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avpro56

Active Member
I have come across quite a few builders that manage to successfully strike a balance between building and family commitments. During Technical Counselor / DAR visits to various projects, I have queried builders that seem to do well at striking a balance that will keep the project moving and not interfere with family relationships and or job commitments.

One builder (he will read this) that I thought was doing particularly well in this respect is now experiencing difficulty with his wife. Mind you, this wife agreed to the time and financial requirements of the project, gave up her garage and even sanctioned the purchase of a new hangar. She even bought a new SL-30 Navcom for her husband?s birthday. But the builder, seeing the finish line clearly in sight has let the project become the main focus in his life. The airplane has become has major reason for getting up in the morning, and issues concerning the finish of his project are affecting all aspects of his life. He has come to realize that he is obsessed with the project; all the while likely dealing with what many of us men would call a mid life crisis.

If any builders on this forum have had personal experiences along these lines, it would be interesting to review the comments and final outcome of their dilemma; including the solution found to resolve the issue.
 
Gotta have balance...

My wife definitely considered my building an obsession (I'm flying now), but I did take time for home projects and family. All of my kids are out of the house, and my wife works (teacher), which I think worked to my advantage, except for keeping up with my wife's expectations for helping keep the house neat and clean. There were times when she was ready to hang me from the rafters, but we survived.
We live in Michigan, and one thing I did do during the winter months was be sure I could pull her vehicle into the garage at night. There were a few times that wasn't possible, so it was my job to get it cleaned off and even warmed up in the morning if necessary.
I did do a major home project, complete gut and re-do of the master bath, in the midst of my build, but was able to do most of it during the cold months when working out in the garage was not much fun. I also had a couple of slow times when waiting for stuff (fuselage kit, engine), and I made sure to do stuff around the house during those times.
Just before my DAR visit, her father died after a battle with Parkinson's. My first flight was delayed a week, but the break actually reduced the stress I was feeling, and put things in perspective.
When things got tough, my solution was to force myself to take a break from the project, even if only for a few hours, or a day, and do something for my wife and/or family. It was often obvious that I was doing it 'under duress', but my effort was appreciated for what it was. My kids would tell my wife "Count your blessings - he's not drinking ,or gambling, or chasing women, and you always know where he is (in the garage)". I still count my blessing that she put up with me building an airplane.
 
this is really very simple. do you like to be ignored, broke and lonely....?
not saying that is the case here. but is typical of intense, time eating, monster hobby's. alot yourself some time and stick to it.
 
When I started the project, my wife and I developed a code word that she could use whenever she needed me to quit working on the project and to spend time with my family. All she needs to say is "uncle". One word, no explanation, no hard feelings. She has only had to use the word once.
 
tinman said:
When I started the project, my wife and I developed a code word that she could use whenever she needed me to quit working on the project and to spend time with my family. All she needs to say is "uncle". One word, no explanation, no hard feelings. She has only had to use the word once.
Click to expand...

I've heard this before from other builders. Something other than "GET IN HERE!" seems to keep people from getting upset. I think a codeword, or a "we need you" notification of some sort out in the garage would go a long way to stopping arguments from happening.

Mike
 
I suppose I was able to make it work, after just doing the first flight, and still have same wife and a happy little boy (he's now 5). Then again, I did take 6 years to do a slo-build. I worked mainly on Saturdays and evenings after the boy went to bed, and Sunday's were always family day. I probably did between two and four nights/ a week in the evenings, but nothing too late, usually knocking off aound 10:00 or 10:30.

I suspect the key is expectation setting towards the end of the project. Once the airplane it at the hangar, it's all-consuming and it would be very hard to deny that big desire/ need to get the thing flying. Once flying, then there's always the "new-toy" effect but that's easier to deal with. I put together a binder which contained the printed pages from my web site, TC inspections, and some other stuff and my wife took a look. Being somewhat surprised she said " I new you were updating the computer, but had no idea! This is a Masters Thesis!" Since she had a Masters, the magnatitude of the project jsut clicked.

Jim
 
I find that the closer I get to finishing, the more I tend to slip away and work on the project... usually stopping on the way home from work. And I end up working for a couple of hours.

You have to be REALLY careful, I think, around this time of the project.

There's also the coincidental nature of the project with the relationship. Even without the plane, relationships change over time and they can get too comfortable and people begin to take things for granted.

That's never a good idea. So even without the plane project, you can't really keep a marriage together just by being inside. You keep a marriage together by working at it.

So when someone says "get in here," she's saying a LOT more than "get in here," and she's saying a lot more than "you're working too much on the plane." It's important to find out for certain what that is.
 
Date Night!

I consider myself very very lucky to have made it through the building process and now have really enjoyed flying around with my wife.
Here are a couple of things that I feel were key to us.
  • I did 99% of the building at home in my garage where we could still hang out together, talk and eat.
  • We had date night every Friday night which gave us both something to look forward to.
  • I continued to fly around with her in rented 172's and 182's.
  • We talked about places we wanted to go.

It does take support from both sides.
I enjoyed reading this perspective from another RV-10 builders wife.
http://www.myrv10.com/N104CD/why/wifesperspective.html

Enjoy.
 
I read this thread with great interest.

With the addition of a child (our first) and more responsiblities at work, the time I've been able to give the project has greatly diminished, so much so that I have begun to doubt my ability to finish it. I just keep thinking about the day I will get to take my daughter for her first RV ride and I keep plugging away. In the meantime, I too am looking for ways to improve my work/life/RV balance.

On a related note... I think the most productive period of construction so far was my wife's last 4-5 months of pregnancy. At that point she really didn't want to have much to do with me, and was happy when I left her alone. :D
 
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Patience is all I can say! It will get done someday. I finally got mine to the airport and I never have the time to work on it like I was able when it was at home. Follow Scott's advice. For those with young kids work after they go to bed. If you have a new born chances are you will get a few very short moments to work on the plane every couple of days. Do what you can and don't stress about it. The babies grow up fast and try to enjoy it. If you have to watch the baby sleep take some parts in and peel the plastic off them. But the best thing you can do is keep the plane and the building of it at home as long as possible!
 
I'm with you guys...

This was a big issue for me. The main goal was to build the airplane with minimum disruption to the family. There are two things I do that work well in my situation. I work on the plane very early before work (430-ish to about 630am) and only in the evenings on special occasions like sealing fuel tanks with another builder (thanks Mike) or when working with one of my kids (who luckily enough the project for the most part). I recently got my wife behind a rivet gun and she did a good job and wasn't too interested until she saw how cool all those flush rivets in the bottom of the fuselage looked, plus I had here sign the inside (it was the seat rib area).

I agree it is not easy. Even with my early morning routine, that forces me to bed early which doesn't work well in the summer with the longer days. My goal is a 5 yr build and I think it will work out as long as I don't get too hyper in the end to finish and cause a major problem.

Good points from the previous posts.

Family first, flying second...
 
Another thought. I wonder if RV-10 builders have less of a problem than the 2-place folks. Y'all know where I'm headed there.
 
Hits Close To Home

I bet this thread hits close to home for many of us. Maintaining balance is something a lot of us strive to do on a daily basis.

Like many of you I am married and have a full time job. I also have a significant commute to work (6 hours roundtrip), so my total work time is huge. As a result of these two commitments, my progress has slowed to a crawl. I was initially very upset by this, but have come to accept it as part of life. I will get it done when it gets done, and I am not going to sacrifice quality or my relationship with my wife or my work performance to finish sooner. It doesn't make sense to me to push through the rest of the build only to end up divorced and out of work.

I make a point of spending time with my wife in the evenings, and we have come up with a new hobby that we both share, since she doesn't like to fly. My wife works weekends, so it frees me up to work on the plane once I have accomplished all of my other chores.

All I can say is even slow progress is progress.
 
A while back I had posted here looking for ideas on involving the kids with the project and got a lot of great feedback and ideas. If I can bring both my boys out to the garage (now to the hanger - yay!) for an evening, my wife can have a night to visit friends or do whatever; she's a stay-at-home mom so it's a nice break for her as well. While that doesn't work every night, it does provide her some stress relief and gives the boys and I some quality time together.
 
Seems I'm One of the Lucky Ones.

It appears that I'm one of the very lucky ones who has a wife that loves to fly. My wife likes the aviation community and the social aspect of it and she can talk flying and travel with the best of them. She is a very enthusiastic aviation advocate and knows just how much aviation means to me. She has also developed a keen understanding of the psychology of aviation and has over the last fourteen years become a *very* good first officer.

Even with all that being said, for years she didn't think I had the patience to build. I've been wanting to build an airplane since I was a high school kid...wow, that was a long time ago. My wife knew of my long established building desires, but couldn't get behind this one aspect of my aviation goals. Then after a several years of watching me maintain and restore three aircraft and watching me agonize over the cost and process of working on certified airplanes (and her agonizing over writing checks as well) she came to me one day and said, "I think you can do this, why don't you build an airplane just the way we want it, and get us out from under the thumb of 'the system'". I was floored.

I started to research in earnest what it would take to build an RV-7; kit timelines, tools, building logistics, etc. But there was one very large problem. My wife wouldn't let me have the garage. I already have a hangar, but it is twenty miles in one direction from our house and my job is twenty miles in the other direction, making for a long commute from job to project and back to the house. It was apparent that it was going to take quite a commitment in travel time and fuel just to get to the project and back. I also wasn't completely sure that I was going to like the RV when all the work was said and done (I know, that's silly). During all this research and decision making a locally owned RV-6 came up for sale. I had just sold my Maule and I had a sizable wad of cash burning a hole in my pocket. After seeing the plane, and some discussion about it, we decided to purchase this RV to see if it would really meet our mission goals and be economical while doing it.

Needless to say it does what we want very admirably and is a joy to travel in - what a wonderful little traveling machine. We now have a pretty nice airplane in the hangar that we can afford to operate, and I still want very much to build. But, I've come to the conclusion that building it out at the airport is NOT the way to do it for many of the reasons that have been previously stated, especially not being right there at the house to help when needed at a moments notice and to spend quality time with my spouse. We live in Arizona and because of this my wife is NOT excited about moving our cars outside to make room for a project in the garage. We're currently exploring our options and it seems that a new home with a larger garage or a work shop (or a hangar!) would be the desirable way to do it. The current real estate situation isn't really favorable at the moment though, and frankly, we like our house that we personally remodeled over the last couple of years, and it has become something of a very comfortable expression and extension of our personalities.

Building is on hold for the time being until we can sort all of this out. In the meantime, I'm doing a lot of improvements and design upgrades to the RV that have been discovered and made available since it was completed in 1997. This plane isn't only a joy to fly, it is also fun to work on. I think it may be a keeper.

As a side note, a couple of the folks here know me from a previous life as one who was very seriously involved in the world of backcountry and off-airport aviation. My wife and I have always been outdoor types and flying has always been a natural way for us to get to our endeavers in the great outdoors. I already miss this aspect of aviation much more than I thought I would. Consequently, when I finally do build, I've decided that the plane I build will be an experimental Supercub and not an RV.

There, I've come clean and confessed. I hope it doesn't drive a wedge between myself and the other members here. :)

Building, restoring, and flying airplanes is indeed a balancing act, and one that absolutely requires teamwork, patience, and understanding from the entire family to make it happen. The sales pitch is well under way for the eventual transition and commitment to building and owning a second airplane...I hear that once you own two, getting a third one is much easier...I've always had a soft spot in my heart for a Pitts.:D
 
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I'm one of the lucky ones too. My wife was fully on board when I told her I wanted to build an RV-10. She's been with me throughout our build, and she has spent almost as many hours in the garage helping me out. She's either bucked or shot just about every rivet on the airplane (I never shoot rivets alone, not coordinated enough). She even looks at our building time as "together" tiume. I think that's awesome considering we're both Marines and have huge demands placed on our free time. That said, there's a reason I'm kit #40032 and still haven't finished, not including the 3 times I've moved. I learned early on that spending 4 weekends a month in the garage wasn't going to cut it. Not that my wife doesn't want to help, but occasionally she wants to do something else, and I had to learn to make time for those things first. I've even had to let the project sit for a month or two at a time while I do family things and wait for her to get back in the game, but every time she comes around and then it's her asking me to get back in the garage and work some more. All in all, I think I'm pretty fortunate. You just have to make time for your spouse 1st and she has to know that you'll make that time anytime she asks.

PJ Seipel
RV-10 #40032
 
First of all, I want to thank all of you for providing your thoughts and good advice on this thread. I am stepping up to the plate and admitting that I am the guy Jon is talking about in his original thread. I just want to clear up one thing that Jon said which isn?t true. My wife has always been able to park on HER side for the garage, all the other stuff is pretty accurate.

I admit I have become obsessed with this project. I am doing the final painting as Jon has suggested and knowing that I could be flying right now, makes it that much more difficult. I just came from a great session of transition training with Alex and he was fantastic. What Jon doesn?t realize is that by giving me the privilege of flying in his RV-8 to all of the amazing events that we have gone to over the past three years, he has made me want to be part of the RV flying community and will stop at nothing to get there. I go to Oshkosh every year and meet some of the finest people, all of whom are willing to help and share their experiences. I read all of the trip reports, with great jealousy, of all the great places everyone has been. I know they are supposed to be gentle motivators and appreciate all who have shared the great experiences, but I can?t seem to take it in stride. I want to get to the places with all of you.

Now I?m not trying to shed the blame for becoming as obsessed as I have. I take full responsibility. As many of you have posted, the quality time with the family should be the most important. I guess I have had issues with achieving that.

What Jon failed to mention, just so you don?t think I?m a total dolt, is that I have still managed to go on family vacations each of the 4 plus years of the build. I have also been able to get things done around the house including a kitchen remodel, painting, landscaping, pool maintenance, and a bathroom makeover.

As many of you have pointed out it?s the quality of the time you give the family not the quantity. I guess I should have realized that a couple of years ago when on one occasion I went to the beach with my wife and daughter armed with my instrument panel blank, scales, and several cutouts of instruments and avionics. I though I was pretty lucky to be spending family time at the beach, lost no time on the project, and came home with a great tan after spending the day with a nice big sun reflector.

I want to thank everyone again for all of their good advice in trying to balance the build and the family life. It is a subject only those of us who have gone through or are going through can truly understand. I will do my best to find that mix.

_____________________

Mike Muratore
RV-7 N307MM Finishing Painting
Holbrook, NY
 
MacNab said:
We live in Arizona and because of this my wife is NOT excited about moving our cars outside to make room for a project in the garage.
Click to expand...
Have you considered the option of a "car port"? I built a 24' X 24" carport closed on 2 sides just outside the garage. It kept the cars out of the sun & rain and gave me the entire garage to work in.
 
I can tell by looking at my wife's face where I am on the "good-husband-o-meter".

Level 7-10 - Marital Bliss. I attain this level of marriage nervana when:
I am totally engaged in conversation with my wife. I let her know that I'm "listening" to everything she is saying, and can repeat what she says back when put to the test.
I do unexpected chores for her that she would normally do.
I get the honey do's done without being ask to do them.

Level 3-6 - Treading Marital Waters. I know I'm here when:
I'm in cruise mode and being cooperative.
I do things only when I'm asked to do them.

Level 0-2 - Scum of the Earth. She gives me "that look" when:
I go straight the garage and start working on the RV after getting home from work or getting up in the morning.
Every conversation we have ends up with me talking about the RV.
The "honey do" list is long and the RV accomplishment list is longer.

Summary: When I intertwine the highest levels with the lowest levels of the "good-husband-o-meter", I find that things move along nicely. I'm smart enough to know that my wife would love to see the RV project go bye-bye, but she is also smart enough to know that men have to have a "project" of their own or they will go nuts.

Have a goodun!
 
Mel said:
Have you considered the option of a "car port"? I built a 24' X 24" carport closed on 2 sides just outside the garage. It kept the cars out of the sun & rain and gave me the entire garage to work in.
Click to expand...

Yes, we did consider building a car port. To make it work we would have to relocate our garage door 90* to the other side of the garage because our garage door is currently next to our front entry. However, there may be easement problems with building a car port in this manner. I like this idea though, because I've always wanted to have a walled patio around the front entry. Moving the garage door would make this possible.

Another possibility would be to buy an additional garage at Garage Town or something similar. Unfortunately the only Garage Town in our area is farther away than the airport! Also seems a lot to spend for a place to build, but I keep hoping another Garage Town will be built close to our home (the first one sold out in about six months).

Still, another possibility is moving my wifes accounting office into a light industrial park with a bay on the back of the office - she's not too jazzed about that idea. :D

We'll find a way to make it work when the time is right. I think my wife is going to make me wait till I get a couple of more years closer to 'retirement' before I can begin building a second toy anyway (unless I can wear her down). By then a solution will have most definitely been found. In the meantime all the money from my third job is going into the 'Cub Bank'. :)
 
Jon,

Oh yeah, that story hits home!

I have come down with the AIDS (Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome) too!

I did nothing wrong, helped her through major surgery and buried her mother and she hits me with this!

I hear that an RV-8 driver we know is going through the same thing now too!

It is the "IN thing" to do this summer, I guess? ...at least my lawyer says she is WICKED busy!

Oh well, so it goes...

:rolleyes: CJ
 
ScottSchmidt said:
I consider myself very very lucky to have made it through the building process and now have really enjoyed flying around with my wife.
.
Click to expand...

I'm really kidding around here Scott but didn't you get married either just before or just after you finished your RV? :D
 
Make sure your spouse has a passion too

If your bride doesn't have a project, you might have trouble brewing.

My bride has been developing our new business and she is working on getting it going more hours on the weekend now than I am building.

With a little luck, I retire from work at age 51 and we get to fly all over the country to promote her product in the plane I built. What a deal.

Life is good - check us out at www.stingmate.com

Wish us luck.
 
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