From the ground up
As a homeowner looking to build, you have the most power, and very likely the least knowledge. How then are you supposed to lead a team of specialists in constructing the home you've envisioned?
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
As a homeowner looking to build or remodel a home, you're in an extraordinary and precarious position: You have the most power, and very likely the least knowledge. How then are you supposed to lead a team of specialists — architect, engineer, homebuilder, tradespeople, and many others — in constructing the home you've envisioned?
This isn't a rhetorical question, but an imperative one. The success of your project, and the new home in which you'll someday wake up and make coffee while you ponder the gently growing morning light, depends on it. What's at stake isn't merely a built structure. It's the experience you're going to have, day in and day out, living in it.
The struggle inherent in this paradox is one I've seen countless homeowners navigate, for better and for worse. The crux is that while there are plenty of perfectly skilled specialists who are each eager to do their part at each stage of the journey, homeowners embark upon this journey without a map.
BuildConscious is that map. As someone who loves working in service of others, finding joy in others' successes and pain in others' failures, I've long wished that I could stand outside of my own role as a project manager and help homeowners from the very beginning of the process — before they've even hired an architect — to the very end — when they're finally enjoying the space they had envisioned for so long.
This site, like any good home project, is under construction. As of this writing, the foundation is formed but hasn't yet been poured. And, like any good home, I intend to build it from the ground up, starting at the beginning of the process, and working my way towards the end, gathering together the details and bits of wisdom I've collected and forming them into something useful — something you can wander around inside of and enjoy.
If you're reading this, you have my gratitude. I hope you'll join me along the way, or, if you're reading this many months from now, I hope you'll come in, take a look around, and stay for tea.
Happy building, and thank you for being.