At the beginning of the semester, I decided to work on my project management skills.  I had no idea that I would be managing the most important project of my life.

After this summer semester started, I decided to purchase a home.  While looking at the houses, I found that houses that were move-in ready were 25-50% more expensive than ones that were a similar size in the same neighborhood.  Being a spend-thrift, I convinced myself that it makes more financial sense to buy a house that has not had any updates since it was built (in the early 70’s) and to do all the renovations that I want done.  In the end, I believe that I can have the exact house I want AND not have to pay the markup of the ready-to-go houses.  I had priced out the major materials such as sheetrock, lighting fixtures, bathroom fixtures, kitchen cabinets and appliances.  The total cost, with reasonable labor, for everything appeared to be a fraction of the difference between the cost of my home and the comparable homes with upgrades.  So I bought a fixer upper and the past couple months of my life have been the busiest that I have ever been.

Surprisingly, I do not have very much free time between school and work.  For some odd reason, I overlooked this fact with the excitement to have a house of my own.   This fact presented itself again as soon as I closed.  I realized that my apartment lease ends at the beginning of November and that I want to be ready to move into my new house by then.  This left me with 4 months to do a major remodel that involved demolition of all the existing sheetrock (walls and ceilings), removing floors (tile/wood/and carpet), removing/moving/adding 9 walls,  completely redoing all of the plumbing and electrical, adding ethernet and speaker cabling, rerouting the HVAC ducts, adding new hardwoods and tile, new kitchen cabinets and appliances, painting, trim, door handles, lighting fixtures, and on and on.  The number of decisions that need to be made are almost limitless.

I went looking for a general contractor and found that the prices that I would have to pay for someone to manage and do the entire project for me would be more than if I had just bought a move-in ready house to begin with.  And that I have to pay the contractor cash instead of being able to take a loan for that amount.  I realized that project management had a steep cost.  I had already bought the house and my only option was that I would just have to do it myself (in my huge amount of free time).

This is doing project management to the maximum extent.  I have taken on a project with my entire life savings at stake.  I can not afford delays in this project.  I can not afford for top dollar electricians and laborers.  Yet, I do not have the time to do the majority of this work myself.

I have drawn the floorplan, I have studied the codes, I have navigated the permitting and inspection process, I have done significant amounts of demolition (in an effort to save money), I have taken bids from independent contractors for electrical, HVAC, plumbing, framing, sheetrock, and flooring (but still have so much more to do).  I have created a timeline of activities and am managing progress of each contractor so that there is as little dead time in between.

I am learning the importance of communication and documentation.  Every instruction needs to be clear and every visit needs to be scheduled and confirmed (sometimes multiple times).  Every sub project has its own supplies and materials list and its own budget.  Recently, I have started to dabble into trying to use MS Project to build a Gantt chart as Excel is a bit difficult when I need to add a previously unplanned task in the middle.

So, I said that I would work on my project management skills.  This is about as big of a project as I am ever going to get.

-Fawad