Thursday, June 20, 2013

Our latest deposit

A few months ago, I took a risk in blogging about the house we were planning to build in the dream neighborhood with killer views of Pikes Peak and our city. Well, it isn't happening.
After failed transactions from our builder, many engineering reports, we lost the lot because our builder failed to communicate in time to file an extension with the seller of the lot. This was a four month transaction that had pushed us too far and forced us to walk away from what seems like slow-sketchy business with a builder who doesn't have a large portfolio. I finally accepted that we weren't going to live in Cedar Heights, and we proceed to request a refund of the LARGE deposit we paid, minus the cost of the engineer's report. They disagreed. They were quick to get our money for a deposit back in January, but didn't want to accept any fault now. We had our records, they had their records.
What were we to do?
We prayed that in all of this mess, we would show character, wisdom and humility when dealing with the builder. We prayed protection against the victim mentality or greed in our hearts. After reaching a settlement yesterday with the party, Daniel and I decided we weren't going to discuss it anymore. Water under the bridge. Forward motion. (we say "forward motion" often in our home)
It could have been much worse, like one of those nightmare stories where the builder goes bankrupt and leaves town. It' wasn't that bad, yet. I hate that the disagreement over money-paid and time-spent was stealing our energy. Even if we didn't receive any of the deposit back, it would not ruin our lives, we reminded ourselves of that over and over. One thing that Daniel said to me was "Money is a good problem to have, because we make more of it everyday." I love him for that. He could have been angry, ranting and making it worse, but instead he was calm, wise and patient.
While all of this has been happening over the last six months, we continued to shop with our realtor for existing homes. I am happy to report, we close on a home tomorrow in Monument and I am finally letting myself get excited about making it our own, yes, even the terrible navajo-print concrete fireplace in the basement. It's tucked in the trees (please don't say anything to me about wildfires) and has an awesome deck for us to start entertaining!!!
I am ready to land in "our" home. Where we can start a family and put roots down in Colorado Springs. We are ready. Very ready.