Reading your story makes me laugh out loud. My husband, bless his heart is not very mechanical. He installed a ceiling fan above our brand new cherry table. Looked great but he didn't attach it to the beam. Needless to say we bought a new table. I do alot of gardening. So I buy mushroom compost by the ton. Hubby set the trailer up for me and said "your all set to go". Went to go pick up the compost (which is about half horse poop), went to leave the parking lot and felt a huge tug on the back of the truck. The trailer was BOUNCING up and down the very busy highway. I thought I blew a tire. NOOOOOOOOOOOO- hubby didn't have a pin for the trailer so he secured it with a STRING. I am not kidding. I ended up spreading 70 feet of horse poop-no wait- stinking horse poop down the one lane of a very busy highway. Cars were sliding in, honking at me, some guy gave me the finger?!?!?! Fines + tickets+new trailer+cost of cleanup = $3500.00 Needless to say I bought a new trailer and it came with a pin on a chain. I laugh now, but I could have killed him. Your father is right. I say if it's not cancer, then it's not worth the worry. Remember, he will rope the moon for you. He could be trying to please someone else instead of you. Don't beat him up over it, he is already doing that to himself. They really do want to be the knight on that white horse. I read "the proper care and feeding of husbands" CHANGED MY LIFE, MY ATTITUDE, MY MARRIAGE. I fully and whole heartly recommend to any married woman who wants to improve their marriage. Get it on cd and listen to it over and over. Be sure to shut off your own internal dialogue, so you can really absorb. I am NO ONE to give advice, but I try to remember this stuff when I want to "verbally smack" him with all of his mistakes. Forgetting to remind him of how absolutly wonderful he is to me. Again, I am no one to give advice. Women think they know everything and WELL WE DO. Men are far less complicated than us. However, they are deeper than we realize. Make him feel like your hero or someone else will. Why risk it?? Your going to spend $$$$ on a kitchen remodel. Spend the $15 on this cd. You will recover 2,000% of your investment on the cd. Maybe 85% on the kitchen. I wish i would have had this book BEFORE i got married. So put on something sexy, make his favorite meal and let him how much he is appreciated.

Lora: Your great views and lot size have nothing to do with the insurance value. Insurance only covers replacement of the home and does not insure the land. Take this a step further, my insurance policy states it does not cover the portion of the home that is under ground. (Do other policies say this also, this policy was with a very large carrier in the USA.). To me, this means the footings, the underground plumbing and electrical, as well as the septic tank, are not covered. In my case, this is approx $25k in building costs (due to expensive foundation). I would have assumed that the 'cost to build' that my insurer calculated would have been much cheaper, given the fact that they are not really insuring the entire home,but instead only insuring the above ground portion of the home. But also in my case the insurance company came in with an estimate of at least $100k OVER our actual cost to build, and our cost also included the foundation, septic system, etc. All I can say is, shop around. Just recently, I switched carriers after having lived in the home awhile and got a new carrier that came up with a cost-to-build approx $50k lower the the first carrier. ---------------------------------- An open question to the insurance pros on this forum....what is the deal with max amt of deductible allowed for most mortgage companies? One of the insurance agents said mortgagers require no more than a 500 deductible. He squawked when I tried to raise it. I ended up switching carriers and got a 1000 deductible. But was wondering about increasing it more . (Am afraid to contact lender to ask in case they say it is 500 and make me lower what I already have.) I read my lender paperwork and it does not give an actual deductible requirement.

Gosh everyone's progress pics are making me so anxious to dig!! We should be breaking ground next month and I can hardly wait. We have a LOT to do to prep. We bought ~10 acres in Central Ohio, most of which needs to be cleared. It was a foreclosed property, so it hasn't been taken care of in quite a while. Most of the brush was taller than me! We've gotten most of it cleared and are now working on our temporary house, which we will be living in while our house is being built. It's pretty rough, but because it was a foreclosure, one of the stipulations was that we had to make it our primary residence within 60 days. The other big thing is getting one of the barns down to make way for the construction driveway. This will be our first time owning a home and obviously our first time building. It will definitely be an adventure! You can read all about it and see pictures of the land and current house on my blog: https://loeschhomestead.wordpress.com/.

There is no difference between a home builder and a general contractor To repeat the second response on this thread: Vague terms whose definition varies by jurisdiction. For instance, as per the British Columbia government housebuilding registration site: Ditto in Ontario, where my municipal renovator's license counted for bupkis when I wanted to build a new home for sale.