Who knew finding a builder is like online dating?

It made us both laugh when I compared the emotions of finding a building to online dating.

You search online, shoot off an email to one or two who look good, swap a few messages back and forth about your dreams, it feels like you’re on the same page, or they at least sound pretty good so you arrange to meet up.

You meet up and chat, tell your story, share your dreams, open up about whats important to you. They say they will email you. You’re excited so you check your email constantly and then.. nothing…. you follow up…they have excuses… you believe them… then nothing. Ghosted. 
Or 
You meet up, it goes OK, they say they’ll email you.., they do, but clearly they weren’t listening. You politely decline. 
Or
They say they will email you, you’re keen you like them, you think they get it, you get a buzz of adrenaline when their email arrives, but then as you read it, your heat sinks, they want more commitment than you can give.

And there were a few friends with benefits in the mix.

Finding the right builder is important and was another roller coaster ride for us. It’s our home and our entire savings so it can feel emotional. We did often feel hopeful as we went to meet a new builder on site wondering if they would be the one. We also often had our fingers crossed waiting for their proposal to arrive hoping it would work for us. 

I won’t go into the details of builders that didn’t call us back, builders that seemingly didn’t hear our budget, those that said they’d be in contact and then we never heard from them. We presented honestly, friendly and passionate but professionally each time. If they had too much on, thought we were dreaming or weren’t interested in passive house, that’s OK – just let us know.

We also met some wonderful builders and other building professionals along the way who even though they couldn’t deliver the whole project were very generous with their time and advice. We are super grateful to these and hope to stay in touch.

Some people wonder if we complicated things by wanted to build passive house, but we wouldn’t have been true to ourselves and our values if we had built the ‘conventional’ way, so I can’t answer that.

In the end we’ve found our perfect builder, which is another serendipitous story, for the next post.