Honestly, very common. We did it not because housing was so hot but because we had some terrible comps coming up on the market in a small custom street. In the end, we shouldn't have done it because the market generally went up still in that time despite the crappy comp. Mortgage rates could certainly go up but my crystal ball says that won't happen. But that is always an issue with building. My advice is to be happy with your temp and assume delays. We were unhappy in our temp and had to break lease and buy a house. The total build time was 16 months.

Look them up online. Because quartz is man made most of the pictures online give a fairly accurate representation of what you will actually get. The pictures online usually show a close up and a full slab. We've only had one time when a quartz slab came in that there was an issue with the colouring (the small sample just happened to not show some grey that was in the slab and it wasn't very noticeable online) This was on quite a busy slab. If you are choosing a generally fairly uniform colour slab you should be safe.

OP : speaking as someone who has been on both sides of your dilemma in the same neighbourhood, first by going through the demolition and building of a house, and then by being surrounded by demo/ building projects, here is my advice, for whatever it's worth.  First, don't stretch or bend the local rules.  You don't want to be known as the one who " got away" with something.  Don't build a house totally out of keeping with those around you:  one of our neighbors built a house that is literally twice the size if any other house on our street, but he kept it to a single story, so it doesn't overwhelm the houses around it.  Don't go overboard about sharing details of your plans or delivering cookies:  the former will open you up to discussions you may not want, and the latter is unnecessary. You're building a house, not asking for a favour. Do ride herd on your construction crew (or make sure your builder does):  make sure they follow the rules on hours for when they can and cannot work, make sure they keep the site tidy when they leave for the day, ask them to keep the music down, and warn the neighbours if any asbestos removal is planned. Tro to keep noise, dust and inconvenience to a minimum (you can't eliminate these things entirely, of course). And be very, very clear about site boundaries:  one builder/homeowner on our street informed neighbours he was going to tear down an existing fence and they would have to move a meter box serving three units because it was on his property:  he apparently got quite aggressive about it. The neighbours hired a surveyor who confirmed that the meter box and fence were both on their property, not his and he backed off, but the neighbours are still angry about that (and a few other stunts, including damage to their homes caused by his demolition crew).

Well, I started gardening organically in 1980 on the same property I still garden on. [g] I guess I was committed to the process beyond what the results were going to be. Major problems that I've had? I did have winter moths on all my trees and shrubs for about 6 years in a row without doing anything to address them. The only organic solution would have been to spray the whole tree, that was already 25 ft tall, every spring, with horticultural oil for an uncertain result, so I skipped that. It did leave moderate damage to the tree. Lots of dead branches up in the canopy but it started out being a very dense canopy so it still looks very good, now that there are no more winter moths. They just stopped one spring. I have no idea why. I did replace a number of shrubs and two small Amelanchier trees. I had a bout of witch grass that invaded my vegetable garden and I did the wrong thing and used a rototiller on it and what a mistake that was, it just multiplied the root system and it was worse. I abandoned my vegetable garden for 2 years before I thought of an organic sollution - I had a left over 25ft piece of plastic from an outdoor skating rink and I covered the whole area for a year and basically solarized it and that was the end of the witch grass. I had a very annoying influx of earwigs that were attacking plants in my vegetable garden and it took me awhile to figure out what was doing it. I looked and looked during the day and saw no pest that was causing the damage, but when I went out at night with a flashlight, I found the earwigs all over the plants. Simple solution, a plastic cup with soapy water in it and I'd just knock them into it. I did that for a couple of weeks and never had that bad a problem with them again. I grow a lot of brassicas in the vegetable garden and I used to get a lot of those caterpillars that make a mess of the leaves. I still get some in the spring, but my plan was to just inspect the undersides of the leaves and remove them, but I got busy in the spring and forgot to do them and I noticed that I had wasps patroling the vegetable beds and I barely had any damage from the caterpillars. So, to me that is the ecology taking care of itself. You do have to be observant to notice what is happening in the garden. So, those are just a few examples of issues that come up and what it has required from me in the way of acceptance and patience. I know in the beginning, when I had less patience, I did make up my own homemade insect spray - garlic, a drop of oil, a drop of dishwashing liquid and some red pepper flakes, blended then strained into a spray bottle. That seemed to be pretty general purpose and I had no issue with using that and still don't. It has been a couple of decades since I resorted to that. What I was doing was taking each issue that came up, researching possible sollutions, talking to other organic gardeners and then choosing the most natural solution, sometimes doing nothing. Thinking about it, I think I do nothing more often then I do any thing else. [g] BTW, when you talk about gardening making you happy, growing organically and supporting the ecology in my little corner, has always made me feel really connected to nature and adds a lot of happiness to my gardening.