Blog #06: The two of you are a team too!

When we first thought about building a house and started talking about it, it became abundantly clear that if we didn't come with a communication strategy, we would probably end up divorcing each other! Jokes aside, we were terrible at communicating our thoughts and would end up having big fights only to realize we were talking about the same thing. Gradually, we came up with a strategy which I want to share with you all:

1. Using the same language: As I had mentioned in the previous blog, English is not my first language and I have grown up speaking British English whereas my husband was born and brought-up in the USA. So terms that seemed simple to me, such as “Drawing Room” rather than “Living Room”, created a lot of confusion between us. My dictionary only had the term balcony for a covered outdoor area but my husband used terms like Porch, Balcony, Patio and Deck and I always thought he was talking about the balcony. But as soon as we both realized the source of confusion, we made sure we stopped each other and confirmed what we were talking about. We looked at it as a learning opportunity. If you are wondering what’s the difference between Porch, Balcony, Patio and Deck, here is an article I found helpful. 😀

2. Pictures are worth a thousand words: I cannot emphasize this point enough. There were times when we were talking about the exact same thing but could not understand why the other person wasn’t getting it. After a few escalations and shouting matches we learned that getting a piece of paper and drawing our thoughts out helped settle debates because most of the time, there was no debate to begin with.

3. Do your homework: I have mentioned before that we both spent hundreds of hours working on designing the floor-plan, layout of the house, exterior look of the house all by ourselves using the 3D design software Sketchup. That helped with things

1. Both of you are on the same page when talking to the architect & builder. You both have talked through things and know what is important to each other. You have each other's back and can keep each other honest.

2. When talking to the architect, it's a very different conversation when you say "I want a house" than saying “I want a contemporary house'' or saying "I want a modern contemporary house with an open floor plan". The more detailed you are, the fewer iterations you will go through with the architect. It will save you money as well.

4. Equal participation: This one is a touchy subject for me. Initially when we were building a team of architects & builders, we realized that some of them unintentionally removed me (the woman) from emails that included conversations about the budget or excavation. My husband made it a point to add me to these emails and called out the person reminding them to include me in all communications. It mattered to me. In fact, when we signed with our architect, he sent us our first invoice and the invoice was titled “ My last Name - Husband’s last name Home”. I felt acknowledged and it was a great feeling.

5. Know which battle to fight :The whole design and build process takes 1.5 - 2 years and just 6 months into the process I had lost count of the number of conflicts we had had. And it's our dream house. It's natural to feel strongly about things. For example, in our initial design, our daughters bathroom was shared with another room and I was insistent that she had her own bathroom. My husband understood and we made some compromises to accommodate the extra bathroom. Knowing which battle to fight is crucial.