Homestead / Building our own home
House of many decisions
My husband and I are building our forever home. We both work. And as a designer, I have an opinion on almost everything, from the first drawings to handover.
I built Homestead to keep the plans, references and decisions together, and bring them back when they matter. This is more than a project to finish. It’s a home we’ll live in every day.
- Role
- Concept, product design and development.
- Collaboration
- Homestead is a solo project. No contributors.
- Period
- Built over the past few months.
- Scope
- A personal app for our house build: stages, decisions, references, rooms and documents.
Time estimates, the current stage and what needs deciding next. The light/dark switch changes the view of home, too.
Download the dashboard clipThe dashboard clip could not load. Use its download link or read the description above.
Seven short clips from my working app, including the day/night detail that helps me remember why we started. They play silently while in view. Use the player controls or pause motion to watch at your own pace.
TL;DR / Overview
- Problem
- Building our forever home means decisions we care deeply about, with deadlines that cannot wait for our working days to get quieter.
- Role
- I took Homestead from the idea and requirements through product design and the working app.
- Surfaces
- Mobile dashboard, personalised setup, construction timeline, reference library, room review, decisions and files.
- Reach
- Designed for my husband and me as we build our forever home.
- Result
- One place for progress, references and decisions. A day/night view of our future home also helps me remember what all the effort is for.
- Status
- A working personal side project. The recordings show the app, not a measured impact study.
01 / A very personal brief
The problem wasn’t
running out of ideas.
I’m pouring my heart and soul into this home. I want to understand each stage and make considered choices, not just get through it. There is care behind all those opinions.
Pinterest boards. YouTube videos. Instagram reels. Figmas. Then all the advice, and all the discussions on top.
Finding something again was only half the problem. Remembering when we needed to act on it was the other half. Construction moves in stages; the conversation we need next is not always the one we are thinking about today.
I didn’t just want a neater pile of inspiration. I wanted a place that could bring the right things back to us at the right time.
02 / Make the plan personal
Not every house
needs the same plan.
Having an opinion on everything doesn’t mean everything needs my attention now. I’m learning what to prioritise at each stage, and which decisions need to happen before we can move on.
A new build, interiors and landscaping are different kinds of work. I start with the home’s scope, floors, utilities and interior choices, rather than asking us to sort through a generic checklist.
That context becomes a stage-by-stage plan. Completed work, progress and undecided items sit together, so we can see where we are and what is coming.
Choose the scope, number of floors and extras, then the utilities the house needs. This is the context for its plan.
Download the setup clipThe setup clip could not load. Use its download link or read the description above.
Move through the construction timeline, open the current stage’s tasks, then return to the wider plan.
Download the timeline clipThe timeline clip could not load. Use its download link or read the description above.
03 / Bring the scattered things together
Saved is not
the same as decided.
My references weren’t just “inspiration”. Each held something I wanted for our home, or advice worth remembering. I cared about why it felt right for us, not just how it looked. That thought needed to stay with it.
Links, images, text and voice notes belong in the same library. A reference can connect to a scope, stage, room and decision, with tags and notes alongside it.
Now I can look by room or scope, instead of trying to remember which app I saved something in.
A cupboard-top image gets its scope, stage, room and tag, then returns to the reference library.
Download the reference clipThe reference clip could not load. Use its download link or read the description above.
04 / Think in spaces, too
Put the conversation
back in the room.
A room isn’t just a plan or a finished photograph. It’s somewhere we’ll move through, use and live in every day. That makes the small details worth crafting with care.
Room review brings the floor plan, saved references and a place for discussion into the same flow. I can open a bathroom reference, come back to its room, then move on to the artwork for the corridor.
I’m learning to zoom in on a detail, then step back and ask how it fits the room and the house as a whole. Room review gives those conversations a place, instead of leaving them scattered across folders.
Open the bathroom reference, return to its room’s references and discussion, then continue through the other rooms.
Download the room review clipThe room review clip could not load. Use its download link or read the description above.
05 / Remember at the right moment
Some things need a date.
Others need a stage.
The stakes feel much higher when we’ll live with the result. A late decision can mean changing something already built. I need time to think carefully, but each choice still has to be made before the work moves on.
I needed reminders that understood where we were in the build. Not everything belongs on an arbitrary calendar date.
So a decision keeps its options and notes, with a reminder tied to a date or a construction stage. The paint choice and the prompt to think about it stay together.
The aim is to surface what is still open before we move on, rather than make us remember to check another list.
Edit the paint options and explore a date-based reminder, then a stage-based one. The construction sequence is available right there.
Download the decision clipThe decision clip could not load. Use its download link or read the description above.
06 / More than getting things done
I needed the delight, too.
I’d thought about delight when designing for other people. Building Homestead for myself made its importance much more personal.
Building a house takes a long time. There are days of stress and frustration when I wonder why we took on something so huge. We could have bought a flat.
On those days, the small picture at the top of the app does something the checklists can’t. Seeing the house in daylight, then switching to night mode with the lights on, brings back the home we imagined.
It reminds me why we wanted this, not just what we still have to do. For a moment, it feels worth it again.
I realised delight wasn’t separate from what made the app useful. On a hard day, remembering why we started was a kind of help I needed, too.
The top of the dashboard, switching from day to night and back. A small glimpse of what we are working towards.
Download the day and night clipThe day and night clip could not load. Use its download link or read the description above.
07 / Built for us
One place for the build.
A reminder of the home.
The less exciting bits belong here too: drawings, agreements and invoices. They shouldn’t need their own search mission.
I designed and built Homestead around a problem we are still living through. Building the house is also teaching me what it means to care without trying to control everything.
I’m learning where to take the lead and where to let subject-matter experts lead. Having an opinion doesn’t make me the expert in every discipline. I need to know when to ask, listen and trust.
It doesn’t make building a house simple. It helps us manage what needs doing, without losing sight of why we are doing it.
From the idea to the app
A personal need.
My own brief.
Built end to end.
These are excerpts from my October 2026 recordings. Dates and progress values are project data, not measures of the app’s impact.
Keep exploring
