The Project Brief

When we talked about ‘the renovation’, we were all sorts of dreamers. We could bump the house out and back and up! We could install solar panels! Wallpaper is totally in! Okay, that last one was just me.

Then slowly we started to get a little more serious. What’s most important? How would we go about this? Are we really willing to do what it takes to make this happen? We decided we were.

Fast forward to our getting an architect and a builder. Now, you can sit around with these folks all you want, dreaming and surmising and fantasizing. You can say you're looking for a city-chic Swiss chalet, and then get weirdly intense about, say, the shape of your bathroom faucets and how you want to loathe stucco but you can't - it's just so texture-y. That sort of random word association approach to construction will get you disappointing houseplans and a high architect bill. Plus, I'm pretty sure you'll be that client they all horrify one another with at their builder conventions.

You have to focus. That's where The Project Brief comes in.



For our first meeting with the builder and arthitect, I pulled together a project brief that stated the purpose of the renovation, what was required, what was desired, and our budget. It provided high-level guidance (e.g., three additional bedrooms and at least two additional bathrooms) and directives to inform the budget (e.g., we wanted the same baseboards on the second level). It also included 'nice to haves', like a coat closet and a large front porch. Several inspirational photos, including a house, master and full bathrooms, even staircases, were included.

The result? The first set of floor plans we got put us 90% of the way there. Our architect nailed it (and then some!) because we did our homework. Sure, in the final planning stages we had to make choices that were influenced as much by what worked for us as a family as well as by the budget (alas, $3,000 chandelier, we are never meant to be together because I care more about the master bath tile).

We're just getting started, and I have no doubt one or both of us will get dreamy from time to time about the possibilities still before us. That's part of the fun, though, right? It's also what Pinterest is for.

Construction update: today trees were trimmed, and bushes unearthed and replanted as part of our final site prep. We got inexplicably excited about this.