Being enthusiastic fans of Grand Designs, Kyle and I came to the conclusion that the key to staying within a budget and to a timeline is meticulous planning. To that end, I've begun drawing up a Gantt chart using Gantter. I was first introduced to Gantt charts at the tender age of 8 when my parents decided that having two small children was no reason why they couldn't backpack around Europe for several months - my father mapped out the planning and the itinerary using Gantt charts (apparently he still does).
Drawing up this chart gives us a better feel for the relative 'when' of planning specifics - there are many things we can begin exploring before we find land, so that when we do confirming things like what goes where become a simpler case of applying one of various drafts we've already considered rather than starting from scratch. Our aim will be to move from buying land to building prototype to moving in as quickly as possible as it will be beyond our means to fund our current rent, land mortgage, and building costs at the same time for long.
Currently the timeline is non-existent, being dependent entirely upon when we find a suitable location which we hope will be within the next year. After that it will all begin in a rush, which is why we're bothering to plan so much before that point. Some dependencies are fairly clear already, such as the need to put up some sort of basic storage shed and water tank right at the start as we don't expect to be lucky enough to find a location with these already.
Drawing up this chart gives us a better feel for the relative 'when' of planning specifics - there are many things we can begin exploring before we find land, so that when we do confirming things like what goes where become a simpler case of applying one of various drafts we've already considered rather than starting from scratch. Our aim will be to move from buying land to building prototype to moving in as quickly as possible as it will be beyond our means to fund our current rent, land mortgage, and building costs at the same time for long.
Tracking progress through the plan as we go will help keep us on track and make it easier to prioritise various tasks amidst the sea of to-do lists we'll end up with. We hope it will also help us react to the unexpected. We won't let the plan become a constraint as things change around us - after all, you only have a plan so you know when you've gone off it, surely? Teaching has taught us both that. Hopefully at the end of this whole thing we can compare the before 'plan' with the after 'reality' and see some similarities!
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