Building A House Together

Building What Counts

2008-11-09T12:07:00.000-08:00

The Economy! The Election! The Economy!

At last the election is over and we can focus on the other critical issues in our personal lives. For most couples, the economy is having a distinct effect on the state of their personal finances and therefore on their relationship stability.

For those couples fortunate enough to be building or renovating a home, few concerns cause more distress to the relationship than escalating costs and out of control budgets. It's easy to attack one's partner when the anxiety about finances makes each difference of opinion seem to be the real problem. If you're in the design or construction process already, then you know that cost containment requires unprecedented flexibility and teamwork.

Sparing the relationship disastrous consequences during financial pressure requires that couples constantly reassess and recommit to their core values and then make adjustments accordingly rather than hanging on to specific wants that may no longer be within either the budget or the values. It is critical that partners not blame each other for disappointments as they make necessary re-allocations.

If you are in a financial quandary with shrinking resources, think about using the quick workbook guide to resolving such dilemmas while sparing the relationship. Building a House Together: A Couple's Guide to Managing Their Relationship During the Construction Process is available at www.buildingahousetogether.com.

"What Counts" in the building process for any partnership is the sustainability of the partnership when the project is completed. That's true for all partnership projects. When the project is building a home together for a particular family to inhabit, then how the partners work together and what happens to the partnership when the project is completed supersedes the success of the project in all other respects.

Sales Games

2008-09-15T08:30:00.000-07:00

Some time ago a developer friend of ours who was positively impressed with the Building A House Together workbook personally took it to a number of his contractor friends suggesting they should include the workbook in the packet of promotional materials to all of their couple clients. Since we wrote the workbook for exactly that market, we were dismayed to learn that universally the contractors said, "Great workbook, but I'll never give this to my customers." Their response was based on the fear that "If couples knew in advance about the stress on relationships, they would never build and we would lose sales."

Now, first of all, we wrote the workbook for couples who had already committed to a project. Secondly, we ourselves had heard from everybody how stressful building a house together would be, but we did it anyway. In addition, we wrote Building a House Together to help get builders, designers, and architects out of the middle of couples' relationship difficulties, so we were totally astonished by the response from these contractors.

Astonished that is . . .until a couple told us about their experience with time share sales. Seems they walked into one of those free vacation deals agreeing they would NOT be buying a time share. One enticing "low key" offer after another was made and they stood fast in resisting the option to buy. Until the sales person pushed the right button and the wife said, "Hmmm." An hour later they had signed the contract. Naturally they left the sales office at odds with each other and continued a miserable vacation marked by frustration with one another.

It doesn't take much understanding of sales to figure out what happened here. The sales person found a weak link in the couple's front and used it to make the sale. Clearly, supporting the couple in making a unified decision was not in the best interest of the sales agent; on the other hand, dividing them totally weakened their resolve.

Could this be why contractors are afraid to help their clients work together even when they know it would expedite the project? Do they assume that a weakened relationship is somehow to the builder's advantage? If so, the notion seems to run contrary to the oft-expressed frustration of builders who lament the number of divorces that occur among their customers after they move into their new homes.

Seems like giving clients who have already decided to work together a tool to do so effectively would be to everyone's benefit. While most couples don't want the contractor to be involved personally in their relationship, they would welcome knowing their contractor wants to see the relationship survive the project.

The construction of a home is a direct reflection of the relationship of the persons living in it. Building A House Together: A Couple's Guide to Managing Their Relationship During the Construction Process is designed to make the reflection a positive one.

Second Exposure

2008-09-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

Strange to see one's life, relationship, and thoughts published in a photo feature of a new home magazine.

For those who don't aspire to be public, marketing a workbook like Building a House Together: A Couple's Guide to Managing Their Relationship During the Construction Process needs a ton of help, energy, money, and hutzpah. The new Fall/Winter edition of New Home a specialty magazine of Better Homes and Gardens features the house and the workbook on page 102. That's the kind of marketing the workbook needs and gets, thanks to the persistence and know how of Anna Booraem.

Asheville is a great place to find like-minded folks with energy, so Anna came to us through friends. In a very understated way, this young journalist has persisted. She's created an excellent reception for this little workbook: the book itself is carried in Build It Naturally a green building supply store in Asheville and has also been featured in Architectural Digest, the Asheville Citizen Times newspaper, Western North Carolina Woman and mentioned in several other specialty magazine "new products" columns as well as this current article in New Home. Next scheduled is Carolina Living section of Southern Living in November.

Thanks, Anna.

Sustainable Relationships for Dream Homes

2008-03-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

Two years ago we did what everybody tells you not to do - we went into business with a family member (each other). Of course, we thought we were just building a house together, so it didn't occur to us until well into the project that we had totally ignored how to operate from a business partnership perspective. Only after we were in the throes of major personal differences did we figure out why others looked at us with one eyebrow raised when we said what we were doing. Worse, we weren't sure we would want to move into the house with each other when it was finally finished.

We're pretty mild people when it comes to personal conflict, so it was shocking to discover how strongly we both felt about certain things, like windows, fireplaces, garages and green building, not to mention budgets. Finally we got smart enough to figure out we'd better see what everybody else does to deal with the relationship stress of building a house together.

So, Jared googled. If you're reading this, you already know there are some good sites out there for finding a contractor you can work with and suggesting how to work with them, tons of sites on all kinds of specialty issues like green building or cool plumbing fixtures, but nothing at all on surviving the stress of working with your partner while building your "dream home." Nothing at all on sustaining the couple's relationship during the process.

From handling sales, customer service, and customer selections for a builder for several years, I knew how awkward it is for the professional to be drawn into a couple's difficulties and how their inability to reach unified decisions quickly can cause costly delays. So we got serious and decided we had better apply everything we knew about conflict resolution, problem solving, and teamwork in a business partnership before we let our personal relationship issues sabotage the whole project or before the relationship itself ended.

As we got back on track, we took notes, and with some great support from our contractor,Tim Alexander of Home Source R.E. and Construction Inc., we created a workbook for couples to help them steer clear of some of the potentially devastating potholes. (We were a little smarter working together on the writing project, but we had to use all the same skills to stay focused on business.) The workbook itself is available at www.buildingahousetogether.com.

So now we're interested in opening a forum for other couples to tell their stories about how they managed to get through the process of constructing or renovating a home and what they learned from it. We're interested also in how designers, contractors, project managers, and other professionals handle the conflict they see opening up in their couple clients' relationships. We suspect mostly everybody runs from it and the couple is left paying for damages. We're hoping this blog provides a space for us to laugh about ourselves, but more importantly to learn how to protect out most precious resource - the relationships that plan to live in our dream homes.