Day Eight - Perceptions, Misconceptions and Stupid Pipes

Day Seven and the work moves along - despite a minor freakout.....

A

....and a stupid old clay water main pipe!

Here's how I operate: dream, plan, research, decide, take action, freak out, calm down, carry on. That's me in a nutshell basically. So I expected at that some point - make that many points - in the process there would be a fair amount of second-guessing going on. I've learned to absolutely NEVER ignore my instincts. That's not to say that my instincts are always 100% spot on mind you - they are on occasion wrong. I believe that to be the case here. 

As the work progressed last week I ended up with 2 big ole piles of dirt basically -- one in the front of the house (where the addition is going), and one in the back of the house (where the existing patio is being redesigned and we are adding a patio to our master bedroom). Dirt and then trenches where the outlines of the rooms/patios would be. I started looking at the mounds of dirt and the trenches and suddenly thought that everything was starting to seem really small - almost Lilliputian! Thus freak out numero uno. Despite the calm reasoning from my husband to "just read the blueprints and look at the final dimensions", my freakout escalating into a mini-meltdown - complete with hand wringing and pacing. Eventually I took his suggestion, stopped starring at the dirt mounds and moved into the house with the ruler. By measuring existing rooms against the proposed dimensions of the new room, it was obvious that while the room is by no means large - it's fine for my kids bedroom. After speaking with the architect, builder and foreman, who assured me that the square footage of this room was adequate --- AND that dirt mound freak-outs are common place in their industry, I began to breathe again. We were once again reminded of the physical constraints of our house and this project. We took everything out as far as it should or could go - therefore making any dreams of a huge new bedroom fruitless and ridiculous. I have to remind myself that our current "go big or go home" philosophy in this country does NOT apply to homes. Bigger is not always better. I can vouch for this based on the many Calabasas mini mansions that I've been in - bigger can sometimes just be bigger. Carry on.

In other news the foreman and the builder broke the first piece of bad news to us (who knows - maybe the last piece of bad news!). Our 1941 house has a 1941 clay water main pipe running directly through the addition that will need to be changed to plastic. $$$$$.

My new doors shipped from China today. They are now officially on the boat!