How do you come up with a plan of what order to do things in

HurdyGurdy

Sorry - silly title, but can't come up with a better one at the moment. Also apologies in advance for the long post.




Following this thread https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5105088 – I have finally got my own way!!! We are going to pay off the debts, have the work done, and save like crazy to build up a nice fallback fund.

Our financial situation is going to have done a complete 100% turnaround. We have just paid off my husband’s bank loan (saving us £407 per month), both our sons are now working full time and are paying £200 a month each for their board, and I have been given a reasonable grade increase for my job at work, which should pay a decent pay rise (will find out in January’s pay just how much). Once we have the debts paid off (currently costing just over £400 a month), we will effectively have an “extra” £1,200 or more per month, compared to this time last year when we were on our knees. My plan is to save at least £500 a month (feeling weak at the knees as the very idea of being able to potentially save that much!!)

So we are going ahead and having the work done – including the extension that my husband really wants, but that I am a bit “meh” about.

We have a pretty basic list of work that needs to be done in the house, but as always, it spills out like ripples on a pond, and we just don't know where to start.

We are going to replace the bathroom and the kitchen and erect a garden building at the bottom of the garden.

The bathroom is pretty easy, I think, and will probably be the first job to be done. The only thing that affects the rest of the project(s) is that sometimes when someone has a shower (over-bath shower) water drips through the kitchen ceiling just above the window. The coving is starting to come away and there is a crack forming across the ceiling (small, so far). So I think doing the bathroom, and finding out why the leak is happening, and fixing it and any resultant damage caused by it, will be the first thing.

Then we want to do the kitchen. We have two rooms next to each other - work done before we moved into the house - and the utility part of it (which is actually bigger than the kitchen) is about 3 foot longer than the kitchen. We want to extend across the end of the kitchen and knock the two rooms into one to make it one lovely huge squared off room.

Because of the work done before we moved in, we have no access from the front of the house to the back garden, only through the house. So we want to make it as easy as possible to get from the front of the house to the back. We want to put the back door, which is currently in the utility room, in a direct line from the front door, to where the kitchen window is now. This will be in the extension to the kitchen part.

The door from the hallway into the kitchen, which will form part of this "corridor" from the front door to the rear garden, is quite narrow, so that will have to be widened to give us as much access as possible.

We also need to replace the garden fence, as it is decrepit!

We also plan to have the front garden block paved to facilitate parking for three cars, and I want to put a bike shed in the front, so that I don't have to trail my bike through the house. This is a "want", not a need nor a necessity, and can wait if necessary.

We also need to replace our ancient garden shed, which has definitely seen better days and is too small for our needs.

So - where on earth do we begin? We keep going round in circles and not really getting to a destination.

We need to find somewhere to store all the clutter/rubbish that is currently in the utility room when we redo the kitchen. We wondered if, rather than having the garden building as the last thing to be done, we should do that second (after the bathroom) so that we can store stuff in there temporarily.

We were going to schmooze our next door neighbour and ask if we could bring all the stuff needed through his garden in exchange for replacing the fence. Although the fence is our responsibility, it is his dogs and his trees/shrubs which have cause the most damage to it and he has previously offered to pay half towards its replacement. This would mean we wouldn't have to bring "dirty" stuff through the house.

Our alternative to having the garden building put up first is to rent a unit at one of the storage facilities for the duration of the work.

Any views/thoughts/ideas etc welcome as to where to begin with this project, and in what order the works need to be done in.

TIA

hannahsmamma

Well done on the work so far.


There is always a huge mess of 'stuff' when having alterations done, I would take a long hard look at all the 'junk' the family has accumulated and ask yourself 'would I PAY for storage for this stuff?' If the answer is 'no' you don't want/need/love said item, get rid/charity shop etc.
I would not involve the neighbour in anything to do with the alterations eg access but get him on board with the new fence.
Find a good local builder and get him to project manage the whole thing.
Set aside a little fund for takeaway meals and trip to the launderette if the kitchen is 'unavailable' for any time.
Good luck!

paddyrg

First of all, clear any debts
Second, get a cash (ie instant access savings) nest-egg sorted which you won't touch unless there's trouble (I suggest £5k-ish is a good buffer against broken boilers/sudden surprises)
Finally, prioritise improvements - here's a technique which might help...

Write each one on a separate card in any old order
Lay them all out left to right in any old order
Starting at the left, with just 2 cards, which will you prioritise? Winner goes on the left loser on the right (ie the cards go in the same position or get swapped).
Now do the same with cards 2 (which you just looked at) and 3 and do the same - just a straight choice between 2 improvements forgetting all other factors. Winner to the left loser to the right.
Now cards 3 and 4, then 4 and 5, then 5 and 6 until you've done next-to-last and last cards as the final pair. Whichever loses goes on the right, and gets turned over face down.
Now go back and do the exact same process all over again with the face up cards, one pair at a time, with the last (losing) card on the right going face down. Keep going - very soon you'll have all the cards after the first one face down

These cards are now in priority order, each has been compared to every other option and a decision made, so from left to right is the order to approach the improvements. In computing terms this is a 'bubble sort', it's very robust and easy to do. The great thing is it simplifies complex decisions into a string of A vs B choices, so you don't get overwhelmed :-)

If you did a bubble sort with numbers as an example, the below might illustrate it for you