The roof goes on!

The top level of the roof is now on, yippee!!
The dormer windows with the colourbond on.
This is our gutter guard to stop leaves from building up in the gutters. The roof is just too high in a lot of spots to clean out gutters.

This week has been stressful. Everything just takes soooooo long. We are always waiting for someone to come and do something. This is the down side of owner building / not hiring a team of tradesmen. To cut costs Darren is doing as much of the labour as he can. He is also organising other trades as he needs them. The problem is that most of the other trades have other jobs on too (they don't just work for Darren as they would for a big building company). They have to juggle jobs and we are not always top priority as they figure we are just a one off job. It just makes everything slow. I know even big builders have these issues but it is worse for us I think. The weather doesn't help either. I know we need rain but I wish God could somehow just make it not rain on our block sometimes. That wouldn't work though because everyone just looks at the general forecast and will stay away anyway on those days!! At least once the roof is completely on, rain will not be a big deal anymore.

My main stress is that every day is costing us money. Rent money, living money, food money, school money, etc. Every day Darren is not out earning money on other jobs our mortgage goes up. It has been OK up till now but we are starting to see our loan at the end of it all being much higher than we wanted. When I look at it though, out initial estimates were very naive. We just didn't factor in a realistic amount of living expenses. We haven't really tightened up enough either, just kept on living normally, still going to the footy, movies, eating takeaway, going on holidays etc. Add to that the building has taken way longer than we anticipated, mainly because Darren is working predominatly on his own and spends a lot of time waiting for things.

Anyway, that is my whinge for the day. At least we are learning a lot and I know the house will be worth way more than we will owe on it so that is something. I really hope we can move into at least part of the house soon. We are thinking of getting the guest room part finished first (where the dormer windows are). If we can get the bathroom there going and have it lined, we could live there and in the caravan and garage underneath and be quite happy. I don't know if you are allowed to do it that's all. We have to be careful with insurance issues mainly. I am looking into that at present. I think it would be fun to live the simple life for a while and we would save a lot of money that way.

What I must do is to look at the bright side. Look at how blessed we are in so many ways. It is a blessing just to be able to build this house and experience the process. We've always wanted to build our own home. Our kids are happy and healthy and we will always afford a roof over our head. I shouldn't complain! Compared to many in the world we are very rich indeed!!