Surviving your building project.

The primary objective to keep in mind....why are you doing this. For us it is a family thing.  We collectively, parents and children, love Eleuthera.  The ocean has always called to us.  The beauty of Eleuthera is bewitching.  The time we spend together makes the rest of the world stop spinning and come to a quiet pause.  We wanted our own place  to share with family and friends in Water World.

Our reasons to complete our project...family!

Robert chillin at the shack

Tom and I are fighters not with each other but with problems.  Together we have learned our strengths and weakness.  When problems arise, which they surely will, we go through them, around them or over them.  Our suggestion to another couple would be to pre-plan the emotional and financial strain. If you are single we would suggest you have a partner/friend that you can bounce your ideas off of.  Sometimes when you speak aloud your idea to another human being, you spot the flaws more easily than just letting your thoughts swirl round and round.

Let's start with emotions.  The biggest is Fear.  Fear of the unknown, Fear of going broke, Fear of loosing your investment, Fear of not finishing... you get the picture.  Of course there will also be pure good old fashion stress.  This will originate from your shipments not being on time, plans not followed, inferior materials....yada...yada....yada.  So what do you do with all this negativity on what is suppose to be an adventure in paradise.  I can only tell you what has worked for us.  We made a list of pros and cons before we even looked for property.  We also went over worse case scenarios on paper.  We gave ourselves different time lines based on those scenarios.  Did that really cover everything.....absolutely not!  Get real...this is life.  You will have to deal with a lot on the fly.  I think half the battle is knowing that.

Our pre-planning always helped.  When we made a shipment we could never tell when it would exactly arrive.  We had to be flexible and make several what if plans.  That was pretty much the theme for the whole build .....what if?  Always, always give yourself an out.  A super tight schedule will drive you and your spouse nuts...it will cause major fights...don't do it.   I will give you an example.  We had a shipment that arrived  in Miami from local construction vendors pre-packaged to our Miami shipper.  When a shipment comes straight from a vendor to the shipper you will not pay local sales tax.  Sounds good...right.  It's wonderful until something goes wrong.  Our shipper was shut down by the Coastguard for one month.  Our stuff was sitting in their warehouse and we could not move it.  If you do not pay sales tax it is as if that material has passed through customs.  Almost like it is sitting in another country.  You cannot touch it.  Oh..and no one tells you these things until one...the shit happens or two...you ask exactly the right question.   It took awhile for our shipper to fess up to what was causing the delay.  We had to verbally beat them up to finally give us some options.  First we could send our stuff back to the vendor...reorder and have it sent to a new shipper.  That was a ridiculous option.  The next was the Miami shipper could put it on one of their trucks and take it to a rival company in Ft. Lauderdale.  To get that done it took a good cop, bad cop routine to make them agree.  In the end this put our schedule back about a week.  Up until then our shipping had gone smoothly.  We had planned to be on the job with our materials working during that week.  How did Tom and I handle it mentally?  Let me recall....mad, frustrated, depressed, I think that covers it.  We almost went along with leaving our stuff in Miami.  The more we questioned the company's dock workers we came to the conclusion to push them to move it to Ft.Lauderdale.  This is where you and your spouse/partner look at each other and say are we going to take this laying down?  The answer better be no, hell no!  Caution here..... Don't be angry, be persistent, be professionally annoying with a smile on your face.  Let whomever is not giving you the correct answer know that you will not be going away until you get what you want.

As you can see time is a factor.  Certain intervals will be rush, rush, rush.  Then when deliveries are delayed you will be twittling your thumbs.  Factoring in how another culture views time will be a new experience for most new builders.  Bahamian time runs about two hours late and maybe tomorrow.   Nobody works on holidays.  They have more holidays than we do.   Suggestion...when dealing with independent contractors, pay them when they are done.  Fork out a small deposit only.  This will keep them more on schedule and less cost over runs.  The mentality of gotta have it done "today-itas" will give you an ulcer.  We are not saying don't push for what you want but do not push a good contractor away because your schedule is to tight.  We take a lot for granted here in the USA.  Our cbs blocks were almost made by hand.  More than sixty percent of our concrete was mixed by hand.  Our loads of sand came from 70 miles away at the other end of the island.  We had to take all that into consideration and plan accordingly.  Other delays are caused by small problems.  If you need twenty boxes of nails, have twenty-four.  Whatever you would add in for waste on a building job in the states, we would double it.  The hardware store was a good hour round trip from our site.  Small things add up to an enormous waist of time.  That theory proved to work for tools as well.  Have back up tools.  Drills and saws go bad fast in a harsh environment.  With out the right tool for the job you will be dead in the water.

So what have we gone over up to this point...pre-planning and time.  These are two biggies but money is the King Kong.  Money is very personal.  No one was going to tell us how to spend our money.  Even if you have loads to spare don't throw it in the trash with poor planning.  Some areas we did superb on saving money, others...not so much.  The hidden fees from banks to customs are nasty little gremlins.  When dealing with a foreign bank, contractor, shipping or customs agent ask are there any fees.  Most of them are in the if you did not ask, they will not tell category until they stick out their hand to be paid.   What you cannot do is use your last saved penny.  A sound financial plan for a foreign build would be thirty percent over and then cut your project by twenty percent.  Yes, that does equal fifty percent.  This is just to give you an idea.  Doing a cost analysis on your materials and labor is mandatory before you lay one block or put up one board.  We consider our home in the Bahamas an investment.  With an investment know what you are putting in and what you expect to get out.  You should love what you build when you are finished. It should not be a financial albatross.  To afford our home long term we knew we would rent it out.  We can pay the bills with out using it as a vacation rental but it is nice to have money coming in.  This may be something to consider.

Samantha's catch of the day.

Robert at Palmetto Point

Patch reefs

Thomas free diving

Samantha at the Surf shack

Tom on the hunt at 20 feet below.

Trigger and snapper...dinner.

Conch/snail coming out of it's shell.

We wondered on more than one occasion if we could pull this off.  Building a vacation home in a foreign country is not for everybody. Can you do this?  Yes! you can.   We actually had to talk to each other and say that all the way through to the end.  You cannot take all the fear, emotional or financial stress out of your building project.  You can be an educated consumer and learn what you need to know one piece of the puzzle at a time.  This will be a major accomplishment when you are done.
NOW GO SLAY GODZILLA!  YOU CAN DO IT!