From DINCs to DUNCs

It's official. Brian was laid off on Wednesday. We've gone from being a double-income-no-children household to being a double-unemployment-no-children household.

The good news is our overhead is quite low these days. Cable is probably our single biggest (non-building) expense, unless we splurge on something.

This did not come as a huge surprise and there are at least some relevant job postings in the area. I think Brian's going to take a day or two to go fishing, then look into the options.

In the meantime, we're forging ahead with the house plans. Had a GREAT meeting yesterday with the architects. We finally saw an exterior elevation of the house and I LOVE it. It's very modern and its shape directs your eye downriver in a peaceful way.

The main thing we're wrestling with now is windows - how many and where. We're not going with a giant wall of windows along the river side of the house and I have mixed feelings about that.

On the one hand, I love the exterior look that mixes a corner full of windows with some uninterrupted walls. On the other hand, there's so much drama outside our door. We spend a lot of time tracking osprey across the sky as they fish and cross to their nest with food.

We'll find a solution. We're working well together, coming up with collaborative solutions and good dialogue. It's definitely fun to design a new space and think about how you'll live in it.

Now, it might seem a bit counterintuitive to continue with the house when we have no source of income. Hmmm. Seems that way to us too, a bit.

The plan right now is to forge ahead at least through to getting a building permit and clearing the site. We're not going to live in the house, so we might as well not pay Oregon property taxes on it.

After that, we'll take stock. Our current thinking is that we should go ahead and build. We're going to need to live somewhere, after all, and it really is a great time to build from a cost perspective.

Financing will be a bit interesting. It was looking nearly impossible to get an owner-builder construction loan. Throw in the no income thing and that door slams shut.

We have some options, from tapping into ROTHs to getting private financing to...I don't know what all. If we were both unemployed I suspect we'd end up doing a lot more of the physical work ourselves, with the help of our "construction coach," Leo. More about him later.

At the moment, we are trying to live in the now and not get too churned up about things we can't affect. Easier said than done at times.

For now, I'm inspired by the shape and look of our house-to-be. That's driving me forward. I guess in this case, hope actually is a plan.

And it always could be worse. I could be pregnant. (Which I'm not - just in case my mom is reading this and hyperventilating.) :-)