The past week just flew by while we were on Vancouver Island!  Stress levels were high, but fortunately even the things that seemed catastrophic at the time turned out okay in the end.  Y’know; small details like our lawyer informing us that a few hundred thousand dollars of our cash had apparently vanished into thin air.

*takes some deep calming breaths*

It turned out our money was in a different trust account than they usually use and everything was actually fine and dandy, but I nearly had a brain aneurysm in the few hours that elapsed between receiving the email saying “Hey, we don’t have your money” and the phone call saying “It’s okay, we do have your money after all”.

Once the land purchase closed (hooray, we’re landowners!) we met with our project manager and subcontractors a couple of times for coordination, but our only real responsibility was to supply the layout for the house.

No problem, right?

You’d think that somebody who’d spent 12 years as a designer would be thrilled by the chance to design her own house.  But did I mention I totally sucked at that career?  Yes; yes I did.  (Mention it, I mean.  Well, and I sucked at it.)

But I tackled the job anyway.

For the past 18 years I’ve delighted in cursing the idiocy of the unknown person who designed our current house; but it’s a whole different story when I’m the idiot designing the house I’m planning to live in for the foreseeable future.  Suddenly design flaws aren’t nearly so entertaining.

I tossed and turned at night, my brain buzzing.  The crisis-point occurred around midnight the day before the plan was due, when I sprang out of bed with the sudden realization that I hadn’t included a guest room on the main floor!

Cue the trumpets of the apocalypse!

It’s amazing how the relative importance of things gets blown out of proportion when you’re sleep-deprived.  Hands shaking, I fired up my CAD program and pushed walls around until I finally achieved a guest room around 1:30 AM, then crept back to bed secure in the knowledge that I had averted disaster.  Probably.

Maybe.

Kinda-sorta…

The floor plans are with the builder now, but I have a squirmy sensation in my stomach every time I think about them.  I’ve undoubtedly forgotten some critical thing that will haunt my nights and make me slap myself in the forehead every day for the next 20 years or so.

But I’ve still got a few days before the final sign-off to figure out what I’ve done wrong and fix it.

No pressure…

Have you ever designed your own house?  How did it go?  (Or is it better for me not to know?)

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New discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club:  Colour-Blind?  What race/ethnicity do you ‘see’ in fictional characters?  Click here to have your say!