What else can go wrong?

**WARNING. This post talks about and contains images of creepy crawlies.**

This is what our driveway looks like. It's green and glorious. Walking down the driveway puts a bounce in my step and a smile on my face. 

Or at least it used to. 

Until these guys showed up:

source

The Tent Caterpillar. *Cue dramatic music here*

Every 10 years or so there is an infestation of Tent Caterpillars in forested areas. The last one in this area was about 10 years ago. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out what that means... 

Yup, our newest challenge is an infestation of worms. They are everywhere. Here are some shots of our yard. All of the dark patches on the tree trunks and tree branches are masses of worms. Gross.

These pictures don't even begin to show the the amount of worms that there are. All of our trees (and we have a lot) look like that. There are so many worms in our yard that if it's not windy you can hear them. It sounds like you are standing in a giant bowl of Rice Krispies. I am going to do you all a favour and not talk about what that noise really is. You can thank me later. 

Tent Caterpillars only live for about a week or two. They start out really small, maybe a 1/4 of an inch long and really skinny. They spend those two weeks eating leaves off of trees. They eat until they are about an inch long, chubby, and hairy. 

Just to show you what kind of damage they do, the tree on the right in this photo used to be green and leafy. The caterpillars cleaned it right off. Oh and did I mention that their favourite kind of tree is Aspen? Guess what 90% of trees are? We have the best luck sometimes.

Now, if you are like me and you aren't from Northern Canada or some other heavily forested area you are probably wondering how these caterpillars are affecting our house building. When I first noticed that we had an unusual amount of worms in the yard I just thought it was gross, until The Husband explained the situation to me.

Once the worms are fat and full from eating all of my trees, they cocoon. Where's their favourite place to cocoon you ask? Yup, it's houses. *more dramatic music*

If you haven't noticed I haven't done any updates on the exterior of the house since December. That's because nothing has happened on the outside. It sill looks like this (minus the snow):

The plywood is still exposed and the soffits (area under the roof overhang) aren't installed so our house is essentially open to the attic. Not enough that a bird or a squirrel could get in, but a worm wouldn't have a problem.

Our first concern was that the worms would crawl up the side of the house and cocoon in the attic. Our second concern is that they would just cocoon on the side of the house. Neither one of these are good. I am not even sure what we would do if they went in the attic. If they cocoon on the outside of the house we'd have to hose them down or scrape off the house. Seeing as our house is just the unfinished plywood either one of these options could damage our house.

We had to come up with a new game plan and switch around our schedule. We had to get this house papered (all houses are wrapped in a waterproof, breathable paper to keep moisture out) ASAP. So that's what we've been working on. Our house now looks like this:

The Husband and I wrapped and taped the first layer around the house. We need a third person to run the forklift to do the next roll and someone who is willing to work on the forklift deck (AKA not me). We have some guys lined up to help us with this, they are just finishing up a project and hopefully they can come help us out a bit.

We have also been sprayed the trees that we can reach as well as the bottom of the house and the ground around the house in an effort to keep the worms away.

In order to get this work done we had to mess with our schedule that was actually on time and falling perfectly in place. I know that everyone says that construction has it's challenges and that you should expect delays but every. single. time. we start seeing good progress and things start to come together we are thrown another curve ball. What are the chances that a worm infestation that occurs once every decade is going to happen on the year that we need to build a house?

Not So Disappointing Anymore...

Last week was disappointing. We had all of our trades lined up to work but only one of them showed. This week was a little bit better. Of all the trades we had lined up to come (5) only one didn't show up.

Yay for progress!!

Our electrician showed up on Tuesday (Monday was a holiday here) and finished what we needed him to do. The drywall mudders showed up everyday but Thursday. They are even coming on Sunday (holy crap). Our plumber showed up a day early and did everything we needed him to do. Our heating/mechanical guy showed up and is done everything we needed him to do. The planets must have been aligned perfectly.

Our sewer guy didn't show up but it's still kind of muddy for him to be working in the yard anyways.

We are actually on schedule, we might even be a bit ahead right now. The drywallers think that they'll be done mudding the upstairs earlier than expected and our basement is expected to get boarded right on time. We should be right on schedule for painting.

I think this is the longest we have ever stayed on schedule.

Interior Lighting

Out of all of the decisions that we have had to make for this house I am having the hardest time with the lighting. I can't seem to make a decision. For every fixture that I like there are at least 10,000 ugly ones. There is soo much selection that I am not even sure where to start. The Husband and I had originally selected the Urban Ice collection from Kichler. Here is the 5 light chandelier from that collection (there are also coordinating pieces available):

I still like the fixture but I am not sure that it really goes with our house. I think something a bit simpler is more out style. I also like the idea of picking out individual fixtures for each room, as opposed to using pieces from a matching collection. Now I just need to make a decision. For the more common areas like the Foyer, Mudroom, Laundry, Hallways, etc. we are just going to choose a simple flush mount ceiling light, so I am not too particular about those. The Husband wants to do a ceiling fan in our Master Bedroom. In some other areas, like the family room, we are using pot lights. That leaves the Dining Room, the Kitchen Island, the Spare Bedroom, all 3 bathrooms and possibly our walk in closet. That's 7 fixtures, it shouldn't be that hard, right?

We live in the middle of nowhere so we haven't spent a ton of time looking at lights. Most of my shopping has just been done online. Before we make our final decisions we want to make a trip into the city to see some fixtures in person. Here is what I have in mind so far:

Kitchen and Dining Room Lighting

Kitchen, Dining Room

We are wired for three pendants above the kitchen island. I wanted pendants that were on the larger size, I am not a fan of the mini pendant. At the same time I didn't want the pendants to take away from the kitchen or to block the views of the kitchen so that all you saw was pendant. I love this industrial style pendant from West Elm, I think it fits my criteria perfectly. So much so that I've already ordered it. It's on backorder until the end of June so hopefully it comes in on time. 

I love the look of drum pendants in the Dining Room so that's what I am thinking we will go with. I love how crisp the white shade looks, and I think it will go really nicely with our darker wall color and white trim. 

Spare Bedroom

I would like a flush mount drum pendant in the spare room. I don't love this one but it's the best one I've found so far that. 

Lower Bath Lighting

The floor in the Lower Bath is unfinished concrete so I want to go for a bit of a industrial or rustic look. I am really liking this fixture from Kichler. 

Main and Master Bath

I am having the hardest time with the other two bathroom fixtures. I don't like the double or triple wall scone style that is typically found in bathrooms and there doesn't seem to be a lot of other options available. So far this is the best one I've found. Hopefully we'll see it in person and I'll like it even more or I'll find something I like even better. 

Flush Mount ceiling Light

I am thinking some really simple and low profile for the flush mount ceiling lights in the common areas. 

So that's that. I still need to pick out a couple of wall sconces. I really don't like wall sconces but somehow The Husband snuck a couple in and now I need to pick them out. Bah.  

Long Weekend Wrap Up

We didn't get as much done over the long weekend and we thought we would. I think we set our sights a little bit too high knowing that we had an extra day to work.

On Friday we set out to finish laying the subfloor over the concrete in the family room. We got about 90% done and ran out of materials. In order to lay the subfloor level on top of the concrete you use levelling strips to make up for any imperfections in the concrete. Our concrete is way less than perfect because we ran out of levelling strips about 4 times. This project is still not done. We have one board and a half still to lay but we ran out of levelling strips again. We're planning on getting some more tomorrow so we should be done with this floor soon.

On Saturday we worked on finishing up some small details on the framing in the basement and The Husband built the stairs for the basement. I apologize for the bad photo. We have this fancy light in the basement, it's only one light bulb but it lights up the whole basement. Great for working down there, not so great for photos.

Sunday we decided to take some time for ourselves and go out for brunch. It was delicious but the restaurant had the weirdest brunch buffet I have seen. It had the typical breakfast items, and a salad bar, and then a chinese and seafood section. Very weird for a chain restaurant. Anyways, we couldn't possibly go anywhere without a trip to the hardware store. We had a few materials and supplies to pick up and I got some plants. 

I wanted to plant some larger pots that can eventually go on the front steps of the house when we move in. My plans was to plant them now so that they have time to fill in and look good later on. For the time being they are classing up the front of our trailer. 

Now that I have these home I think I should have got bigger pots if I want them to work on the front step of the house. We'll see how it goes when we move them, I can always use them on the deck or something instead. 

I planted 5 plants per pot. A big leaf (honestly, that's what the tag says), a Creeping Jenny, a Strawflower, and a white flower and yellow flower (I can't remember the names of those ones right now, I'll try to add an update later). 

I also did a small tomato garden. I have two different varieties of a full sized tomato and a baby roma. I also did a basil plant in there too. 

I can't wait until next summer when our yard isn't a construction site and I can landscape and plant a real garden with more than just tomatoes. 

Well That Was Disappointing.

Last week we had a few people lined up to come in and do their thing. We were all excited and expected to see some good progress. Sounds great, right?

Well nobody showed up. (Hence my lack of posting last week)

Ok that's a bit of a lie. the mudders and tapers showed up on Friday but I am not sure what they did all day because everything in the house looks the same. The sewer guy and the water meter guy were both no-shows.

They have been rescheduled to come this week. Today is a holiday so no workers today which means a 4 day work week. We have 4 days for 6 guys (or crews depending on what we're talking about here) to show up. I am not holding my breath.

If by some miracle they all show up here's what will be done on the house:

- More drywall mudding and taping. This is going to take until the end of the month at least.
- Basement electrical work will be done
- Basement plumbing will be done (or least up to the point that we can drywall down there)
- Water meter and pressure tank installed (Hello water! and shower!!)
- Sewer work
- Basement ductwork
- Basement drywall hopefully started

The Husband and I are working on prepping the garage slab this week too so that our mechanical guy can run the in-floor heating in there sooner rather than later. The slab prep is the only thing I can guarantee that we'll see some progress on. Well that and the electrical work, I love our electrician. I need to bake him a cake. He's awesome.

If any of the rough-in work (electrical, mechanical, plumbing) is delayed this week it's going to cause us a pretty big headache. If we can get the RIs done by the end of this week the drywallers can board the basement and keeping mudding the whole house all at once so that we don't have all the upper floors done and then wait for them to come back and finish the basement later on. If we end up doing the basement later we can still continue on with the upper floors. It would just be so much easier to be done with drywall in the house and then we/our painter can paint (we haven't decided what's what with the painting yet) the whole house at once.

Let's all cross our fingers and hope that everyone shows up this week!

Weekend Wrap Up

So after The Husband's meeting with our concrete guy we decided to skip the concrete staining. He confirmed what TH and I had already suspected, that the staining was going to add weeks to our already delayed schedule. This wasn't something that TH and I were willing to wait over. Especially considering the fact that we didn't really like the stains we had selected to sample. TH also learned at his meeting that we can purchase tinted sealants that we can apply later on down the road. I am not sure I want a color, I am fine with the concrete color, it just needs to be sealed. Whichever way we choose to go can be decided later on so we chose to keep moving ahead with the basement.

This weekend we tackled the framing in the basement. We are only finishing part of the basement, a bathroom and my gym. The rest of the basement will remain unfinished and closed off from the finished part.

Gym walls in progress

Bathroom walls in progress

The basement walls are completed I just don't have any pictures of the finished product. Framed walls are pretty hard to comprehend in photos anyways, or at least I find them to be.

I know it might seem a bit weird that all of our upper levels are drywalled but our basement wasn't even framed yet but that's what happens when you build over winter. The ground was too frozen for the plumber to do his ground works when we were working on the framing of the rest of the house. This delayed when we could pour our slab, which then delayed when we could frame the walls in the basement.  We were planning on just moving ahead with the upper levels (the main living spaces) and then drywall the basement when we do the garage but the drywaller wanted to do the whole house at once to save setup time on his end. We moved the basement walls up on the schedule hoping to satisfy the drywaller but all of our trades are on vacation this week, scheduling fail. We'll have to see how things play out in the next couple of weeks, it might end up still working out with the drywallers schedule. If not we're just out a bit more $$. Not the end of the world.

We did get some other trades lined up for the week. The water meter and water pressure tank are going to be installed later on this week. That sounds so boring but it is one step closer to having running water. Seriously, I am jealous of all you who can just walk to a faucet and turn the tap on and having a never ending supply of water ( I am going to assume that's all of you).

Our sewer guy (hey, every house needs one) is coming later on this week to finish hooking up our sceptic tank and sewer mound.

The crew is still on schedule to start mudding and taping the drywall in the house.

We met with our painter, who isn't coming this week but, is really flexible and is able to come as a soon as we need him to and it will only take 2 days to do our prime and first coat. Yay for something happening quickly! Then we'll be able to move onto cabinet install. (sooooo excited about this. We picked up samples of our cabinet doors the other day and they look amazing.)

Now for the bad news. We had heard that booking tile setters can be challenging here so we called 4-6 weeks in advance. We contacted the 2 best tile setters in town and they are both busy for at least 2 or 3 months. No bueno. (Hey, those Spanish classes paid off after all!) So right now it's looking like we are going to attempt to do our tile work on our own. It looks so easy on TV. Right? Right?

I kid, I kid. We really are going to attempt to do our own tile, just with a bit more guidance than from the crew on Holmes on Holmes. If it works out with my parent's schedule (who knew retired people would be so busy?!) they are going to come and help us out. My dad is really handy and has experience tiling and one of tile setters that is too busy to do our house offered to teach us Tiling 101 for Dummies. Hopefully with all of their knowledge combined we can lay down some decent looking tile.

Lots happening on the house building front this week! I think once we get the house painted, things are going to start moving really quickly. Or at least that's what I am telling myself....

Concrete Staining

We are only going to finish part of our basement to start off with. The finished part will have my gym, a bathroom, and a hallway. The unfinished part has a mechanical room, an open space that might eventually be our office, and a bedroom. Because of how we will likely use this space we don't want to a finished flooring, like carpet, downstairs so we have been planning on staining and sealing the concrete floor in the basement. Earlier this week our concrete guy came by and did some color samples for us.

The colors we chose to sample (from left to right) were Cocoa Brown, Sumatra Brown, Nutty Brown, and Black Diamond. We thought that the Black Diamond looked like the concrete was burnt, and the Sumatra Brown looked like we were trying to cover up a crime scene. Those two colors were out. That left us with Nutty Brown and Cocoa Brown. We both preferred the Nutty Brown but it is a bit on the dark side and there is no natural light in the basement so we felt it would look even darker downstairs. That leaves us with Cocoa Brown (the one on the very left). I like the color but I am not sure that there is enough color difference between that and the concrete to justify the extra cost. We are now contemplating just sealing the concrete or maybe just painting the floor in the bathroom. Skipping the staining also means that we could get to work on the basement even sooner. 

The Husband has a meeting set up with our concrete guy and they are going to discuss our options and the schedule but for now it looks like we are going to skip the staining and figure out our concrete finish  later. 

Concrete stain color samples

It's About TIme!

I have been anxious and excited for our house to be drywalled for what seems like forever. In reality, it's only been a couple of months, but who's counting?

Our house finally looks like a house! Look at us go!

They started boarding on Friday and they were done on Wednesday! Holy crap on a cracker, they were fast. They aren't done the mudding and taping, that will happen next week sometime, but the boarding went really fast. There's nothing I love more than trades that work fast (except maybe the dog, oh and The Husband. I should probably include him in there somewhere too). Now with that being said a fast trade isn't always a good thing. In this case I think they could have done a bit better job and taken a little bit more time but their work is not bad. I think any cuts that are less than perfect can be fixed when they mud.

Anyways, enough babble, let's get on to the good stuff, pictures! Why would we talk about drywall when we can look at it!?

Look down at the spare bedroom level and linen closet from
the Master Bedroom Level

Sitting Room, Dining Room and part of the Kitchen

Sitting Room, Front Entry, and part of the Dining Room

Looking at the Kitchen from the Sitting Rom

Family Room

Windows in the Laundry Room

Looking up into the Master Bedroom

Reading Corner in the Master Bedroom

Now we play the waiting game until the mudding and taping is done....

Weekend Projects

The post title should really read, Weekend and Late Monday Night Projects but that doesn't sound as good.

We had a lot of little projects to tackle around the house last weekend to get everything ready for drywall.

Here's what our To Do List looked like:
-Screw and spray foam all the exterior doors
-Spray foam around the windows
-Apply acoustical sealant to any joints in the exterior walls that were too small to insulate
-Lay the fancy shmancy subfloor in the family room
-Fix the stairs going down to the family room
-Build the wall for the family room closet
-The build-out for the fireplace in the family room
-Clean the house (move a bunch of tools, garbage, plumbing fixtures, etc.)
-Get started on yard cleanup

Some of these are small jobs like all the spray foam and acoustical sealant. They don't take much time but are important in creating a thermal break for the house. I don't have any pictures of these, The spray foam you can't really see and the acoustical sealant looks like we rubbed tar on the walls. Not very pretty.

The subfloor took way longer than we thought it would. The floor is 2' x 2' panels that are a tongue and groove assembly, so that you can just hammer them into each other. The actual assembly was easy but levelling the floor out was tedious and we had to keep going back and ripping out panels that we had already laid. We are only done about 3/4 done the floor, we need to leave part of it open so that we can do some concrete color samples for the basement. I'll have more about that later on this week or next week.

Laying the subfloor panels

When The Husband first starting building the stairs he miscalculated the rise on the top stair on the first set he built. The flooring extends all the way to the stairs and over the first riser so you have to account for the thickness of the flooring in the height of your first riser. The Husband somehow accounted for the flooring twice. Anyways, to fix this we thought that we were going to have to completely re-build them. Once The Husband took the stairs off he figured out that he could repair the existing stairs with a few modifications. Yay for time and material savings!

The stair repair

It's been so long since we built interior walls, I think I forgot how long they actually take to build. I thought that building the closet wall and putting it up would take half as long as it actually did. The fireplace build out wasn't too bad, except that we still needed to decide how we wanted to do it. We like leaving things to the last minute around here. This may have taken us longer than we thought but they are done! The only framing that we have left is the interior walls in the basement. It will probably be a couple of weeks before we can go ahead with those though.

Closet wall framed

We got the house all cleaned up and we got a good start on the yard cleanup. There is construction garbage everywhere. We got a few loads cleaned up and I got started on cleaning out the trees. Our acreage used to be a farmyard (maybe 50? years ago) The guy that used to live here had his shack house more in the trees and the area where we built our house was where he kept all his animals. We find some interesting things in the trees. Antique seeders and cultivators, old doors, wheels, fences, etc. We are trying to get this all cleaned up and get rid of some of the dead trees in the yard. We started on cleaning this up last fall and still have a ways to go but I got one little section mostly all cleaned out.

Not bad for a weekend's (plus a Monday night's) work!

Ch-ch-changes

As you can probably tell, I have made a few changes around here. I never liked the old design, I have always felt that it was too busy.  I finally had some time to simplify it and add a few tabs at the top of the page to make things a bit easier to find. There are a still things I want to add but I think so far this is a big improvement.

What do you think of the new look?

Any tips on things that I should add or update?

Adventures in Trailer Living - Part II

So what's it been like the past 9 months? It's been....interesting.

First off to give you a better of what our living situation is like, here are some interior pictures of a camper similar to our model:

So that's it. This is where we've been living. For a camper it's not too bad, for a house? It could be worse but it definitely could be better. Needless to say, this experience will make us appreciate our house that much more.

The pros of living in the trailer are that we were able to have our own space and on our own terms (more or less). To me having our own space was worth the challenges and inconvenience of temporarily living in a camper. I am not saying I would do it again, but in this case, the trailer suited our needs and provided us with a dry, warm, place to sleep. At the end of the day that's all you really need.

That's not saying that there aren't any negatives about living in a camper because, let me tell you, there are...

The top ten worst things about living in a camper:

10. The bed, couch, and other seating is uncomfortable. This isn't something that you would notice when purchasing a camper or even if you were to go camping for a week. We lived in the camper for a couple of months before we realized that things weren't that comfortable. I think this is quality thing though. Campers aren't meant to be lived in so I don't think they are built to withstand the wear and tear of being lived in. We also bought a cheaper model. To do this again, I think we would have bought something a little better quality. We resolved this by buying a couple of memory foam mattress toppers. One for the bed and one is folded up on the couch.

9. Lack of Storage Space. When we first set out to build our house we thought it would take 6 or 7 months, not 11 or 12, so weren't overly concerned with storage. We did buy the model that had the most storage space for the layout that we wanted and it still isn't enough. The closets are about 2' wide by 4' tall. That's all the clothes storage I get. The closet rod is installed in a way that you can't even hang clothes on it. I am not even sure why there is a closet rod at all. All of my clothes are just jammed into the closet. Fun times.
We run a home based business which means that we also work out of the camper. We ended up buying a shelving unit to go in the camper because there just isn't any storage for our files and paperwork. yet, we still have papers all over the place.

8. Mice. Yup mice. Part of this problem is that we moved to an older yard that hadn't been lived on for 50 years. There were old sheds and other places for the mice to hide in that we demolished. Technically we took over their home so they decided to move into our camper. We have caught about a dozen mice in the camper so far, probably 6 or so in the house, and just last week we found a nest with two mice under the hood of my car. Once we get settled in the house we are thinking of getting a cat to help control the mouse population.

7. Fridge Space. Obviously we have a camper sized fridge. It actually holds more than I thought it would but there are items that we have had to stop buying because they just don't fit in the fridge. I can't wait to move into the house and have a full sized fridge again.

6. The oven. My main complaint is that the seals on the oven door broke after a couple of months and I now have to use a broom and wedge it between the kitchen cabinets and the oven door so that the door stays closed tight.

5. The microwave. I am impressed that we even have a microwave in here but after a couple of months of using it, it no longer opens properly so you have to use a fork to lift up on the microwave door as you press the open button.

4. No running water. We moved to an older acreage that wasn't serviced so while the water line is run to the house it isn't hooked up to anything which means that we have no way of having running water on our land. In the fall we would haul water from The Mother in Law's house and fill the holding tank on the trailer. That's all fine and good but in the winter when it was cold this wasn't an option because the water lines would freeze. So from November until April we hauled small hand held jugs of water and boil water for dishes or whatever else we might need hot water for.

3. Laundry. I don't think I need to tell you that we don't have a washer and dryer in our camper. We do that at The Mother in Law's. Overall this actually has been an okay set up but it is annoying when you just need to do a quick load of laundry. I have a whole new appreciation for people who use laundry mats on a regular basis.

2. Showering. With no running water we obviously weren't able to shower here so we shower at The Mother in Law's. We are very fortunate to have this option but it's getting old. I know it doesn't sound like that big of a deal but every time you need to go somewhere (or you just want a shower) you have to pack up your clothes and your shower stuff and then drive over there, shower, and then go to your destination. And sometimes I just want to take a shower and not have to get in the car and go for a drive and make conversation. How many weeks until we move in?

1. I just want to move into the house already. We lived in our old house for four years knowing that the long term plan was to move here and build this house. We put off certain things because we knew this was the plan. And now, I see the house, it's 350 ft away from me at all times but I can't move in. We are so close, yet so far away. It's the mix of the stress of living in a less than ideal situation, mixed in with the stress of a self build, mixed in with the time suck that happens when you are your own general contractor and you run your own business. We are tapped out, spent, done, finished. It's been 9 months of waiting, 2 more to go until we reach the finish line. Can we make it?

Adventures in Trailer Living - Part I

I haven't talked about our living situation a lot, I think because it makes us look crazy pants. But here it is:

Yup, we live in a camper. 

We seem to get varied reactions to this. People either think we are crazy or they have done it themselves. You heard right, other people do this too. Maybe we aren't crazy pants? Probably though. 

The people who haven't decided to do this all seem to be concerned about the fact that it's cold, we do live in Canada after all. Everyone says "Oh, you are so lucky we had such a mild winter". This frustrates me to no end. So what if it would have been colder? We have a furnace, and yes the furnace would have run more, and yes our propane bill would have been higher. How is this any different than in a house? In a house your furnace runs more when it is cold and your heating bill is higher. To be honest, it being cold in the camper isn't even on my list of complaints. Maybe this is because we have just adjusted to it or because we used to keep the thermostat in our old house fairly low. I find it much more comfy to throw on a sweater and cuddle up with a blanket than to crank up the heat. Plus it's cheaper that way. 

I should probably rewind a bit back to how we decided that this would be a good idea. We were moving across the province, we didn't have the option of living in our old house and working on the new one. We needed a place to stay. The options that we came up with were:

1. Rent an apartment or house in town

2. Stay with The Husband's mom

3. Buy a camper and live in it

We looked into renting but decided against it for several reasons. Rent here is really expensive and there are limited renting options ( I just might see a rental property in our future...). We have a dog and finding an acceptable pet friendly place that was in the area we wanted was impossible, or at least we couldn't find one. Plus, both The Husband and I hate paying rent. I hate paying off someone else's investment when I could make my own, you know? So #1 was crossed of the list. 

Do I even want to get into #2? No, I don't think I do. 

So that left us with the camper. The main reason that we decided to go this route was $$. Yup, the almighty dollar. We liked the idea of buying a camper that we could either keep after we were done living in it for, you know, actual camping. Or we could sell it when we were done. We also liked the idea that we could park the camper on the construction site so that we could be close to the house in case we wanted to work late or check in with any trades that might be working there. So here we are 9 months later, still living in our camper.