Lessons From a Contractor’s Wife – Part 3
Hi, I’m Sarah! I’m the wife of Lucas Casper, the owner of Casper Builders. Usually, I stay happily on the sidelines of the business, but when Lucas and I decided to build our own house this year, I suddenly found myself wearing many hats: part-time designer, part-time laborer, part-time project manager, and full-time “gofer.”
In this blog series, I’m going to share what building a custom home looks like from the non-professional’s perspective—the surprises, the lessons learned, and all the little details that no one tells you about until you’re in the thick of it. Come see how the sausage is made!
Part 3: Good, Fast, Cheap
There’s an old saying: “Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two.” As a homeowner-turned-laborer on this project, I’m definitely the “cheap” option. Quick? Not so much. And “good”? Well, let’s just say I’m aiming for “good enough” and calling it a win.
If you read Part 2, you might have picked up on the fact that I have (possibly unreasonable) expectations about timelines. You might have also sensed that when things don’t move fast enough for my liking, I have a tendency to roll up my sleeves and declare, “Fine, I’ll do it myself.”
This is how I ended up wrestling massive reclaimed barn beams into place with Lucas, power washing decades of authentic barnyard aroma off of them, planing and sanding, and anxiously staining them in the hope they’ll be similar in color to the flooring I took too long to pick out. It’s also how I found myself sitting in the cab of an excavator a few weeks ago—a small one, but still—trenching drainage lines around our house like I knew what I was doing.
LESSON: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Listen, my trenching is definitely not at the level of someone who operates heavy equipment for a living. But you know what? It was good enough, and it got the job done. A professional grading crew will come through in the next few weeks to level out the yard, and they’ll cover up any evidence of my amateur excavation adventure. Nobody will ever know.
As the sun set on staining day, I was still working and obsessing over every gouge in the wood that I hadn’t completely sanded out. Lucas finally stopped me and gently reminded me that these are old barn beams—the whole point is for them to look rustic and weathered. Sometimes I need someone to break me out of my perfection spiral and remind me that character marks aren’t flaws; they’re features.
Being hands-on with this build has taught me to appreciate the “good enough” more than I ever thought I would. Sure, I could have hired someone to do every single task perfectly. But where’s the story in that? Plus, our budget thanks me every time I choose sweat equity over writing another check.
Next up in Part 4: The moment I realized that picking out tile sounds fun until you’re staring at 47 nearly identical options and questioning every design decision you’ve ever made.