House Update - The Struggle Continues...

And here, the "Bog Every Day In May"-challenge has made it on our house journey page, as indeed, it is what we struggle most these days. I am totally aware, that this is most definitely a first world problem, but still, we've gotten ourselves into it, and need to figure it out.

So, a few weeks back, in the end of April, I've had a letter from the district building department in our mailbox. I was cautiously excited, hoping for the building permit (haha, says Murphy). Well, it was a letter telling us that they would reject our application at our expense if we would not recall the application voluntarily because the total squarefootage of the house in relation to the property size (Geschossflaechenzahl, short GFZ in German  --> a bonus point for you if you can pronounce it!) was much above the legal maximum. Ok, panic attack is coming on since I have no idea what the GFZ is and what that means for us. I call our building engineer and learn from his assistant that he is out of the office already and would not be in the next week due to vacation. In the meantime I google all the information and double-check our building application just to notice that about all the info in the application had been entered incorrectly. The size of the property was entered as 120 sqm instead of 164 sqm, and instead of 2 full levels they entered 3, increasing the size of our house by 50%. Come Monday, I call the office again and tell them to contact the architect, who has mastered this piece of work (= building application), and tell him to double-check it. The assistent promises that the issue will be taken care of and that she would call me back on Wednesday at the latest. Well, Wednesday passes, Thursday is a public holiday, so I call back Friday, since the assistant has not called me back as promised. She tells me that she doesn't have any info yet but calls in to check; a minute later she returns with the information that indeed, there were mistakes in the building application (duh!!), but that our building engineer will have to look at it on Monday.

Come Monday, he really calls me, just to ask what the matter was, as the only info he had received was to call me back urgently. I explain him again what had happened and he promises to check and call me back immediately. Indeed, he gave me a call back a few minutes later and confirms that there have been major mistakes but that they will send in the necessary paperwork to correct the matter. More time passes, and the following Monday I call in again, since no-one gives me any info. I learn that my building engineer had had an accident the week before but was now back in the office and would take care of the issue. This night we received two pages with correction to sign as appendix to the building application, which we return immediately. However, when I called the district building department to confirm that everything is fine now, I learn that indeed no paperwork has been received to correct the matter, and that another minor issue has, as well, not been taken care of. Pretty annoyed I call our building engineer again to ask what the matter was. He informs me that the case worker has been on vacation and will take care of the matter in person as to not having to take the "official" route.

So I hope that tomorrow, we will finally learn that everything has been figured out and corrected. Keeping fingers crossed and knocking the heck out of all the wood around me, trying to keep Murphy at bay. Richard and I have asked ourselves multiple times if there was any way out of the whole matter, but of course there's none. Too much money has been spent already, so the only way to go for us is forward. We know that once the house is actually built and we have moved in, the struggles we're facing now will not matter any more, but right now, we're at a point where we're not even looking forward to owning a house any more. All he stress, issues, and obstacles we've faced so far before even a single worker has set foot on our property to start building has taken the fun out of it all. Had we known 9 months ago what we know now, we've never even set foot on the path of building our own home but waited until the right house had popped up on the market; yes, buying an existing house would have been a lot more expensive in terms of fees and taxes, but it would have saved us a lot of nerves and stress on the way.

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