Are you in yet?

[MortarThePoint]

Is this the hardest question? I'm out for dinner with friends. I'm tempted to design a buildhub T-shirt that makes it clear that this is an unwelcome question.

[SteamyTea]

They are not your real friends then.

Real friends would be helping.

[G and J]

Forgive them, they know not what you are going through (albeit voluntarily).

Many years ago I ran (meaning jogged, slowly) a half marathon.  In the pub a few days after I was asked my time.  It was an hour forty. 
 

So one of them piped up ‘that’s not very quick’.  It pissed me off. Especially as the guy doesn’t run. Took me a few days to remember to be proud of my achievement.  
 

So smile, shake your head and pity the incapable.  Their inability to grasp the enormity of your achievement because they don’t have a clue is their problem.  

But I feel for you.  I know I’ll be emotionally exactly where you are now. 

 

[Russell griffiths]

I get asked this a lot, as mines been going on for 6 years. 
but just look at the people asking, got nothing do nothing achieved nothing. 

[ToughButterCup]

Your question is close to "When will you be finished ?" There's not a month goes by without us being asked. 

 

I don't think people want to know the answer, they just want to say something to show a bit of interest.

 

My reply..

"If you see me using a strimmer, I'll be finished"

[nod]

To be clear 

When you are planning a self build All your family and friends that think it’s a great idea Soon loose interest when you start 

 

[G and J]

My cunning plan is to regale the one who asks with a long winded litany of toil and woe and injustice and everything else I can think of.  Two helpings of that, leaving them wishing they’d never asked, and they’ll not ask again.  
 

See, being a boring old windbag has its upsides.

 

 

[Onoff]

2 hours ago, Russell griffiths said:

I get asked this a lot

 

Me too 😉

[Nick Laslett]

I think once you commit to a certain approach, you are a prisoner to that decision. 
 

We decided to do the soffits and fascia boards ourselves, and used exterior MDF. It took us 6 months to cut, paint and install them all. Every board needed 7 coatings on both sides, so each board took a week for coatings. Only had enough room to paint 6 boards at a time. The house has 6 gable ends and 2 dormers. It sounds crazy in hindsight, but before starting it made perfect sense. 
 

Once we were on this journey, how could you turn back, or bring in a trade? People would ask how it was progressing and we would talk about the same piece of work for 6 months. 
 

We are now doing the internal boarding, it took 6 months to board downstairs, and we are 1 month away from finishing boarding upstairs, which has also taken about 6 months. Again every conversation for the last year has been about the same basic task. People think you are mad. We probably are, but once you start, very hard to walk away and hand over to a trade. 
 

The crazy thing about committing to a lot of the self build work yourself, is that it is so all consuming that you have no memory of actually doing the work, how you did it, or what it looked like before. You just move onto the next task and forget. 
 

We broke ground April ‘21, so just had the 4th anniversary of the build.