, shared with neighbors, with a fire pit and herb garden. Yard maintenance.
What's more, our new house will have plenty of electrical outlets--there are codes mandating such things that didn't exist when that charming little bungalow we were recently considering was built in the 1920s with knob and tube wiring.
Like any romance, the first stages of planning are dreamy. It's great fun to meet with builders (and maybe architects) who present as knowledgeable, competent, and laser-focused on a buyer's every desire. In sessions with these professionals (who all have Keurig coffeemakers in their offices), a discussion establishes what's included in a base price, followed by amenities and upgrades; this list tends to shorten rapidly when their extra costs are revealed.
Then there's a period of enthusiastically visiting window, door, flooring, lighting, plumbing, granite-slab, and paint suppliers. This leads to the opportunity to humble-brag about the undertaking to friends and family, who uniformly praise your decision. Knowing that nobody likes a party pooper, they seldom share any less than blissful home-building stories they have. Not yet, anyway.
Next comes the less-fun aspect of figuring out how to pay for the project. You either can or you can't. If you can, and you're squared away with those designers and constructors and suppliers, a deposit is handed over. And a mental silhouette of a new house magically looms within, oh, about four months.
Still, despite wishful thinking by forward-spinning contractors, the average completion time of a single-family house is around seven months.
That doesn't factor in permitting difficulties, which the builder describes with a positive spin (not a problem, but a journey). These pale in comparison to weather (there's no need to say "bad" weather; you can't pour a foundation when a month like August blasts us with thunderstorms and downpours several days each week). Blockwork can't be completed when only half the needed supplies are delivered. And tight labor markets mean that your dedicated crew, dutifully showing up regularly at the site, suddenly starts disappearing a day, then two days, then maybe more each week. You may feel like your relationship with them is deteriorating, that they're cheating on you. Don't take it personally. it's just business. They're starting or finishing another project. Or it could be deer season. Or something.
Finally, there's the self-defeating tendency of owners who, when encountering unexpected free time because of delays, start second-guessing their original intentions and change their minds about shower or tub, granite or marble. These changes almost always result in higher costs.
And don't neglect the human factor, like when the tasteful interior designer who spent over an hour helping us select lighting fixtures packed up and left the supplier where we made those choices. The record of what we wanted seemed to be for a house much larger than ours would be. We didn't take copious notes when we visited. So we're going back and starting all over.
Speculative (spec) houses built for sale with no particular buyer in mind move along a little faster since there won't be anybody snooping around to make sure that, say, a particular faucet is installed in the guest bath. But even when building a generic house, there are no guarantees of rapid completion.
So don't cancel the lease on your apartment or put a For Sale sign in front of your current house just because you think you'll be moving in a few months. Stay put until it's time for a home inspector to check out the new digs (it's just as important to inspect a new house as it is to inspect a 100-year-old classic; who's to say that half of the insulation didn't get installed?)
As we walk around our neighborhood and tsk-tsk over construction projects that have been going on for a year or more, we often jump into the cliche fray: You'd think that if we can go to Mars (almost) and invent stuff like self-driving cars and delivery drones, we could figure out a better way to build a house than with manual labor and nail guns. It's not a log cabin. We don't have to gather our neighbors for a barn-raising.
We considered the option of prefab housing--faster, more predictable, energy-efficient, safer, and cheaper to erect than a stick-built house. But prefabs just don't have the soul of a structure that we're watching as it's erected from the ground up. Despite the time and aggravation and costs, it's worth it to see a dream come true.
Karen Martin is senior editor of Perspective.
Editorial on 09/23/2018