Janet and her partner are designing a new home with a difference.

Learn how they got started on their project of building their ideal home in Brisbane.

You’ll also learn how they got educated to feel confident in their project, and established their design brief, their budget and their project team.

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 319, and in it, you’re going to meet Janet, who is a HOME Method member building a new home in Brisbane, Queensland. And, it’s a new home with a difference!

Janet, her partner Paul, and their 3 children, have been on their project journey for a few years now. You’ll hear us talk about their timeline in this episode, which started back in 2021. 

Having renovated before, and knowing they didn’t want to renovate again at their current home, Janet and her partner initially didn’t expect to build new. However, when a block became available near their current home, they decided to dive in.

This is a great conversation about the steps Janet and her partner are taking to make their home a reality, and the learnings, wins and challenges along the way. Janet is fantastic at sharing all the details, so I know you’ll find it super helpful.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW.

Before we dive into the conversation, let me give you some context on the timing of Janet’s project. 

In real time, Janet and her family have just recently moved into their finished new home, so these episodes with her are a great way to go back to the beginning, and talk through all the decisions and journey so far. All the way back to late 2021! 

In this episode and the next, we’ll get up to the start of construction. And then Janet will be back on the podcast in the future to talk about the construction process.

A bit of background on Janet and Paul and how they came to build a new home that I had to clip out of the podcast for timing …

When they began their journey in 2021, Janet and Paul had been in their existing home for almost 19 years. They’d renovated it when their two oldest kids were super little. As the third child arrived, and life moved on, they found it wasn’t accommodating life the way it needed to! 

Janet said this to me – and this may be super familiar to you too if you’ve done a not-so-great project before – she recognised they’d been in a hurry with the last reno, and not got the best help from the building designer they’d worked with at the time to future proof the house and think about the design from a long-term perspective. 

They knew that if they did more to that house, they’d have to undo so much of what they’d done in the previous renovation. 

Building a new home wasn’t on their radar though, until they found some blocks that had been subdivided near their existing home, and after some tooing and froing, they purchased a block in August 2021 with a 6 month settlement on it. They sold their home with a 6 month settlement on it as well. 

They thought they’d be able to choose a home off the plan, or work with someone, and then start building fairly soon. And whilst they weren’t expecting to be in the finished home with their sale settlement, they were hoping to be getting it sorted asap. 

However, as you’ve probably heard me say before, expectations and reality can often be mismatched at the beginning of a project. So let’s meet Janet, and then dive into how they adjusted their expectations and commenced the journey of building their new home. 

Now, let’s dive in!

This is the transcript of my conversation with Janet about designing a new home with a difference.

Amelia Lee
Janet, I am so excited to have you here. It is just awesome to be meeting you even though it’s online, to actually be connecting with you and seeing you on camera because you’re somebody that I’ve interacted with inside the HOME Method community along your journey. And your name has cropped up as your Facebook profile inside the Facebook community that we have there and on the Q&A, and like with all of my members, it’s just such a joy then to actually see you and put a face to all of that house conversation and all of those challenges that you’ve been solving along the way. And I’m really looking forward to being able to dive into sharing more about your own personal journey and creating your home with the wider Undercover Architect community because I know that you’ll have loads of learnings and things that you’ve been thinking about. And the way that you’ve approached it, that’s going to be super helpful for others to learn from for their own experience. And I’m just really grateful. It can often be tricky because people can be really private about their personal journeys and creating their home, so I’m really grateful that you’re willing to be here and share your journey on creating this home of yours. So I’m wondering if we can just start with the basics of you just sharing with us a little bit about your family, about you, and who this project was actually for. 

Janet
There’s myself, my husband, three kids. So now, my eldest is 16, my son and my daughter’s 14, and then my youngest is 10. At the time, we’re talking 2021, so take off three years. My youngest is going on 11. So there’s a slight delay there.

Amelia Lee
So think back to that time where you’re going, “Okay, this is all going to work, we’re going to have a six month settlement on this, these people who are buying a house have agreed to an extended settlement. We’re going to try and make all of this work.” You’d previously just said that the idea of building a new home wasn’t something you were necessarily seeking to do. It was something more that Paul wanted to do, but you wanted a house and you wanted a house that was going to fit everybody and suit everybody. So what were your impressions of building a new home back then when you thought about your block? And what were you most nervous about, or concerned about? And how did you go about trying to upskill yourself in what you’re going to be able to do, given that you’d renovated and added? It had created an outcome that wasn’t going to work for you long term, like, what was on your radar in terms of thinking about, “Okay, this is a new build on a new block of land, we’ve got these deadlines.” How are you putting all the pieces together?

Janet
So I was a little nervous at the deadlines. But we had a buffer. Of course, when you’re building, you’re not going to move out of one house and all of a sudden move into the completed building, unless you’re renting your house back or whatever. I said to Paul, “I don’t want to do that. I’m done with this house. I’m done with squeezing into this house. It’s driving me mental.” And so we ended up renting off some friends for a while. And at this point also, our settlement date kept shifting. By the time we moved out in August, the settlement date was January.

Amelia Lee
On the block of land that you’re buying? Was that because the developer was needing to do specific things in order to see all the plans and everything like that? Did you know why it was extending out?

Janet
There was problems with plan sealing. And I think a lot of it was electrical and plumbing and all the underground stuff. Now we know, spoiler alert, it wasn’t done very well. And that actually did cause some issues, quite a few issues later on. But you know, you don’t know what you don’t know, and the developer is not the one going, “Oh, by the way, I’ve done the dodgy.” On the surface, everything looked fine. The plan itself looked fine. Everything that had been submitted to Council looked good. So if everything was done that way, sweet. So yeah, our own deadlines did keep pushing out. And then January came and that was supposed to be a bit longer, and ended up being May that we settled. So 12 months after we put a contract on, we finally settled on the land. A lot changed by then though. 

I think my biggest fears was I didn’t want to rush it. I didn’t want to make the same mistake and just go, “Yep, that’s a good house. Yep, that looks good. Go with that. Sign off. Excellent. Start building.” And then have that same horrible sinking feeling when you walk in and go, “Oh, I didn’t think it was going to be like that. Oh, oh, that’s a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be.” Or, “Oh my, I didn’t actually want that one… Oh, is it too late?” I didn’t want any of that again. There’s just that horrible feeling of, “Well, I could have done a better job there but I didn’t, so it’s too late now.” Didn’t want that. So that was my biggest fear, especially a renovation, it’s a lot of money. But a build, holy cow. When we sold our house, don’t get me wrong, I loved that house. I brought up my babies in that house, they all learned to walk down the hallway. I don’t want to get too emotional, it still has a really special place in my heart. But it just didn’t suit us anymore. But to sell it and then move into something that didn’t suit as well, oh my gosh, that would have just been the worst. 

Yeah, biggest fear was doing it wrong. Timelines kept shifting. And I guess the way we knew that you built was you go through all the homes, the display house, which conveniently were in the next block over. And then you go, “Yep, no, I don’t like that. No, I don’t like that. Well, I like this one. Oh, will this one fit on our block? Yes, no, maybe.” Most of the time, the answer was no. And so we had friends in the building industry, who worked in the building industry, they had said that they were happy to look after us. But again, none of their plans fit. Our frontage is five metres, we’ve got barely any street frontage, and we’re now behind two other houses. So just to design for that, it was a bit weird. So yeah, we went to our friends. They went, “Yeah, we can take an existing design and we’ll make it fit your block. We’ll make it suit.” And it worked. The first idea that came back, Paul’s all excited because he’s excited about these things. Bless him. I went, “I hate it.” And he was really disappointed with me, “What, why do you hate it?”

Amelia Lee
Yeah, “I thought it was sorted. I thought we’d decided on this.”

Janet
Oh yeah, Paul’s like, “Let’s move on this thing. Let’s do this house.” And I’m like, “It’s all wrong. This is wrong. And this is wrong, and this is wrong. This doesn’t suit our family. And this doesn’t suit our family. And this is wrong.” And he was disappointed that I was disappointed. He just wanted me to love it, but he’s the best man ever. I’ve got a fabulous husband. 

So, sent it back with a few suggestions. Came back again, it was better. But still, it just didn’t suit. And so then I was taking it. And, you call it serendipity, I call it hand of God actually because seriously, we had a week, we got three kids, we had a week in that September where we had no children. We’d moved out of the other house, we’re in the new house, and then all three children went somewhere else – on camp or up to my sister’s. And Paul had holidays off, he took a week off. So it was a week of him and me and the plans. So it was so good because we took these plans with all these concepts that we’ve been given, tape measure, and we walked through so many display homes, and we’re just comparing the concept with reality, concept with reality. And we walked into a bedroom and I went, “Whoa, this place is huge.” Did some measuring, looked at our concept, it’s the same. Oh my gosh! 

So then, after going through and making lots of notes, I, as a teacher, I was trying to massage this and make it work, and I just got so frustrated. I went, “There’s got to be a better way.” We went out to dinner, I said, “Hun, maybe we need to look at an architect.” And I said that dreaded A word, because we can’t afford it. We don’t know if we can afford it though, because we haven’t spoken to any. I think the very least we can do is at least investigate and find out if it’s definitely not an option. Because at the moment, we can’t keep going the way we’re going. It just isn’t working. I’m having to massage spaces and make suggestions, and we need a design professional. The volume builders do a great job for what they do and for the service they provide. They build to a budget and that’s their specialty, and we had a budget so for us that was a good way to go. And they were going to look after us, they were friends. But in the end, we said, “Look, we’re really sorry, I just don’t think this is going to work in terms of our block and in terms of our family. I think we need to go looking for a professional.” So yeah, went home, started looking at architects, and then at the end of that week, we had a two hour drive. Cue Undercover Architect. I looked up how to get it right. Seriously, I put it in those words.

Amelia Lee
You wouldn’t be the first.

Janet
I know. You chose well, Amelia, very well. Because I just said, “Hey, there’s got to be a way that you can get this right. How do I build and not stuff it up? How do I find information on how to get professionals? How do I find information on whether an architect or building designer? Or who do I go to first? Do I talk to a builder? Well, we talked to builders, and that didn’t work. So maybe we do need to talk to some architects.” I sent off a couple of inquiry emails before I found you. Pretty much they all came back and went, “Hey, your budget’s too small.”

IMAGE: Drawing from Landscape Design documentation by the Green Boutique to show overall outline of house plan and site configuration

Amelia Lee
Yeah, and so you had two hours in the car listening to Undercover Architect. For you, everything that you’re saying in terms of looking at a plan that was going to go on your block, which I’ll put a site plan in the show notes so that people can see that it’s not a traditionally shaped block, which then can make trying to find something off the plan super challenging in any instance. And I think when you’re in a cul de sac position where you are overlooked by more houses than you would ordinarily be, you’re dealing with orientation and overshadowing, but you’ve got the privacy of having a narrow frontage, and you want to maintain that privacy the whole way around the block and all of those kinds of things. 

Lots of people do go down the route of just trying to massage and massage and massage a solution from something else, never going back to that helicopter view. So it’s a great credit to you that you went, “Hang on. Now, we got to pull up stumps here for a minute, get ourselves back up to helicopter view. What are we actually seeking to achieve here? And let’s look, have we chosen the right approach?” Because I think what a lot of people do is they make the very understandable mistake of just keeping pushing down the line that they chose in the beginning, and trying to make it work and work and work and not realising that there were other alternatives that they could have chosen five steps before. So when you started listening to Undercover Architect on the podcast, where did you start? And what did you, in terms of how that was sitting with your budget expectations and the nerves about whether a design professional was going to be the right approach for you and your timelines, how did you start to pull all of that together and not get overwhelming of, “Oh gosh, this is actually going to take a lot longer than we anticipated or this is going to cost more than we anticipated”? What did you do to reconcile all of that mentally and still keep getting yourself educated about it?

Janet
Yeah, well, I mean, at that point, nothing was set in stone. We were still under contract, so if we wanted to pull out, we could. We just would have had to go find a house to buy. But we were still keen to keep going and for me, just do the next right thing. Just take the next step. My dad gave us some really good advice, he’s like, “Well, just push on the door. If it opens, go through. If it’s a bit harder, you either need to push harder or find another thing to do. Or if it doesn’t open at all, well that’s it, you’re done.” 

So every every step of the way, we kept pushing, and it kept opening. So first thing, of course, on the way home was, are architects too expensive? Just what does an architect do? What does the building designer do? What does a draftsperson do? I don’t think we got to the ones where you actually spoke to them yet, just the first defining ones. So they came later, which is I think again, so funny and so serendipitous that we stopped there. And then went back right to the beginning to all the orientation stuff. And I knew a little bit about it, but every time, everything I was listening to, everything you said, I was like, “Yes, that’s it. Oh my gosh, that’s it. 100%.” And so went through, consumed in volume, like most people, a lot of the podcast as much as I could, even in yoga class. I distinctly remember doing a bit of a salute the sun, listening to you talk about a cul de sac and how to design for it. 

There’s only so much of the breathe deeply. This is getting a bit boring, I think I need to listen to something. “Just relax.” No, I’m not here to relax. I’m here to learn got to be productive. 

Got to make most of my time, people. Anyway, so yes, I’ve consumed a lot, a lot, a lot of those first few seasons. And the more we listened to, the more we went, “Yeah, actually, we do need to find a professional to design for us.” And the more you talk, what we wanted in the house got confirmed and crystallised, and then you started talking about the feel and function of each room. And your room notes, they were so good, because I could answer all of those questions, I guess, just based on having lived in one house for a while and it not working, having moved to a new house. But also, as a young person, I moved a lot. I lived in a bazillion different houses. My husband, no, not so much. So for me, it was a lot clearer how the house needed to function, how the house needed to feel, how each room needed to flow into each other. The weirdest thing was knowing all of that, understanding all of that, but having absolutely no picture, no clue what the house might actually look like. It’s really weird. 

So I started writing a brief and that was not brief at all. I think at one stage, I got to 43 pages. I edited as much as I could, but I think it still was in the 30s. Sent it off to a few different professionals, really helped having your questions of how to vet. That’s when I started getting onto Instagram, because I went, “Well, if this person is a good person, then let’s look at all the people they follow.” And that was actually really helpful, had massive lists of builders to contact, massive lists of architects and building designers to contact. Again, it’s 2020 by this stage. Nobody was available. Or they were available, but they didn’t want to build to our budget, or they were available but the builders themselves didn’t want to come down to our side of town. 

So then it was frustrating in that way, but then we listened to your “What does an architect do, who is the architect?” Then Aaron came on, and I went, “Oh my gosh, he’s in Wynnum. He’s just around the road.” And he’s on the same page. We are on the same page as this guy. Yep, we could work together with him, I reckon. So I think we ended up getting in touch with him at the beginning of the year, 2022. And he’s like, “Yep, thanks, I’m so glad you got in touch. Glad you’re following through Amelia, I can see where you guys are at. I’ll be available Easter.” Well, you say you can work with our budget, let’s just go with that. At that point, that was a win. For a designer to say, “Yeah, I design to all budgets. That’s fine, let’s go with that. But I’m not available now.” You know what, that’s fine, we can wait. Easter, it’s a few months, we will work on that. We’ll get a brief together, we’ll fill out your brief, we’ll just keep going through life because life happens. And it is a part time job, all of this. But it’s a part time job that’s sometimes really naggy, and then sometimes really not. Sometimes it’s just easy to ignore, and just keep on going with your life and before you know, another month’s moved on. Except the friends and family, they go with their house.

Amelia Lee
Oh, your friends and family can be like, “Why is it taking you so long anyway?” 

Can I just track back, so you were looking initially at a settlement on the block of land around November 2021, that pushed out. September 2021 was when you and Paul had the week together of no kids, Paul not working, the two of you being able to dedicate some energy and attention to it, and then the two hour car drive where you had found Undercover Architect and you could start diving into the podcast content. You joined HOME Method in October of 2021, and started learning and some of the stuff that you’ve been speaking about in terms of the checklists and those kinds of things, and the room notes, are all resources inside HOME Method. And so then you’re getting in touch with Aaron from Green Coast Designs at the beginning of 2022, he’s saying he’s not ready to start until Easter of 2022. 

You sent me through a copy of your brief, which you took the questions that are in the brief builder that’s supplied in HOME Method but you’ve turned it into your own document. And I said before we jumped on to the recording that having read through that, it was amazing to see how I could immediately know how you and your family tick. 

And as a professional designer, I could see what a home was going to need in order to support you best because of the effort with which you’d gone to describe yourselves, your lifestyles, the goals that you had for the home, where this fit into your overall lifestyle goals. And then, of course, you were using those five F’s – the functionality, flow, feel, furnishability, flexibility – to define each of the rooms and to think about how that fit into the overall whole. So putting together that document would have taken some time… You’re sitting there going, “Okay, well, we know we want to build. I’m nervous about building because it’s starting from scratch. It’s not a conventional block, we’ve had this experience of trying to massage a house that didn’t work. And I’ve also got a budget that I’ve soundly checked with a few designers who said, ‘No, it’s not enough.’ And now found this designer that has said, ‘Look, we can work with it.'” I’m imagining that you’ve shifted your budget a bit at this point to a different level to reflect some of the changes in the marketplace. 

IMAGE: Site Plan from Green Coast Building Design documentation showing site arrangement

You’ve got this new knowledge, you’ve upskilled yourself in understanding more about the orientation of the site, you’ve done this work to uncover and think a lot about who you are, what you want, and what that’s going to need to be, And like you said, you don’t necessarily know what it’s going to look like in a house, but you got a really clear understanding of how that house needs to function and feel in order to accommodate you on the lifestyle that you want to lead. So do you remember what was important to you? And then thinking, “Okay, how are we going to use the next few months before we start working with Aaron to really make sure that we’re going to hit the ground running, and that this is going to work really well from the outset”? I can imagine you didn’t want to waste any more time at this point, you really want to get going. So what were you seeing was going to be important in that navigating the initiation of that relationship with him? Huh?

Janet
Yeah, so social engineering already has this part. Basically, watching everything we could that Aaron had put out, consuming any kind of post or video or anything that he produced, that was helpful because that gave us a better idea of his values, the way he worked, and understanding of the overall process. Again, Green Coast is very helpful in the way that they give a good overview of this is how it’s going to work. We had this meeting, this meeting, this meeting, this is our fee structure. And then I think we had a bit of a discussion as well with him about project spend, because he says, “Usually what happens is,” and you said the same thing – you’ve got this magic number, but then all of a sudden, something happens. And you go, “Oh, maybe I can find some more money.” 

In those months, the main things we were doing was finding out about Aaron, we were talking with finance and looking at what our finance options were. We were also looking for builders because we were aware that they book out months and sometimes years in advance. Then once we found the builders, doing all the background checks on those builders. And yeah, there was not actually many phone conversations, lots of emails, but most of the builders would, while we’re waiting in that time, they were all, “Yeah, don’t come to your side of town, don’t work with your kind of project spend, unavailable till 2025.” That kind of thing. So when we did find somebody, it was, “Awesome, quick, let’s book in a conversation.” I think we had three phone conversations with three different builders, we had a Zoom meeting, extended with one, and a face to face with another. And we used your myriad of questions, so a lot of questions, I felt a little awkward.

Amelia Lee
I always say you can just blame me.

Janet
And then budget wise, talking to finance – again just by accident… In the move, we’re trying to rationalise our belongings, and one of those things was all the paperwork that you end up having. So my husband found a pay slip from when we first bought the house, and that was documentary evidence of 19 years prior of what he was making. And he also happened to find our repayments of what we were repaying. And we worked out percentage wise and went, “Oh, okay. What would that look like in today’s money? Okay, so if we go with the same percentage…” so out comes the Excel. Now, I’m not very good with Excel, but at least I can do a little bit. “Okay, so here’s all the different amounts we could possibly spend in all the world. And, yes, interest rates are on the rise. So if the interest rates are at this amount – I think at the time they were 1 or 2% still, but slowly creeping. If it’s at 1%, this is our weekly monthly repayments. And this is the percentage of your income. What percentage are the repayments at each different price point?” It was a very useful exercise and really eye opening, because all of a sudden, these amounts that we could never have even dreamed about spending five years previous, were actually not that bad.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, it’s really interesting just to make it black and white. This is the thing, numbers never lie. Yeah, we can load them with so much emotion and baggage and all that kind of stuff, when you see them in a spreadsheet like that, that must have been really powerful to adjust your expectations of what you could actually afford, and then what that was going to mean for your project spend. And yeah, Aaron does talk about project spend because he’s very much of the opinion, as I hope that a lot of designers and builders and architects, I feel this is actually the really best way for them to approach it is that it’s not your position as a professional to tell your client what they can or can’t afford, your position is to take what they’re telling you and then educate them about what they can get for that money. And then let them determine, is that representing value in their eyes, and to help them see where that value needs to actually play out in terms of where they’re going to invest money. Because some people will see value in all of the luxurious fixtures and fittings on the surface, but won’t see value in getting it built properly, or designed for orientation and it being energy efficient. So you, as a professional, educating them well – What does value mean to you, and where is it actually going to be embedded in your project for a good long term outcome is really important.

Janet
Yeah, one more thing that we were doing in there was going through the HOME Method course as much as we could. And I think for me, being top down sort of sequential person, I like to have the big picture view. The most helpful thing for me at that point was having the list of professionals, and who do you contact at what point, and who’s going to be involved in your project. Because when, and I find this with pretty much anybody I’ve known who starts a renovation or building project, the first thing is, “Who do I call, where do I start? Who do I ask about this? I don’t want to inconvenience anybody, I don’t want to ask dumb questions. I don’t want to go to the wrong person, and have them say, ‘Sorry.'” Or worse, go to the wrong person, and have them be a really super helpful person come in and try and give you advice, but they’re not actually the right person to give you advice at that point. So yeah, knowing that we aren’t going to make any false starts here, knowing that we are talking to the right professionals, and along the way, we aren’t the ones who are going to have to find the engineer. After talking a bit more with our professionals and confirming, so we’re going to need these kinds of professionals, do we find them or do you? “No, no, it’s okay. I will find them or I will get you in touch with my people.” Totally fine, if you trust them works for me. 

Just having project managed and done our renovation ourselves, I was the one contacting everybody. And I was the one initiating all of that. But there’s just so many questions, and so many ‘what do I do here, who do I call?’ All my friends were in the same position. They want to extend their house, they want to do some renovations, they want to maybe put on another story… They go, “I guess I’ll call a builder.” Now I can tell them, “They’re not usually the best person to call first. Have you thought about maybe calling someone who specialises in design and talking to somebody about what you actually want to happen in the house?” But yeah, that for me, that was, in that time, the most helpful thing – going through the HOME Method course, finding out who the professionals were, contacting the ones that we had to ourselves, and just educating ourselves as much as we could about what this whole process is going to look like.

Amelia Lee
Fantastic. It’s a really great look at, okay, we are now at what a lot of people think is the start of their project. So we’re at the point where we’re actually going to speak to our designer for the first time and potentially start putting pen to paper to make this house look like something on a drawing. So we’ve now officially started, but you’ve already spent months and months and months doing a bunch of stuff to get yourself to this point. And so your project started probably seven or eight months prior, when you were first thinking about, ‘Okay, we went with this, we did this option, it didn’t work. We then found this information, we then bought HOME Method, we then started writing this brief, we then thought more intently about what we wanted to create, we started using all of the questions and those kinds of things.’ So it’s really interesting how much preparatory set up you’ve invested in to get yourself to this point, but as a result, you can now actually hit the ground running in terms of that relationship and hitting on the design. And so were you intending then to have a builder also help you from the get go using their Paid As Consultant Process or some kind of collaborative process so that that builder could be informing you? Was that your intention?

Janet
After having listened to so much of what you produce, we thought, “This is a really great way to go.” And we knew that Aaron was completely open to it. The main hiccup was none of the builders that he worked with were available for this. Once we started meeting with Aaron, he said, “Okay, so let’s just get the concept going first. There will be a point at which we do need to test this, and we do need to run it by a builder and begin to be a bit collaborative. Let’s not involve them just yet. Let’s do the work together ourselves, and then we’ll see how we go.” So yeah, the intention was there to work collaboratively, but it didn’t happen right from the get go. Which actually ended up being really good because the builder we got was a contact of Aaron’s, and Aaron went and tested the design himself with Dwain, with Hezzelic Homes and he said, “What do you think?”

Janet shared this over email with me after our podcast chat and I thought I’d share it with you here …

“When we first began this project, as we talked about earlier,  I was very nervous about getting it right, and unsure as to my capacity for making good decisions. However, after we had started HOME Method, we stopped thinking, “I hope I get this right! I hope we do ok.” and we could say with confidence, “We are going to get this right and we are going to do a great job!” 

Educating ourselves gave us the ability to look for and find the professionals we wanted to work with, rather than writing down a phone number and hoping for the best. 

It gave us the ability to communicate with our professionals in a language they understood, rather than ditzy speak –  “that thingy… you know! The thing, that goes on that… other thing?” 

It meant that we could judge for ourselves the word and the work of the professionals around us, and even gave us the confidence to challenge them from time to time. 

You know, Aaron was supportive of us going through your course, but was also a little sceptical, because he said that he felt it was his job to educate us on the way the process worked, and so he felt we should just leave it to him and our builder to guide us through. 

I am SO glad we didn’t do that, though. He didn’t know where our knowledge gaps were, and he wasn’t the one giving flowcharts, lists, diagrams and videos/podcasts on all things design and building! We would have had to pay him a lot more to get the kind of help from him that we got from you!

Suffice to say, we are very grateful for your input and the work you have put into the podcast, the course and the Facebook community over the last few years. 

RESOURCES:

Check out these podcast episodes

• Season 3 Episode 5 ‘The first conversation to have with your potential designer or builder’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/how-to-choose-your-designer-or-builder/
• ‘Where to start: the first conversation with your potential designer’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/start-first-conversation-potential-designer/ 
• Episode 209 ‘Who should you use? Architect, building designer or draftsperson [Part 1]’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-who-should-you-use-home-design-part-1/
• Episode 210 ‘Who should you use? Architect, building designer or draftsperson [Part 2]’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-who-should-you-use-home-design-part-2/
• ‘Don’t expect a draftsperson to know how to design’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/what-does-a-draftsperson-do/ 

Janet’s Project Instagram >>> ‘buildscarlettshomewithahole’ https://www.instagram.com/buildscarlettshomewithahole?igsh=MXRmYXU4M2x3Nnd0NQ==

Access the support and guidance you need (like Janet is) to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home 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