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Welcome back to another episode of the y ‘all are crazy ranch podcast. We’ve got our drinks ready. I’ve got my electrolytes in my Hydrojug Longhorn cup.
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How many of those jugs you think you have?
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I just have like four Four hydro jugs because that’s my favorite brand hydro drug. If you want to sponsor this Oklahoma Grassfed Beef podcast, I love your water bottles Yeah for those and then 10 of like other I have gotten rid of most because I have found the one I like the best and I’ve gotten rid of the rest
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So you’ve taught me well. Do you like my headband today?
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Oh, it’s fantastic.
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I knew you would like it. I wore it for you, actually.
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You did.
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Because I thought he will like it because he likes when I do unique things.
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One thing’s for sure, you’re always unique.
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And unlike that, you have your standard coffee cup that you drink out of every week at the Oklahoma Grassfed Beef podcast and the John Wayne cup with the black coffee as to be expected.
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That’s how a man should drink his coffee is black, not milk and sugar.
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Okay, so you prefer your coffee black. I like mine. Coco. I like mine with half and half and honey.
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That’s my favorite. Pumpkin spice.
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I like half and half and honey. Those are my, that’s my coffee preference now.
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Listen, if you’re dating a guy and he gets coffee with pumpkin spice or vanilla.
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You might need to rethink some things. You know what I’m saying?
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I feel sorry for the boys that date our daughter.
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You know, a real man drinks black coffee, so.
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Not honey?
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No, just black. That’s how it should be done.
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Well, we’re not talking about coffee or drinks on this podcast.
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Well, you got us on this tangent.
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That was the opener for this podcast. We are actually gonna be talking about what it’s like to build a home. Believe it or not, we, this is our first home building experience. We have bought, sold, flipped, remodeled, rented, Airbnb’d, everything, two houses. So this is our first home building experience personally.
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Right.
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It’s been a doozy.
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Oh, it’s been a good journey. You guys are gonna learn today a lot of You know lessons from the school of hard knocks that behind those and behind the scenes things that we’ve never shared publicly Yeah, that way you guys can learn what not to do should you decide to build your house? Yeah, so we wanted he wanted I said no he wanted to title this Oklahoma Grassfed Beef podcast Well, I don’t remember the for the how not to lose Oh, yeah, how not to lose $40 ,000 when you start building a house because we did it’s gone and there’ll be back Yeah, but you know what when you learn a lesson like that
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You can’t feel sorry for yourself. You can’t sulk about it. Maybe for a minute and then you just gotta move on and life goes on, you know what I mean?
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One of my standard practices is just that and I often tell people this. When something hard happens, unexpected, you know, something that hurts you, knocks you down, give yourself 24 hours to feel sorry for yourself, be sad, be upset, feel it, like sit in it. I call it sit in the suck. Like sit in the suck for 24 hours and then when that’s up, you just gotta pick yourself up and move on.
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Gotta move on.
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And we’ve had to do that many times over this whole experience. So I have helped people buy and sell houses that they have built. I’ve been part of processes many times but when you’re building the house yourself,
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it’s a lot different. And also when you’re building it on your land, you’re not building it in a neighborhood that has to follow covenants and restrictions. There’s no HOA out here. We’re not under city codes. We don’t have to do inspections. Like this is a house in the country.
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It is and you know, all the other houses we’ve bought and fixed up and sold and everything, you know, they were never gonna be a forever house. It was always just gonna be, hey, we’re gonna live here for a few years, enjoy it, make some money, and then move on to the next one. Well, this one we’re building, we don’t, I mean, we plan on living here forever. So, you know, it’s on a big ranch and you can’t, you don’t get a redo. You know, once you build it, it’s there. We want to make sure we get it right and.
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And that is hard, you know, I’ve talked to so many people about building over the years, and it’s helped prepare me for being at this point because I’ve talked to so many people who are like, I wish I would have done this differently. If I could build again now, I’d do this differently. So I was already kind of prepared like, hey, we’re not going, there are gonna be things that we’re gonna be like, wish I would have done that differently. And we just have to know that going in because if you want perfection, it will keep you stagnant. And so many people want to do things, but they’re afraid to make mistakes, so they just never move forward. That would definitely happen in this process. If you just weren’t like, okay, we’re gonna make the best decision for us right now. We’re gonna trust God and we’re gonna do our best. And we’re probably gonna be like, oh, wish I would have done some things differently. But that’s just life.
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Yeah, so like our home building process started what? Has it been about three and a half years ago.
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We sold our home in Luther in 2023. Yeah, it’s 2026 So when we didn’t plan on it being no when we sold that home We were buying our land and we were gonna start building.
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Yes. I thought we’d be in our new home in 2024 Yeah, yeah, it didn’t happen, you know But that’s what you guys are gonna learn about today and we’re building the house right now and it’s going fantastic But the journey’s been a journey The journey’s been real.
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Yeah, and we’ve also had so many people tell us like if you want to test your marriage build a house together Right, which is a little bit scary and daunting it is but it also can make you closer and stronger together, right? So just look at the positive.
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Yeah. So anyway, I guess we start the story with
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Start from the beginning.
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Start from the beginning? I mean, so we started in the beginning and we just picked a builder and an architect. They were people that we knew.
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Kind of.
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Kind of, we didn’t know them well. But they were people that we had heard of and knew. And we didn’t interview builders or architects. You know, these two worked together and we just thought, hey.
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They both been in the industry at real while older than us.
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A long time.
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Quite a few years, quite a bit older than us. And we just trusted.
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Right, just trusted and thought, hey, they’ll take good care of us. They know what they’re doing. We’ll just, that’d be great. And man, it started off with like trying to come up with the house plans and what we wanted, you know.
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With the, what would he be considered?
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Architect.
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But not yeah, no he is but yeah, yeah and Like the architect because we didn’t have house plans and we wanted a custom house design right this time We’re like we want this built exactly for us There were red flags popping up all over the place. I think now that I when we look back we’re like ding should I look back I was like what an idiot. Well, you know we were we were You know, but once again looking back The weird thing to me is when we started this process we sat down with the architect and he never said what’s your budget?
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Right.
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He never said How many square feet do you want this house to be?
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He never said, tell me your non -negotiables. Now as a realtor, I ask these questions when I start working with a client. It’s very important.
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It’s important.
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What’s your budget? What do you want your house size to be? What are your non -negotiables? We never, never ask that. So we sat down and he just starts sketching. Right. Right. And it was like, I remember the first time we came back to meet with him, he was like, here’s your house. And we’re like, it was like we had no say in it.
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Yeah, it was very – Odd. Odd. But the house looked cool, you know what I mean? And it was like, okay. And then your brain just starts going with, okay. You know, don’t know any details either. How tall are the ceilings? We’ll learn that later and different things. Like you didn’t even know. You know, and I remember saying like, hey, we’re not trying to spend, you know.
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a whole bunch of money on this house. We’ve spent millions of dollars on land for the ranch, hundreds of acres, like that part’s important to us. We’re not building this house in a gated community where we just blow all the money on the house. We bought land and everything, and we wanted it to feel kind of a country feel and have a lot of porches and stuff like that.
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And another thing, once the builder kind of came into the equation, they kind of worked together, which is what we wanted, but at some point in there, we told the builder, this is our budget. We wanna stay around here because we also wanna build a pool. We gotta put a driveway in, which is quite long. We wanna put an entryway. We need to have some money set aside for these things. So here’s our budget on the house. We gotta prove with our bank, we’re good to go there.
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And so at that point, it was like, this is our budget. So the house plan has to fit the budget, right?
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Yes.
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That should be common sense.
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Well, yeah, you would think, and man, I think this house plan back and forth thing went on for over a year. And you know, look at that, we’d never done it before, right? So we didn’t know no different, but there’s no reason it should have took that long. And you know, it just kept us going down the path, if that makes sense. And then I remember we had a final meeting and, you know.
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This was after months and months and months of revisions.
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Yes.
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And it was like, we would come back in and we’re like, with another red flag, we never got told along the way.
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budgets, like they never talked about numbers with us. The whole time, it was like, I’ll get you figures once the house plans are completed. And we shouldn’t have gone along with that. We should have picked up on that.
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No, because it’s like, you have these plans right here.
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The ones you designed. Right, just use these and give us an idea.
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Give me where are we at?
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But we kept saying, this is our budget. Like there was no, there should have been no questioning what our budget was because we said it so many times. So anyway, and I will say also, the architect would be like, okay, well we can take this room off. We can do this. But if we were ever like, well we don’t really want this here. He’d be like, oh you need it though. You’re keeping it because you need it.
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Yeah, like I remember there was something about my closet that he said, I’d say, dude, I am not that kind of man. I don’t need that kind of thing in my closet.
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Whatever the heck I don’t even remember what it was but it was like there’s a bro. I don’t need that, you know Oh, yeah, you do and I’m like, who’s the customer here, right and along the way we were paying for time right, you had to pay the architect right give them money for time and Deposit with the builder. Yeah Deposit with the builder and dirt work. Yeah, and so then it came to like the final meeting you know what I’m saying after so many revisions and things would come up that was like Budget deals and it was like well the ceilings are 12 foot you could do 10 foot and save several hundred thousand It was like we didn’t tell me it was 12 foot How would I didn’t know that and before the final meeting?
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I remember the architect saying are you ready for me to make this? like the final
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Drawing right and the builder was in there and you sit looked at the builder and you said Does this fit our budget of this amount right and he said yeah, I feel good about it Oh, yeah He got out his phone as a calculator and showed me the number and it was right on budget And I was like you’re sure about that and once again we trusted them Yeah So we were like doing it for years and we we are not the kind of people to be like you were off By this little bit and it’s like we wouldn’t be mad at them We knew it was gonna be off a little bit. We expected that we were like, you know, we we have wiggle room we’re not like BAM, but Little did we know yeah, so we’re like, all right.
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Hey sounds good. So we pay the architect all his money They get all that that stuff done and we can go ahead get dirt work going. All right Well, they will send the dozer out and get that going
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And then the builder was gonna get all the figures actually together and give us like a hard number on the deal. A couple weeks go by, the dirt work’s done or whatever and we go to the office and you know, we’re in a room for almost three hours, I think it was, going over line items, but with no – With no final number. No final number. And it was like, I didn’t put the final number in there because we’ll talk about that later. And it was like – And it was like – Every line item was trying to justify why it was so high. Yeah, long story short, we get to the end of the three hour meeting and the house is almost a million dollars over budget.
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Over budget. Over budget. Based on what we told them, our budget was, the quote was a million dollars over.
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Almost a million over. And anybody that’s built a house knows, like –
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As you’re building it the house is always gonna cost more than what you even initially think because you’re gonna go I want this. You’re gonna make a great and so it’s like you got to mentally prepare for that, too Well, we’re just in the beginning phase and we’re almost a million over budget and this is not including pool Shop, driveway, entry, nothing.
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This is the house.
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I was like Confused. We were both very confused. I was like surely what I was like how in the world did this happen?
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I think we were kind of in shock at that point Because I think both of us like didn’t really know what to say.
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No, I remember feeling very angry Yeah, and then all of a sudden he had to leave, you know, go to another meeting, right? and we’ll talk about it later and it was like you just hit us with a Almost a million over budget. We’ve been at this deal over a year. You got dirt and we’re going and we’re you know We’re just sitting there. We left and we’re like, oh my gosh, like what are what just what just happened, you know?
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Uh, you know, and then the dirt work wasn’t even right.
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Well, it was very, very, very simple. The dirt work was basically enough to put a concrete pad on.
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Yeah, it’s like we’re building on a ranch. If you could imagine open rolling kind of landscape on top of the hill and we want to be able to like see a pond and have it positioned right. And it was like, he just had his guy go out there on the side of the hill and cut a flat spot in it, you know, and it was like, I mean, literally for the size of the house pad pretty much the, and it was, it didn’t work. We had to redo the entire thing. Um, but I remember we had to end that. We had to end that relationship. It was like, Hey, we’re, we can’t move forward. You know, I don’t trust. There’s no way.
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And you had a very hard phone call with both of them.
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I did.
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And it ended up that we got none of our deposit back. We got none of that money back.
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Yeah. I had to pay the dirt guy. Wasn’t the dirt guy’s fault. Out there running the dozer and had to pay him $27 ,000. Had to pay the architect is.
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16 ,000 whatever it was and then the builder had a few thousand bucks and by the end of the day it was about 40 ,000 bucks in a year and a half worth of wasted time.
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It was very hard very frustrating I just remember feeling so incredibly defeated. I Remember just talking of like why did we not question things? Why did red flags not go off over this process? And I think it came down to we trusted them We were like they’ve been at this a long time. They know what they’re doing And also we just wanted to push the easy button and just like we did we have to take We have to take blame in the situation too, right?
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So hopefully you’re learning that lesson in All other areas of Oklahoma Grassfed Beef business. We would not have gone that far without concrete numbers We wouldn’t have paid money up front for that kind of stuff but for whatever reason we were just ready to push the easy button and just You know trust to just move on and learn a lesson from that. Don’t
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I don’t know, don’t let your guard down when you’re in those kind of situations and be who you really are and don’t just trust people too far, you know?
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Yeah, and I think it’s hard because it was emotional too. This was gonna be our home, our dream home. And when all that happened, we were just so defeated, so discouraged. We’d lost this money and it was. We kinda had to sit in the suck for a while.
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Yeah, we had to start over. It was like, well, we’re not gonna take these house plans to another builder.
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And I think that was the architect’s point is I drew this for you, you can take it and have somebody else build it. And it’s just like, it was still the house he drew and he even admitted this is not within your budget.
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Oh yeah, later on the architect, well, you should have known it wouldn’t have been on the budget. And I’m like, oh, really?
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You guys told us over and over and over.
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We sat there and asked both of you over and over again and then you assured me it was. If you knew the whole time it wasn’t gonna be, why did you charge us the money and put the plans in place?
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Yeah, so we had to literally throw those house plans in the trash. They were no good to us anymore, which was, oh gosh, if you were friends with us during that time, it was just very devastating. And so after that fiasco, we went through a season of what do we do now? I think we felt so burned that we were like, should we just build a house ourselves? Should we be our own GC and just hire the contractors and do it ourselves, save money on that side? And it honestly felt like we couldn’t trust anyone.
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Right, yeah, when you get kind of burned like that. Well then we gotta start all over, right?
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Try to find a different house plan. I think that was the hardest part for me, is starting over. It’s like we’d been through a year and a half of revisions, going to the architect’s office, all that, and then it was like, and we’re starting from scratch again.
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Again.
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Oh, it was so hard.
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I remember we started scouring the internet for house plans and ideas.
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All the time, and I even got a sketch pad. I’m not an artist, you guys, by any means, and a ruler, and I was sketching plans. And we were just at ground zero.
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Yeah, and then we got on this idea that, hey, we’ll just build like a barniminium.
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And so many people think that.
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And it was like, we’ll build a big old metal building and it’ll be cool, and we found a cool set of house plans. We did. For a barniminium. Actually, it would have worked perfect. There’s still nothing wrong with those plans. We ended up buying them online. You know, you can buy plans online. I don’t remember what those were, $1 ,500, something like that.
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But we bought those plans, then we started trying to find, here’s another lesson, probably should have done this ahead of time, is we tried to find a metal manufacturer to actually build the beams.
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Well, the thing is, you have to have the plans to show the building manufacturer.
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You do. They have a simple version, and maybe that would have worked, maybe not. I don’t know. But we tried to find these companies to make the metal for us, the metal beams for us. And man, we couldn’t find anybody to build this deal. Nobody. A lot of these plants, I learned, were either would build beams that do easy buildings, like a 60 by 40 shop or whatever.
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They wanted to build shops.
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Yeah. They kind of got their process, and they don’t want to build anything out of the ordinary and complicated.
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And this house was, it was super cool. It was more of like a cabin, but it was built out of metal.
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Yeah.
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Yeah. I mean, and it was like a two -story, two -deck kind of home.
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Yeah. It would have been awesome.
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but anyway that thing ended up going nowhere because we couldn’t find anybody to build the actual metal and We were just like well this thing just roadblock after roadblock So we scrapped that idea and I remember telling you probably about that point Like are we are we never going to have our new house?
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And I’m like this was not in the plan. We sold our beautiful house in Luther Arcadia on 40 acres 1 .6 million dollar home to move out here and The goal was to build our dream home We sold that house to build our dream home and since we moved out here We’ve talked about this we lived in that little ranch style home that we moved into that had no heat We slept on the floor on air mattresses for the first few weeks with the newborn We had a flood come through the house like it was just it was like we moved from our beautiful dream house
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this little house because it was supposed to be a season a short season and After living in town for a while. We lived there for about a year and a half and we made it cute It’s now a great Airbnb We moved out to the cabin which is where we still live right now And it’s 1800 feet and we love it there and our kids play outside all the time But it’s tiny we went from a forty eight hundred square foot house to now an eighteen hundred square foot house Yeah, with a family of nine.
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Yeah, we have seven kids and so Five of our boys are in one room we got two sets of bunk beds in a toddler bed or crib in there and But they make it work.
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We make it work and we’re and we’re still living there We’re gonna have such great memories there. Yes, but I just remember thinking when that second set of house plans fell through of like
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This was not the plan This was and you know, we would get upset at each other and blame each other and then it’s like why did we do this? So it should we even have sold our house like what is happening here? So that didn’t work and we’re like now what do we do and we I mean we prayed during that time We sought the Lord’s guidance and we were looking at house plans I’m sure we looked over at a over a thousand house plans online. Oh for sure Yeah, me and you both were just and we went through a season two of like Should we just build a small house, right? Should we build a three thousand square foot house save money and just like live more simply?
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Yeah, that’s not a small house for most people. But when you have seven kids
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you know.
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I think everyone can admit when you have a large family it takes it’s easier. It takes a bigger house. Yeah.
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So if it’s two people or even just two kids three thousand feet it’s plenty.
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Now can you do it? Sure. We’ve been living in 1800 square feet for almost two years and we’re very happy there. Like you know we’re very happy there. So you can do it.
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Yeah.
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But the goal was to get a bigger house.
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Yeah and I remember you found a set of house plans and sent them to me. I don’t remember what you said but it was something like this is it.
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Well it was called like New American Luxury Farmhouse and I’m like every one of those words I love.
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I love America. I love farms.
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You know I love a farmhouse.
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And I like a luxury a nice house.
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Well and also what we loved about that is it said with luxury.
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master suite.
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Oh, yes.
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And we loved that. And so I was like, this has literally everything we want.
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Yeah, porches, a good master suite. I wanted a library. It’s got a library off the master. It’s got a big living room, entertaining space.
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It’s like it was built for us.
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It’s got a humongous back porch with outdoor kitchen fireplace for entertaining.
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With it screened in.
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We love to host. I think I was talking to Kyle and Brooke the other day, two days ago. And they hadn’t been out to the ranch yet. We hadn’t even met their son.
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Oh my gosh.
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I can’t believe.
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Are you sure?
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None of us could remember the time, but we could. And so it was like, man, we used to just host like all the time, but we’ve been in these smaller houses and stuff, just not host friendly. And we’re excited to be able to do that again.
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Oh, I can’t wait.
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You found those plans and.
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Man, it checked all the Oklahoma Grassfed Beef boxes. You know, it’s hard when you’re here, so this too, when you’re building a house, it’s never gonna be just perfect. And you have to be okay with that. You gotta sacrifice somewhere.
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And you have to work together. You have to work together.
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And find something that does, I don’t know, nine out of 10, it’s hard to get something 100%. So this one is as close to 100 % for us as you could get.
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Yeah, and a big deal for us, and I know this is kind of odd because we are building a pretty big house now. I think this is gonna be about, after the add -on, somewhere about 6 ,500 feet. But a big thing to us was getting everything on one story.
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Right.
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And that can be kind of hard to find.
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We’ve lived with a house with two stories and what we discovered is we didn’t use the second floor. We lived on the first floor and the kids would just sleep upstairs. So we wanted a one story house, but we wanted it to have all the things we needed it to have. And so when we found this one, it does have a bonus room over the garage, but that’s the only room upstairs. And it was just a big deal, because it is, it’s laid out just like we wanted it to be.
[00:26:00.600]
Yeah, we love it. And so the next step was we, you know, now I remember our builder that we’re working with, he actually reached out to me. He did. And said, hey, I heard you’re building the house and I think he had heard that our relationship with whoever we were gonna build with fell through. He heard it on a job site somewhere. And he’s like, hey, you know, if you wanna have coffee and talk about it, I’d love to talk to you about it.
[00:26:26.300]
And I remember talking to you, I was like, ah, ah, I’ll have coffee with the guy.
[00:26:29.700]
You were kind of hesitant, honestly.
[00:26:31.200]
Oh, I was on the road of, well, just do it my own dang self.
[00:26:34.600]
You know what I’m saying?
[00:26:35.200]
I didn’t want to, deep down, but I was telling myself I would just do it, right?
[00:26:40.400]
Like we were still kind of bitter, I think.
[00:26:42.400]
Yeah, I was like, I don’t trust a builder. You know, that was my, because of the bad experience. But anyway, I had coffee with the guy. I can’t remember, I came back and told you.
[00:26:50.000]
Well, we both went. No, we both went together.
[00:26:51.600]
On the first one?
[00:26:52.300]
We went to the coffee shop, and John.
[00:26:54.600]
We just really liked him. He was just a very good, honest guy. You know, that kind of stuff. And so we kept thinking about it, and then we thought about, okay, what are the pros and the cons? You pay a builder, they’re expensive, right? You don’t do it, you save money.
[00:27:07.600]
but if you save money, you might screw up a whole bunch.
[00:27:10.400]
Well, we’ve never built a house before. And knowing just as me, as a real estate agent, when I watch people sell for sale by owner.
[00:27:17.700]
They don’t save money.
[00:27:18.700]
They don’t. And then they have terrible experiences. They don’t make as much money usually. And then they’re like, I should have just hired an agent. And I’m like, by us doing it ourselves, like we’re basically doing what for sale by owners do. And I see this being a disaster all the time. So why would we want to do that? And also we’re very busy. We have lots of jobs, lots of Oklahoma Grassfed Beef businesses, lots of kids, and we just don’t have time to build our own house.
[00:27:42.100]
Yeah, and the happy factor in life is very important.
[00:27:45.400]
Well, and that’s what I kept going back to. It’s like, babe, if we are gonna be happy and with each other, if we wanna have a good marriage, a strong marriage, and be happy at the end of this house build, I think we need to hire a builder.
[00:27:57.600]
Yes. And so I remember talking with our builder now and,
[00:28:04.600]
saying we were looking to move forward, he sent us some references, which was awesome.
[00:28:08.800]
That was a big deal to me.
[00:28:10.000]
I was like, okay, the last guy didn’t send us no references, and it was like, call him. And usually when you call somebody that’s built a house with a builder, I mean, a lot of times they’re like, I would never build with that person again.
[00:28:21.600]
I would say 90 % of the people I’ve ever talked to who have built a house will tell me I would never use that builder again. Yeah. And so I was kind of going into it with that mindset of I’m gonna call some of these people and some that weren’t on the reference list, but I just knew that he built their house. Every single one of them we talked to was like, I would 100 % use him again. I would 100 % trust him. Some of them, we’d even been in their houses and we were like, we love the quality of this home. And these were people that we could trust. And then some of them we didn’t know at all. They were complete strangers. And so just…
[00:28:58.800]
just that went great. We should have done that the first time around, but we did it this time.
[00:29:04.600]
Yes, we did it this time and we decided, hey, you know, he put together like an actual budget of what it would take to build the house and it was much more detailed and organized than the first go around.
[00:29:18.000]
And it was on budget.
[00:29:19.500]
Yeah, it was on budget and it was like, hey, sweet, let’s go. And so we started with him and now we’ve got what the frame of the house, the roof, brick and rock is going on. Sheetrock just got done. So electrical and plumbing is all, you know, roughed in and all that stuff. Sheetrock’s up. Sheetrock’s going to get textured and stuff this week. In a couple of weeks, the floor is going to start going down. So we’re.
[00:29:45.800]
I mean, we’re through the process pretty far already, and it’s been fantastic.
[00:29:50.300]
Well, I had somebody ask me the other day, they’re like, it just seems like your house building process is just going so well. Like, have you guys hit any bumps? And I’m like, since we hired our builder, it’s been fantastic. He’s the hire, he’s taking care of everything. We just show up and we’re like, look what it got done this week, it’s amazing. But before we got to that point, I mean, I’m gonna tell you guys, it was a nightmare. Yeah, it was not. Literally, it was like living through a nightmare.
[00:30:18.200]
So it’s a lot of adversity.
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And so it’s not like this whole thing has been beautiful, but I think where we are now is, and we learned lessons, we did it together. We didn’t blame, it would have been easy to been like, you should have picked up on that. But we’re both at fault. So we just learned the lessons, we got through it together, and I think we’re so much stronger on the other side. And here’s the other thing.
[00:30:43.300]
like these house plans better than we liked the other two now that we have them.
[00:30:48.100]
Yeah and they were a lot less expensive.
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That’s true.
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And it was actually you know things that we actually really truly wanted. The other part that we did in this process was we hired a designer, a home designer. Is that the right title? Home designer?
[00:31:04.000]
Yes I think so. She has been absolutely instrumental in this process. We’re gonna have her in the podcast here soon.
[00:31:11.700]
You know I mean I’m a guy right? You asked me what color should I paint this wall or what kind of tile? I don’t know and I truly I don’t care. I just want to look great but I can’t waste my mental energy on that kind of stuff because I just
[00:31:27.100]
I can’t make the right decision and it just, I don’t know. You gotta tie it all together, you know? She has been great at that.
[00:31:34.400]
I love decorating. I love putting a house together. But for me, I think I needed somebody who would push me and not just let me do what I’ve always done, because I will go to my comfort of what I know. And I think hiring Micah has helped me, like, oh, she’s like, you should do this. You’ll look amazing. And I’m like, I’m not really, like, I like it, but that makes me kind of nervous. And she’s like, you’re gonna love it. Also, she’s known us for a while, and so she knew our style, and she knew what we’d like. And so I’ve had to trust her a lot of like, it’s a little beyond what I would do, but I trust you.
[00:32:15.000]
And so it’s been so nice. And then also she and our builder worked together. Micah and Brian worked together so much and they solve problems that we don’t have to even mess with, which has been ideal.
[00:32:27.900]
I mean, she builds like a portfolio of materials, color schemes, faucets, lighting, and has it all mapped out of what each room is gonna be done with and all that stuff. And then she can just send stuff to the builder and he goes and buys whatever. She goes to the tile store or wherever and picks out stuff. We’ll meet her places and she’ll help us pick out. And it’s like, and then they communicate together and man, and things just start just getting done.
[00:33:00.200]
And there’s not near as much stress on us. It’s been great.
[00:33:03.800]
Well, and I want to say part of that I want to say a couple things about this. The builder we chose is not the cheapest builder in the area, right? However, to us, we wanted someone with a great reputation who built quality homes. And if we had to pay a little more, we were okay with that. So since hiring him, we’ve talked to several people who were like, I wish we would have hired your builder. We thought about it. He was just a little too expensive for us and we didn’t do it. But by the time they got to the end of their build, they’re like, we should have just hired your builder, you know, kind of thing. And so hiring professionals is so important. And then along with that, our designer, most people don’t use a designer. They just do it themselves.
[00:33:46.900]
which is fine, but I think when you bring a designer in, does it cost money? Yes, it does. However, has she saved us hundreds of hours of time and is going to make it way better than we would have made it 100 times? So it’s just so important to hire professionals, use people you can trust. If it costs you a little more money, probably gonna be worth it in the long run. It’s just very instrumental.
[00:34:14.300]
We’ve learned over the years, if you find a professional in whatever and they are successful and great in their field, there’s a reason why. They’ve helped a lot of people and a lot of people have had good experiences, so their Oklahoma Grassfed Beef business keeps growing. They don’t usually keep growing if they’re terrible at it. And so…
[00:34:34.200]
Paying a little extra for a good professional is Most of the time you’re gonna come out way ahead and way happier.
[00:34:42.700]
That’s right. I had one lady I went and looked at her house We were having like a pool party over there for our girls program Beautiful house they had it custom -built and she told me she’s like the amount She said I had to quit my job to design my house She said it took so much of my time. I had to pick everything out I had to go to tile stores and floor stores and she’s like it literally took over my life for a year and I can See why it was a beautiful amazing house and we just couldn’t do that Nor did we want to yeah. Yeah, and so for her to have to source everything and not doing it all the time That makes it hard that makes it harder. You have to make a lot of mistakes when you hire a professional who does it every day You’re really buying back your time
[00:35:29.800]
and you’re actually giving the reins to someone else who is gonna do a better job than you. So you have to let go of some control. And sometimes that’s for the best. I tell people that a lot, like with what I do. When I meet with somebody to sell their house, my goal is to take the stress off of them and for them to trust me to be a professional. And if they do that, it’s gonna be a smooth, wonderful process and they’re gonna have a smile on their face at the closing table. If you try to be cheap and do for sale by owner or hire one of those companies that charges you $999 to put it on MLS, you’re probably not gonna be happy at the end of the day and you should have just paid a professional.
[00:36:08.500]
Yeah, I don’t know. I’m sure they’re out there, but most of them don’t ever make as much money as they would if they would have hired a professional and gotten it done right. You’re gonna get more money. You’re gonna negotiate better. You’re gonna know how that stuff works.
[00:36:19.800]
It’s just like with Micah, she’s got a tile person or a couple, right? She’s got a cabinet person and a flooring person and you know She knows what color tile goes with what kind of grout colors and I mean all that stuff that you’re just like dude There’s so many decisions in building a house when you have somebody that’s in that all day every day and they They could just guide you down into like two or three options and you can make an easy pick It just makes your life so much better so much better.
[00:36:47.500]
Yeah, I think and when selling houses I was just thinking like, you know If somebody’s never sold a house before and they don’t know what they’re doing It’s gonna be a lot harder and take them a lot longer because they’re gonna have to research everything and they’re going to have to be Like oh, I don’t what’s a title company. What’s a title company to do? Who should I use? Should I even trust these people? You know, I have to show my house. I have to negotiate this How do I negotiate this? What does this contract mean? But when you hire a real estate agent who’s a trusted professional we do this all day every day
[00:37:15.500]
So I can guide you. I already know we’re going to use this title company. We’re going to do this. This is what this means. Boom, boom, boom. That’s kind of how it is with the designer. Yes. And that’s why it’s taken so much of our plate that you just be like, we trust you, you know, our style, make it great.
[00:37:31.500]
Yeah. And it’s like, when you find good professionals, you can trust them. And this is another little piece of advice. When you get like, let them do their jobs. Don’t pepper them with questions all the time and get in the way and make it a nightmare for them. Nobody wants to be that nightmare customer, you know, because we all have them. Right. And you’re like, Oh no, so and so is calling me again, you know, and you don’t want to be the one that is perceived that way to whoever you’re hiring to work with.
[00:38:00.500]
so let them do the job. You know our builder we met today at lunch and he was talking about flooring was gonna go in here in a couple weeks. I’m like what kind of flooring are we doing? He was like you know it’s oak wood or whatever that’s and I was like you know how thick is he’s like it’s like seven eighths you know and I was like oh so we got like an inch thick you know nice wood floor. I remember we’re gonna do wood floor but I don’t remember all the details and he was kind of laughing. I was like yeah and I was like hey that’s what I have you for right. I know I made that decision a long time ago but I don’t remember what it was and you know we just trust you guys to make it look great. Yeah and every time we go on site something’s done and the house is moving forward and it’s just I love it and the quality is great and it’s like man this is I love it.
[00:38:41.100]
I told him I said we make so many decisions every day we serve so many people and building this house it’s been so nice because we just get to go once a week we can go we can go as much as we want but that’s about what we go and we’re like look at what all got done this week and we’re not having to like
[00:38:56.100]
Call the contractors make sure they show up because he has relationships with these contractors. He stays on top of them He checks on things. He orders the things and I’m like, babe Can you imagine if we would have tried to build this ourselves?
[00:39:09.300]
Oh I’d be more bold than I already am.
[00:39:11.900]
We can’t have that.
[00:39:13.500]
No, we So I wear a hat We can’t have that.
[00:39:18.500]
Oh, I got it.
[00:39:19.400]
You got to keep your hair Yeah, but now it’s been hopefully you guys have learned some lessons of what not to do and what to do And you know find we talk about a lot is like building your own team Yeah, right and in this case our team is a builder and a home designer I would recommend that you have both whenever you build now if you’re buying a house in a neighborhood That’s already almost all the way built and you just got to pick out some colors Maybe maybe not you don’t want a home designer because they’re gonna give you some options and you just pick and it’s there but if you’re building a custom home, I would highly recommend you do that and
[00:39:52.600]
make sure that they’re on your team too. You know, anytime we’ve made an adjustment on the house, Brian said, hey, this is $1 ,500 over budget. You approve. And we’re like, yep. Well, this is whatever, over budget.
[00:40:03.800]
And once again, we knew that was gonna be the case, which is why when the first builder gave us such a high overage, we’re like, well, we know it’s gonna cost more than that. Yeah, no way.
[00:40:13.200]
If we’re this far over already, there’s no way, you know.
[00:40:16.100]
Yeah, so this time it’s like, okay, we knew what it was, and if we wanna make these updates, upgrades, it’s okay. Because we built within our means, I think too, is really important. And then when we make upgrades, we know it’s gonna be an upgrade.
[00:40:30.700]
Right, and he’s honest and upfront about what it’s gonna be. You know, he’s looking out for us too, and that’s what you want. Somebody that’s gonna look out for you, you know, and it’s gonna be a win -win relationship. Right, he’s gonna get paid well, and she is too, and then we’re gonna get in turn what we really want, and it’s gonna be a smooth process. It’s gotta be a good win -win relationship.
[00:40:51.000]
And so when you’re interviewing home builders or whatever, we didn’t interview multiple. I would recommend you do. I would recommend you call their references and ask questions about how the experience was. Maybe go see a couple of their houses. And then go with who you feel is going to treat you the best. And price is important and what they charge to build. But at the same time, don’t not go with the best one to save a few thousand bucks and hate yourself later.
[00:41:21.700]
Yeah. You know, and I would say find some, find whoever your trusted professionals are and make sure you align with them spiritually. I think that’s a really big deal because if you hire someone who’s not a Christian, I just think the experience is not going to be ideal. And there might even be some spiritual warfare in there with these two that we have. Like they are.
[00:41:45.900]
Christian people and I feel like we just connect with them on that level too and I think that is a win.
[00:41:52.000]
That part’s important for us.
[00:41:53.300]
It’s very important for us and so whoever I work with, like I want them to be a believer and I want us to have that in common. And another thing that I wanted to say on that is one of my friends, she, they did not use the builder we use, they live not very far from us and she’s like we almost used your builder but we didn’t because he was a little bit higher. She said but the guy we used drugged the project on. She’s like there’d be like six weeks where no one would be at our house. And then it was like delay, delay, delay.
[00:42:27.200]
And I’m like, oh my gosh, like we’ve no, there’s always been someone at our house working. Our builder has kept it moving along so well. And so who you hire matters.
[00:42:37.700]
It matters, yeah, it matters a whole lot.
[00:42:40.300]
Who you hire matters and that’s in everything in life. Like use people that you know, like and trust and hire professionals who are gonna help you in your journey, it’s gonna be worth it.
[00:42:52.200]
It will, yes.
[00:42:54.100]
Well, that was a fun one.
[00:42:56.800]
Yeah, yeah, hopefully you guys learned a lot of lessons. You know, we learned a lot of lessons and so maybe we can help you have a better home building process.
[00:43:05.100]
Yeah.
[00:43:05.500]
Because when you get it going right, it’s a lot of fun.
[00:43:07.500]
I was gonna say, don’t let it scare you. No. From building your dream home because it’s, I think we’re gonna be so proud of it when we get in there and we have, we’ve been loving sharing progress pictures along the way and I know you guys love seeing them and videos. So we’ll keep doing that because it is fun and it should be fun. It should not be.
[00:43:26.700]
nightmare. But I also know that life’s not perfect, but God is, and he’ll carry you through even when it’s hard, and you can’t let detours derail you from moving forward. So you’re going to hit hiccups and roadblocks. But like I said, sit in the suck sometimes, and then you just have to keep moving forward. And that’s what we had to do. And now here we are. And I think we’re just so much better off than we ever would have been if we wouldn’t have had those hiccups.
[00:43:56.700]
Yeah, we only got four or five more months, and then we’ll be in.
[00:44:00.500]
That’s wild. I was telling the kids. So our kids got out of school this week. And I said, guys, when you go back to school in August, I mean, we’re going to be kind of at the end of our house building journey. Yeah, we’re supposed to be done in October. And so it’s that’s crazy to think about.
[00:44:14.500]
Yeah, it’s gonna be exciting.
[00:44:17.100]
More to come. Hopefully this was a fun episode. Hopefully you guys got to see some behind the scenes. I love like pulling the curtain back and like seeing someone else’s behind the scenes because when you watch someone’s life, I think a lot of times you just see highlight reel.
[00:44:33.600]
You do.
[00:44:34.500]
And everybody’s just like that, that’s just normal. And so I think sometimes it’s fun to pull the curtains back and be like, here’s what really happened that you didn’t get to see. So that’s kind of what we wanted to do today.
[00:44:47.100]
It’s not fun to let everybody know that you made a $40 ,000 mistake, you know, and you’re an idiot for doing that. And, but it is, it’s just what happens, you know? And so.
[00:44:58.800]
We wanted to share that and a lot of people don’t know that, you know, but it’s easy to do. It was easy for us to make that mistake and we don’t want anybody else to make it. I want you to enjoy your home building process and it can be enjoyable if you take some of the steps that we discussed in this episode.
[00:45:18.100]
That’s right.
[00:45:18.800]
Yeah.
[00:45:19.100]
So excited to show you guys more as we get farther along and when our house is done, it’s going to be great. So we will see you next week.
[00:45:30.300]
Until next time.