Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Isn’t Crazy. It’s Being a Builder.

There’s an old saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Clearly, whoever came up with that was not a builder.

I’ve been building for more than 20 years, although I didn’t start out building homes from the ground up. I started in remodeling, which, in hindsight, may have been the best education I could have received. When you tear apart someone else’s work, you learn very quickly what holds up, what doesn’t, and which decisions leave the next builder standing there twenty years later saying, “Well, that was an interesting choice.” Eventually remodeling became new construction, new construction became development, and here I am building mountain estates in East Tennessee.

After all these years, you might think construction becomes somewhat predictable. It does not. You simply become considerably better at predicting the ways it might become unpredictable.

Take measuring: ee measure everything, then we measure it again. I mark exactly where something needs to go, come back the next morning and discover the HVAC tech has moved my mark six inches because that location worked better for his ductwork. Wonderful. Except now his six inches affects the electrician, the cabinet layout and possibly the light fixture that was supposed to be centered over something that apparently no longer exists in the same place.

Welcome to construction.

That is one of the things homeowners rarely see: a house isn’t built one trade at a time in isolation, but it is a three-dimensional puzzle where almost every decision affects something else. Move a wall and you may affect a floor joist; move the plumbing and suddenly we’re discussing cabinetry; change the cabinet layout and now the electrical plan needs another look; add a beautiful oversized window and somebody had better remember where the HVAC supply was supposed to go.

And yes, sometimes six inches really does matter.

Mountain construction adds another layer. Before we ever get to finishes, I have to think about how the house actually meets the land. 1) On a flat lot, moving a house a few feet may be fairly uneventful. 2) On a mountain, a few feet can change the driveway grade, the foundation height, drainage, retaining requirements and excavation costs. That gorgeous rock you see exposed along the mountain? Beautiful. Until you’re paying someone to remove several hundred cubic yards of it.

Then there is water! In the mountains, I don’t care where water is supposed to go, I care where it actually goes during a hard rain. The driveway, rooflines, gutters, retaining walls and final grade all have to work together to move water away from the home. Drainage isn’t particularly sexy, and I have yet to meet a client who puts French drains on their inspiration board, but a dry foundation is considerably more luxurious than a wet one.

Windows are another example: everyone wants the view—and they should. We’re in the Smoky Mountains! Who could ask for a better view? But placing a window isn’t simply a matter of pointing it toward something pretty. I’m thinking about what you’ll see while standing at the kitchen sink, where the morning sun enters the bedroom, how furniture will sit in the room, where electrical needs to go, and whether that gorgeous wall of glass is going to turn the great room into a greenhouse every afternoon. The view matters, and so does living comfortably with it.

Then we get to the finishes, where apparently my tendency to measure things repeatedly only gets worse. Cabinetry has to relate from one room to the next. Tile has to work with both artificial and natural light. Baseboards have to be proportioned to ceiling height.

Lighting needs to be centered on what will actually be there—not simply on the dimensions of an empty room. I’ve moved plenty of electrical boxes because something looked perfectly correct on paper and completely wrong once I stood in the space.

That isn’t being picky. (Okay, sometimes it’s being picky). But it’s also the difference between a house that technically works and one that feels right.

After more than 20 years, experience hasn’t taught me how to eliminate every problem in construction, but that’s simply impossible! What it has taught me is how one decision travels through an entire house. I know to ask what happens next before approving what is happening now.

And that may be the real definition of being an experienced builder: knowing that when the HVAC guy moves your mark six inches, you’re not looking at six inches.

You’re looking at the next five problems.

So I measure it again.

Crazy?

No, I’m a builder!