For many homeowners, their new build project can take longer than expected.

How do you maintain momentum and motivation, and stay on track?

HOME Method member, Ellen, shares how she and her partner have been navigating their new build project, and managed the extended timeline with continued motivation and determination to see their new build happen!

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 336 and in it, you’re going to meet HOME Method member, Ellen. She and her partner are building a new home in Ballarat, Victoria and have a really interesting project journey to share.

Ellen and her partner bought their property with the view to do a knock-down rebuild. However, as it can, life got in the way, and time passed, with their project taking longer than expected.

Ellen shares more about this, and how she’s navigated her project to maintain momentum, managed the uncertainty along the way, and is achieving the outcome that’s being realised in their home, which is now under construction.

Ellen is also a psychologist by profession – so it’s also super interesting to hear her also share her insights into the psychological aspects of navigating a project journey. 

I loved this conversation, and I hope you do too.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW.

For timeline context, Ellen was a member of an earlier iteration of the course that became HOME Method, joining back in 2018. 

Back then, I was still offering 1:1 Design Services, and so I worked with Ellen and her partner to design some concept options for their new build. We did this in late 2018. 

You’ll hear Ellen talk through the Design process in this podcast, and how they developed the initial concepts I did for them, and the professionals they worked with along the way. She also shares how they’ve managed their budget, and its required increases, across this extended timeframe for their project.

Ellen and I recorded this conversation in August, 2024. At the time of recording, their project was under construction, with the contract being signed with their builder at the end of 2023 and demolition of the existing home starting in February 2024.

Ellen shared with me that some of the most helpful elements of HOME Method have been understanding what they needed in terms of drawings and plans as well as information about the building process and design elements. 

The Facebook group has also been helpful for moral support. 

Let’s hear from Ellen now.

This is the transcript of my conversation with Ellen and their new build project journey.

Amelia Lee
Well, Ellen, it is absolutely awesome to have you here. I’m so looking forward to us having this conversation about your project and being able to dive into your journey and you sharing more of it. As I’m finding with speaking to HOME Method members on the podcast, everybody’s following the same steps and going through wanting to achieve a similar outcome, but navigating it in their own unique way, and it’s just been so lovely to be able to draw those stories out. And we’ve been getting so much feedback about how listeners have been resonating with different members and different experiences and those kinds of things. So I know that you’ll have a lot to share from your point of view, and also, I think you’ve got a whole another layer of skill set for what you do professionally that’s going to add a whole other dimension of understanding to a project journey as well that I think will be super helpful for members of the Undercover Architect community. So before we dive in, I’m just wondering if you can share who your project is actually for, what you’re doing, and who this project is about housing and supporting.

Ellen
Yeah, absolutely. So we are a family of four when I started, and we’ll go into this. When we started this project, we bought the property 10 years ago. It’ll be 10 years ago this year, towards the end of the year. We were me, my husband, both, I think, working from home at that point, and we had a six year old and a three year old. We now have a 16 year old and a 13 year old. Back then, we had a cat. Now we have two dogs. So essentially, it’s a family. It’s a forever build for want of a better term. It is a single story residence, and it’s designed for us to be able to live in, to accommodate the kids as they are at the moment, but also, I suppose, with a bit of flexibility going forward, they’ll move out. They may come back, who knows. Certainly, me working from home, and possibly my husband at times as well.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, it’s fantastic. And it has been a longer journey for you, and I’m looking forward to diving into how that came to be, and I suppose what that’s meant for your experience overall. Can you talk through, I suppose, what made you decide to tackle this project, and you’re doing a new build that was on a site that had an existing house on it that you actually lived in for a period. So can you talk a little bit about the decision to buy this property, do a knockdown rebuild rather than a renovate, and how that journey unfolded for you?

Ellen
We are one of those couples where we can niggle over the smallest things, but when it comes to big decisions, we just go, “Yeah, that seems like a good idea. Why not do it?” And I remember, because it was so long ago, why we decided we were renting. We’d moved to Ballarat, so we’re in Ballarat in Victoria, regional Victoria. We’d moved from Sydney, and we rented, not knowing anyone. We didn’t really even know how long we were going to stay. We were just finding our feet. 

And we started looking around, and my husband came across this property. It was in a good central location. The block’s about just over 1000 square metres. It runs east west. We’ve both owned and lived in enough houses over our lifetime to know that orientation, as I know you know and you talk about all the time, is really critical. And it’s not quite at the very peak of the hill, but certainly at the top of the hill with the northern side running downhill, if you know what I mean. So we’ve got nothing blocking us, we get a view over. And it had an existing house on it. It was a very old house. Once upon a time, it would have been a lovely house, but it had been sorely neglected over decades, I think. It looked like it would have been built around turn of the century, and it looked like it had a kind of a, I’m not going to call it a renovation, a bit of a kind of a tart up in the 80s, and I don’t think anything. And sadly, it hadn’t been 10, attended and not been looked after. It was a really, really bad way, windows, floorboards, everything was rotted. Nothing was level. It was literally falling apart. 

And so our plan, originally, was to buy it. And I remember, it’s funny, because this was 10 years ago, so it was 2014, and I remember a neighbour, we said what we paid for it, which we were coming from Sydney… So it seems so reasonable to buy a block with an existing house. I can walk to the train station in 15 minutes. We can walk into the centre of the city in half an hour. And they were outraged at what we paid for it. But in comparison to what we paid for a townhouse in Sydney, it seemed like a steal to us. 

So the plan was to live in the existing property, despite the fact that it was borderline unlivable, for maybe 6-12 months to get a feel for the block, get a feel for the light, feel for the garden, all of the different things that come from living in a space. And by virtue of life being what it is, circumstances change, we ended up being in that house for four and a half years through. And if anybody knows Ballarat, and I’m sure some of your listeners will by reputation, if nothing else, it gets really cold in the winter. We had one little gas heater in the front of the house, and we had an open fire in the kitchen, and that was our only heating. And there was no insulation, and there were gaps, literally, millimetres of gaps above windows. It was not easy living by any means, but we did it. 

And we had always intended to knock it down, not renovate, as I said. Sadly, it would have been a lovely house once upon a time, but it was really too far gone. And we knew too that even if we were to renovate it, the compromises involved in trying to make it the kind of family home we were looking for were just going to be too great. And we’d consciously chosen that block ahead of others, because it’s just outside of the heritage zone in Ballarat, which, again, is a significant consideration, because we do have heritage overlays and they are quite strict about what you can do. So we were a block back, so still close to the lovely older part of town, but a block backside that we weren’t going to be hampered by those overlays. And then if we got any further back, we then would have been hampered by bushfire overlay. So we were right in a little sweet spot there. So yeah, it’s been a long process, but the intention was to build a family home that was designed for the way that we like to live and work.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, and I thank you for sharing that detail, because I think it’s really important for people to understand that, I mean, you have the best intentions. You move in, and then life can get in the way. So trying to juggle and be patient with yourself about the fact that sometimes things can take longer than you intend them to. And what I’ve loved about following your journey is that you did set that intention early on, and you’ve kept moving towards that intention, and checked and balanced things along the way, and then ultimately, now have the home under construction and moving forward to completion. And I get so excited, because we met very early in your journey of that design process, and I remember talking with you about what that existing home was like and what you were navigating in terms of the thermal challenges.

Ellen
That’s a nice way to put it, thermal challenges.

Amelia Lee
It took care of you during winter. And so it’s very exciting to think of you having a thermally comfortable home that does utilise the block well. It’s a fantastic block with that long side to the north and the exposure and those kinds of things. So yeah, I get really excited to think about you living in a comfortable, efficient home for yourself. So I can imagine that you guys are probably besides yourselves.

Ellen
It literally feels unbelievable to me. I go and stand in it as it presently is under construction, and I just look and go, “I can’t believe this is actually happening.” Because there were, there were long periods there, and anybody who goes through a project like this, and hopefully not everybody’s take as long as ours have, but it’s an emotional journey, as much as it’s a practical thing. And there were certainly times at which I thought this isn’t ever going to happen. I felt stuck. I felt bogged down. I felt like there was no way forward, as we invested so much time and effort into the design and what have you, but it felt so slow. There were times when I started looking at other properties around and saying, “Maybe we just give up on this idea and we just buy an existing property.” But for me, the compromises around existing properties were too great. I really did have it in my head, and I’d loved the design and the block for so long that the idea of abandoning it, I could never really get to that point. And, therefore, the only way is to keep plodding along and slogging through it. And some days that was just a matter of ‘I’ve just got to distract myself with something else’, because thinking about this is too uncomfortable for me. But other times, it was right. And I know you talk about this, what are you going to do today? You’ve just got to keep moving forward. And so it was just a case of ‘Right, what can I do today that just keeps moving us forward?’ And we had a pandemic in the middle as well, which was another big hiccup. And just the distraction of being entirely consumed by other activities meant that it sat on the back burner a little. But ultimately, the vision for what it was we were working towards, for me, was enough to just keep pushing me forward and pushing me forward through all of those ebbs and flows and emotional difficulties.

Amelia Lee
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing, because I know there’ll be loads of people who totally identify with what you’ve just described. So can you talk a little bit about what you were nervous about before you dived in, before you thought about embarking on this project? And, I suppose, in the process of that, thinking about seeking support and education for your journey, what was your thinking as you were embarking on this project overall?

Ellen
Yeah, look, it’s a really good question. And I was reflecting on this because, again, it was a long time ago, but for me, the primary driver of getting educated, finding Undercover Architects’ work, your work, and all of the HOME Method, everything that comes with that, and the podcast has been enormously helpful as well, was that I’d never done this before. I had renovated houses before, but I’d done everything myself. It was those sorts of renovations where you just did everything yourself, and I had no skill or experience. My husband has a background in real estate and property development. So I thought, ‘Oh, he’ll know what today.’ But property development and real estate is quite different to building your own home for your family. And he did it in a different time. It was 30 years ago in a different city. 

So there was a whole lot of factors at play there and for me, and I remember when I first started listening to your podcast and reading the stuff that you were writing, and it was very much that idea of being a female, that resonated with me, just being somebody who needed to know perhaps even more than the average bloke might need to know. A) to feel comfortable myself, but B) to feel credible in the conversations that I was going to have. And I like to learn, it’s one of the ways I operate, so consuming as much as I could to feel comfortable that I could go into those conversations, that I knew what to ask, that I had at least enough skill and knowledge to have a reasonable conversation. And because, literally, I didn’t know anything about the process of building. I’d never done anything like that before, and it was such a big project, and there was so much money involved, and it was something that I was doing for our whole family. I did want to get it right.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, I love that you use that word you wanted to sound credible, because I’ve actually never heard it described like that, and yet that totally nails what I see homeowners wanting to experience, that they understand the terminology, they understand the steps, and particularly being a woman walking into a male dominated industry, that credibility becomes the way that we can gain confidence to have a voice in our projects, which is ultimately the best way to show up in your projects. Because it’s your project, and so your voice is really important. So yeah, thank you for giving voice to that, because I think that’s a really great way to describe it. 

Now, you talk about the design and the process. Your design process was a little bit different, I think, to some of our other HOME Method members, because when you and I first really started interacting with each other, I was still providing one to one design concept packages. And so we worked initially together to create some options for the site. And the way that those services worked was that I didn’t enforce copyright so that you could then take them to a local professional to continue the process, and then obviously you have continued on with the design. And so I’m curious how, I suppose, that design process has gone for you, and how that’s then worked through with the design that you’re actually building now in the finished home. And ultimately, I suppose, what was really important to you to hang on through that design process, and how you felt that enabled you to do that. You said earlier that you’d committed to this design and that’s been one of the things that’s kept you going. How has that design process been? What’s been most important to you? How’s that worked through and how have you felt that design process has gone overall?

Ellen
So, again, not knowing anything about it, although I have, I suppose, a bit of a family background in different forms of design. So it was understood, I think I understood the concept of it being more than just lines on a page, that it had to be about feel, that it had to be about things like volume and light and all of those sorts of things. So I suppose I came into it with that amount of knowledge. But yeah, you and I started out with a conversation about what this could look like. So even that, for me, was an eye opener. 

And I’m sure others have said this too, that you kind of go into a project thinking, ‘Oh, the architect’s going to ask you how many rooms you want, and what size the rooms need to be, and all of those sorts of things.’ And yet the questions that you ask and questions that the other architect that I’ve worked with was also asking was, how do you like to live and what do you do in your spare time? And so that was a real interesting pivot, and I think it probably set a really good, I don’t know if you call it intention, for me around the project. It was that reminder that this is something that we will live and interact in, that this is not just lines on a page or, ultimately, walls, roof and windows and doors. It’s going to be how we live. And so that was really helpful for me to start that process and understand that, because I think it changed the way I thought about the build all the way through, and all the decisions that I’ve made subsequently.

So we had worked up some designs which was all about that, how exactly do we want to live? Which was wonderful, loved them, came back and thought, ‘Well, what I do want to do is just sense check it with a local architect, because Ballarat is perhaps a little different to other parts of the world, and certainly other parts of Australia. And we have our own unique climatic conditions. Being up in the highlands, I won’t go into it, but it’s cold, it’s grey sometimes. I say that, the sun’s just peeking out outside right now, which is lovely. And so I wanted to sense check it with someone. So did that with the local architect, who I know you’ve had as a guest on the show, Talina Edwards, who is a certified Passive House architect. And whilst ours is not a passive house, both my husband and I were very keen to build sustainability principles into the property. And again, that made a lot of sense where we are as well, to keep it thermally comfortable and to manage largely the cold, not so much the heat, although we can have some really stinking hot days, but they tend to be fewer and further between here. So did that, and sense checked, we tweaked some of the designs of things. But I think the fundamental principles… 

So one of the things for me about the block, one of the things that we’ve loved about it and why we decided to choose that particular block in the first place, was that we are on top of a hill. We look down over towards some of the older, more established part of Ballarat. And behind the property is Black Hill Reserve, which is one of the old, original mining sites, but it’s still bushland. So we’ve got this bush to the back, and then looking out over the township around to the other sides, to the north and the east, and a whole lot of sky, which I really like. I like, as a psychologist, because of that aura and wonder piece and the well being benefits of it. And so trying to design so that you really got a sense of that sky, the scale, and I know you talk about that indoor outdoor connection. So I’m a keen gardener as well. So it was really important for me that we have this connection with all of the natural surroundings. And that it had, and I think this was your term too, contextual fit, which I really loved. 

So, again, we wanted something contemporary, but we are not far from the very traditional weatherboard that would have been originally tin roofs, often Colorbond now, gabled roofs, that type. And I didn’t want it to look like something too overly modern, or like it didn’t fit in its surroundings. So not just the natural surroundings, but also the other architectural styles surrounding us. 

So those are some of the fundamental principles that we went into the project with in terms of design, and again, I think have served us well when it comes to making decisions, because you can use those as your marker points and say, “Is this going to give us a view of the sky? Are we retaining the glimpses of the sky? Do we have that indoor outdoor connection? Are the choices that I’m making in terms of things like the cladding still going to lend itself to that contextual fit? So all of those sorts of things drove the design. We were able to build in a few bits and pieces that were, again, going to help with the weather condition. Using Talina as a local architect, she also had, and this is, again, something I hadn’t thought through. So you’re always learning as you go, I’ve discovered, which I suppose, is like any big project, like parenting, really. And she had contacts, local contacts, which, again, was going to be really helpful. So we went from there and similar sort of situation, we did the concept design, but she’s not continued on as part of the project. 

We moved on then to the draftsperson. She’d said, “Here’s a couple of people that I know and that I’ve worked with.” And so I went with one that’s worked similarly with builders. You keep leapfrogging from one recommendation to another recommendation. And our draftee was fabulous because he’s also a registered builder. Doesn’t work as a builder anymore, he just does the drawings. So a combination there of me having joined the HOME Method, listened to the podcast, learned about which drawings I needed, and then were able to leapfrog to the draftsperson who could then not only walk me through and ensure that we had all of the drawings that we needed, but because he had a building background, I think that just added a whole level of understanding, and also a strong interest in sustainability. So he was the one who was able to say, “Right, triple glazed windows, uPVC…” He just had a body of knowledge that I didn’t have. And so whilst we didn’t have an architect actively involved, he was the next real source of information and expertise that I needed, project-wise. And then it continued from there.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, that’s fantastic. I think what I love the most about hearing about that journey is, as you said, you’ve been learning as you’ve gone and you’ve been able to establish what those design priorities. I think one of the challenges, and we talk about this inside Undercover Architect a lot, is that people do treat their project like this lineal relationship. If you go to the designer, then you go to the next person, then you go to the next person, and they handle it from silo to silo to silo. And when that happens, you naturally have to become as the homeowner and the client, you have to become the custodian of all of the knowledge and information between all of those silos, and you have to be comfortable about why things are the way that they are, that you know why they are the way that they are. So that when somebody questions it on the next step, or somebody proposes an alternative that might undo it, you know whether or not it’s going to kill the design. And a lot of people don’t know that. 

A lot of people don’t know how to educate themselves through that process. Whereas what I love about the way that we work together is that’s very much about setting you up with some options so you can see what the site is capable of. No one design will solve every single problem. There will always be constraints. You’ll always have to have priorities that you choose. 

And so I’ve always found that when a homeowner sees their brief in drawings presented in a few different alternative ways, it very quickly clarifies for them, ‘Oh, okay, no, that is actually more important for me than that is.’ And your priorities become ordered very naturally by seeing what it means in a drawn sense. And then working with Talina then embedded her knowledge about sustainability and Passive House, which can be really helpful in terms of bringing in that sustainability arm. And then working with the draft person who was a registered builder then brings in that knowledge. But you have educated yourself the whole way through so you’ve known what you needed to hang on to. You know what you needed to fight for. You know what you could possibly let go of so that you weren’t losing the design integrity as it travelled along the journey. Do you feel that as part of your experience of it?

Ellen
Yeah, absolutely. I think those core anchor pieces, that kind of vision of how we wanted to live, what that was going to feel like, those things. I talk about the sky, the indoor-outdoor connection, as well as things like budgetary constraints. There’s lots of things we might have liked to have done, but it was never going to be realistic. So you’ve got these key anchor points. And, I suppose, yes, I have educated myself along the way. A) because I like doing that, but B) because it’s been enormously helpful, and I’ve had the resource to be able to do it. And built on the knowledge, ask the questions, which is not to say that sometimes, I remember making certain decisions or thinking with the draft person, ‘Oh, I wonder what this would be like? Let’s try that.’ And he’d draw it up, and I go, “Oh, no, that’s ridiculous.” And that wasn’t him, that was me making a decision. 

And one of the things that I learned early on, again, was that this notion that at this point, it’s lines on a page, so play around with it now, because you don’t want to be trying to play around with it, when it’s being physically constructed. And there’s a bit of a few other things. I know one of the things that you said to me really early on that’s been really helpful has been whatever you’ve got, and not everybody’s going to be in this position, but whatever you end up is going to be infinitely better than what you’ve got now. But it’s been a really good reminder for me, because it’s really easy, I think, to get caught up in this perfection piece, this idea that I need to get this right. I need to get this perfect. There’s no perfect. It’s like any project, there’s no perfect. And for us, in particular, quite often, it really came down to that notion of progress over perfection. I could spend a lot of time, but this is moving so slowly anyway, if I spend any more time on it, we may never actually live in this house. So all the children have gone, moved out and gone to university before we get it built. So being able to put things into those sorts of perspectives was enormously helpful. 

And you’re right, I suppose, having that vision for me of what it was going to not necessarily even look like, it was really much about what it was going to feel like, how it was going to function. And as we went from step to step and person to person to build on, and it’s been very much a building on the knowledge thing. You add in, because your confidence and your own knowledge builds with time as well. So there are things that perhaps I’m making decisions about now that I just couldn’t have made a decision on 12 months ago or two years ago or five years ago because I didn’t know. 

I practise as a psychologist, that’s my job. And it’s been a really interesting process for me in this cognitive building exercise. Where do you get your information from? Are you actually ready to make a decision on this yet? Because you might go, “I really wouldn’t need to know what paint colour it is.” It’s one of those things, because I’m a visual person, and I love colour, and I really wanted to know, but I had to keep reminding myself, I’m not ready for that yet. That’s a decision to come. Right now, we need to focus on these decisions. And when the moment is right, and when you’ve got enough information, both literal information and just ideas type information, to make those decisions, then it will be an easier decision to make because you’re ready for it. That, I’m not sure was a very good explanation.

Amelia Lee
No, I’m actually wondering if we can dive into that a bit more, because I think that from your experience and your professional knowledge, you’ll have a totally different lens on this. I can imagine, sometimes, maintaining the self awareness and the professional objectivity can be tricky because it is a really emotional process, it’s very personal. But I imagine that there’s been opportunities for you to actually clock, ‘Oh, hang on, that’s what’s actually going on here. It’s this kind of model of behaviour or this framework or that kind of stuff.’ So yeah, that cognitive building that you’re talking about, can you just extrapolate that a little bit more and explain how that works? And in terms of, I suppose, just generally, and then that application to your project?

Ellen
Yeah, I suppose, how we synthesise and decision making processes really, so we are always taking in a whole lot of information from a whole lot of different sources, both consciously and unconsciously, and that will form our base, I suppose. It’s like a scaffold in order to make decisions. And because humans are humans, we’re often eager to jump ahead and do things, or we think things are going to happen. You mentioned about this notion of things happening in a linear fashion, and not a lot of decision making actually does happen in a linear fashion. It is just this accumulation of knowledge, facts, ideas that filter in. And so it is a bit of a set of competing forces. There’s that desire to progress, the desire to make decisions, to take action, competing with the emotional element of a big project. And what you want to be able to do and what you’re actually ready to do, in terms of a whole range of factors, it might be the decision making factor, but it might also be you just haven’t got the ducks in a row in terms of your team for your project. Or you can’t make a decision about that door until you know what this window is going to look, who knows, and those sorts of things. 

So there is this competing process and the ability to step back and, I suppose, untangle perhaps what is my emotion in this situation. What are the feelings that are driving my desire to do things now or to do things differently, or even, what is it that’s frustrating me about this situation? To be able to sit back and unpack that has been really interesting, because whilst I can do it, as you say, intellectually, when you’re feeling it because it’s yours, it’s not always that easy to do. There were certainly moments where I had to, and I suppose this is where it has been helpful for me, is when I have been emotionally caught up in aspects of the build. There’s been some really challenging things emotionally around it, not least the frustration of the speed or lack thereof. But also, you’re trying to make decisions with other people. You’ve got a partner involved. It’s not straightforward. 

And so being able to just notice, what am I feeling? What are these feelings? Label the feelings. Because we know that that helps people enormously, to just be able to give is this anger? Is it frustration? Is it resentment? Is it boredom? Is it disappointment? Is it guilt? To be able to fix a term to a feeling helps us to just get some sort of control over those feelings. They’re much more manageable, not entirely manageable, but more manageable than if we’re just awash in emotions and we don’t really know what’s going on. So be able to step back and do that, and then to be able to think that through, well what is at play here? Why would I be feeling, and then what am I going to do about it? 

And that then comes down to sometimes it is, as we’re saying before, I need to make progress on something. It doesn’t even matter so much what it is, I just need to make progress on something to feel like we’re moving forward. Or I need to distract myself entirely from this project. I just need to think about and look at and do other things because it’s too hard right now. There’s a whole lot of different ways that we might, so we talked about emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping, and different ways of coping with what it is we’re dealing with. So whole lot of that stuff’s at play. So, yeah, you know it intellectually, you don’t always do it because it’s you, but ultimately, I think it’s helped.

Amelia Lee
Ellen, that’s tremendous. Thank you for taking us through that. I know that even just that snippet will be super helpful for people. Your expertise is just extraordinary in this area, and so it’s lovely to be able to share a window into it in terms of its application to its project, and also your honesty about how difficult it can be when it’s your own project, and maintaining that objectivity is super challenging. So yeah, so thank you so much. That was really awesome. Now, I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about your budget and your expectations, how you went about setting that, because with that time frame, you will have seen a lot of increasing costs over that period. So I can imagine where you started isn’t necessarily where you’re ending up. And also, I suppose, in accompaniment with that budget, but also any changes, you mentioned being able to make decisions as you progressed from a different place than you could have 6 or 12 months prior. Your kids have obviously grown a lot in that time, and the designs that we worked on were always about, how can they accommodate a family long term? I think that it’s tricky for homeowners to necessarily believe that a home can do that unless they’re having a lived experience of occupying a space in that way. So how is that balanced? Just that duration, the budget, the potential design changes, and navigating that time frame overall in terms of your own expectations of things?

Ellen
Yeah, look, I mean, things changed significantly, not only because it was 10 years between buying the block and thinking about building, and then I think it’s been about six years from when we started talking to you doing the initial concept stuff. And in the midst of that, we’ve had the pandemic, and then we’ve had all the associate flow on costs of well, everything, really. 

So the budget has been a really interesting process, because it is a really hard thing to get a fix on. And I think probably the learning for me has been that, and every project’s going to be different because everybody’s financial situation is going to be a little different, but the big learning for me has been to keep working with, again, the information that you’ve got, to keep checking in and updating that information and making decisions accordingly. So we set out with a budget in mind, which wasn’t huge. It was probably unrealistic. Probably everybody’s budget is unrealistic. We’re all overly optimistic when we start out. The builder, interestingly, that I am using, and we can talk about this later as well, but is in fact, one of the builders that I first spoke to years and years and years ago. And so he came and stood on the block with me and just gave me a bit of a sense of whether we were wildly outside. And he gave me enough confidence to know that, yeah, it probably wasn’t going to land there, but it wasn’t going to be too far out. Now, again, a lot happened and time. 

So in actual fact, the budget that we’re working to now is, it’s not quite three times where we started, but more than two and a half, I think. But life changes in that time as well. So incomes change, financial situations change. It has been one of those things that I’ve just had to keep updating and to almost, and I know this sounds bonkers, but to some extent, almost be able to just put out of my mind and say, “We will find a way.” And I don’t know if that’s other people’s experiences, because it’s only been my first time and hopefully only time I’m going to do it, but we will find a way. Because that was one of those really overwhelming ideas or thoughts. And again, like lots of them, I couldn’t wrap my head around how we were going to do that until I allowed time to progress. And the problem solving element came into it. I don’t know if I can explain it any better than that. 

But like I was saying before, I couldn’t make a decision about what colour door to have, because I didn’t know enough about what everything else was going to look like. Well, the budget was a little bit the same, I knew that things were going to have to shift and move; time, expenses, and we were checking in through processes – architect, builder, draftsperson. At all points, I was really open and honest about what I thought my budget was. Again, it changed over time, but I was never one of those people who wanted to say, “Oh, I’m not going to tell the builder what our budget is, because they’ll just charge me that amount or more.” I’m a firm believer that honesty is the best policy, and how can you work collaboratively if something like your budget isn’t upfront? I’m not sure my husband always had the same view, but that was certainly the way I was rolling with it. So I was always very upfront with people and said, “Look, this is what I think we’re looking to spend. Tell me if that’s reasonable or not.” And so it has adjusted over time, but our financial situation has also adjusted over those 10 years. So it’s been a tricky one, again, emotionally, as much as anything else. Because money is a really emotive topic. But we’ve worked our way through it, just bit by bit.

RESOURCES:

For Ellen, a Knockdown Rebuild was the right choice. If you’re trying to decide this, read the blog and the 7 questions to answer here >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/renovate-or-detonate/ 

Member story for Ellen >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/building-a-family-forever-home/ 

Access the support and guidance you need to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home (like Ellen did) inside my flagship online program, HOME METHOD >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/the-home-method/ 

Learn more about how to interview and select the right builder with the Choose Your Builder mini-course >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/choose-your-builder   
Access my free online workshop “Your Project Plan” >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/projectplan