Jenk, I don't think you're crazy at all. Sometimes in life we make sacrifices to get ahead. The first time we moved to the country as a young married couple (we both grew up in the city), we only lived there for 6 months and our mobile home burned to the ground. So we were 21 years old and homeless. We built our first home then. That county had no building codes, and we just winged it. We lived with his mother for a few months and moved in when the house was nothing but bare block walls. We heated with a wood stove made out of a 55 gallon barrel. It was so cold in there that the ice in the toilets froze in the winter!! But we survived, finished that house and later sold it, built a much larger one and sold that one and are now at the age of 50 we are building our forever home. When we moved from that big house into this little single wide, we bought a 40' long overseas shipping container to store our stuff in. I got a set of shelving from a Wal-mart going-out-of-business auction so everything we own is stored neatly in the container on shelves. Now the end of this build is finally in sight and we can soon move into the new house. And not a minute too soon.....I am getting WAY too old for this!! I laid a bunch of tile this weekend and don't remember getting so sore last time I did tile work. lol!

Kats, that is some real chutzpah. I feel for you. We've been in our home for a little more than a month after a 13-month build (that was only supposed to take 9 months) - the delays were excruciating because they would have been avoidable by someone with even a modicum or organizational ability, which our GC does not have. He's a lovely guy on a personal level but not nearly as good a contractor as he thinks, and we sorely need a break from the unrelenting pressure. He still has not finished one major item - two sets of steel stairs that go from our rear porches to our rear terrace, as well as several small punchlist items. There's always an excuse. He's disorganized, but resents it when we step in to organize, or take any kind of action to impose a deadline - this from a guy who is routinely hours late to scheduled meetings and never met any deadline in the construction process, even ones he imposed himself. Our new theory this week is to give him whatever time he needs (within reason) but to limit his intrusions into our home life to one day a week, arranged in advance, with a "one hour" rule - if he's not here within an hour of when he is supposed to be he has to wait until the next week. Apparently that is being just as "mean" and "difficult" as complaining about unmet deadlines - he thinks we should be there 24/7 for him to do what he wants, or we should just give him a key and trust him, in any event on his schedule. No way - he has needed watching every step of the way. We've done way more than our share of work that he should have done - I feel for you there too. He's been inches away from being fired more than once on this job, and we've talked to a construction lawyer several times about really contentious issues. In the end, even though we have the cash leverage (we still owe him more than our 10% retention, primarily because he's too lazy to do a requisition), it just hasn't been worth it to fire him. Assuming that you don't need clean title for a takeout of your construction loan, it sounds like you have little to worry about. I don't have huge faith in the court system, but even then I find it hard to believe that a judge would buy his argument that his subs are not under his control. Also, if he's not done, how in the world could he be owed a completion bonus? The courts are always a risk, but in this case it seems to me a pretty small one. If you do have to close any new financing that requires title work, you may need to think about it a bit more strategically. Do everything you can to get your loan closed without a lien being recorded. Otherwise, my advice to you is the advice I have a hard time taking myself. It's only as big a deal as you make it. So hire a lawyer and instruct him or her to deal with it in as cost-effective a manner as possible. Then let it go and enjoy your new house.

brutuses, Thank you for the comments. My hubby did all the columns cabinets and the fireplace in the living room! The mantel is Foster mantel unfinished dental molding style 60" from Lowes(a regular in stock item here is so.Calif), the pilaster sides are also from the same company with the routing all ready done. The rest of the detail and the face wood (below mantel) are pieces of finish grade pine unfinished that hubby bought and cut to complete the detail. DH suggested that you take the pics to Lowes and ask them to match up the trims and detail pieces for you. We don't have the names of them. I took some more pics and will post them for you to see more detail. The living room walls are Sherwin Williams Barley. The fireplace was painted in Killz primer from either home depot or Lowes. The finish color of fireplace and all moldings and cabinets (white) and trim is Sherman Williams too. Let me know if you need any other info! Here are the detail pics House pics for web albumn 10-07

Hope you caught these persnickitydesign posts: "It was pretty much a full time job (plus overtime) and it still took a year and a half for me to get everything purchased & everyone lined up. ...One of my oldest & dearest friends' DH owns the HVAC company. He did our house at cost. Another owns the company that did our fireplace and garage doors. He also worked at the lumber yard for years and gave us the names of many of the subs that we ended up using. ...our friends came by to help us out and worked for free" "Our permits were $433. We're on county water & sewer and did have to pay a tap-in fee of $1067. There were no charges for the gas and power." "We are fortunate enough to live in an area where the cost of living (and cost to build) is extremely low. Plan prices are not mentioned. Also, keep in mind the year of the build--2008. There was a wee bit of a recession going on then, centred on the collapsing housing market. Trades were desperate for work, suppliers for customers. I had the fortune to build in earlier declines. With cash in hand, you were like a god.Now, not so much.