Rusty and I always had a dream to build our own house on a large piece of property. In November of 2016, I sent Rusty a link to a property for sale. It was a 17 acre horse farm with a large utility building, a horse barn, and an old house. I was only half way serious about it. Rusty jumped on top of it and wanted to make an offer. After looking at the property, we both shied away (me more than him). The house was small and needed a LOT of work. We’re talking a total gut. After talking about it, we decided to throw out a very low offer. We never thought in a million years we would get it, knowing there were two other offers. After offering $60k less than asking price, we were shocked to get the call that leads me to writing this blog. We purchased our farm!

Being a Woolard, I quickly realized we would be doing the majority of this work ourselves. I went through three stages of acceptance:

1: “Yes! I’ve always wanted to be Joanna Gaines!”

2: “This is so overwhelming.”,  “I just don’t know if we can do this in a reasonable budget.”, “What if I don’t like the final product?” (cue panic attacks)

3: “Let’s do this!” (cue ordering of Woolard Construction gear)

We quickly had to make sure Rusty’s contractor’s license was up-to-date and created our construction business, Woolard Construction.

When I found this farm, I saw the potential in the house. To give you an idea of how bad this place is, it will need about $150,000 worth of work. Sure, if we wanted to flip it, we could spend less but we are designing this home to be ours. The house is currently 1900 sqft and at the end will be close to 2800 sqft. The house has sat vacant for quite some time and has experienced some water damage. With that being said, we’ll be tearing the house down to the studs.

Our project will consist of bringing forward the front exterior wall, adding a new porch to the front, a master suite addition to the right side of the house, new roof, new siding, tearing out all of the drywall, re-configuring the entire first floor,  and giving the upstairs a little makeover.

The house doesn’t only need work but also the 17 acre farm. The farm is full of brush, weeds, old stumps and dead trees. There are other buildings on the property that could also use a face lift as well.

At this point you might be saying, “what was this girl thinking?” Well, I’m a planner. Always have been. I actually worked for our local Chamber of Commerce as an event planner for over four years. If I have a plan, I can tackle just about any project. I love check lists, timelines and budgets! As we continue on, you’ll get to hear my master plan.

How do you tackle big projects and stay organized while doing so?