To Build a Cabin... or Maybe a Lake Home?

... A Story in Three Parts

 

By John Kaman

 

Having always lived in older homes in the Minneapolis and having a dream to someday own a cabin on a lake, this, a fifty something, project manager (a PMP no less) and his wife Marilyn decided to act on their dream.

 

Our story is interesting from a project management perspective. What would our requirements be? What about the time line, and the almighty $. We decided (or should I say that my wife decided) that the cabin should be located no more than 2 hours from Minneapolis. Well if you draw a radius outward from Minneapolis equivalent to 2 hours driving time you will probably see that you will not be "up North" in the woods of Minnesota. So we decided to explore Wisconsin. And using my well honed project management negotiation skills, I was able to show and persuade my wife that if we went about 2.5 hours out from Minneapolis into Wisconsin that we could get that "up North" feel that we were both looking for. Having decided on our first requirement we were now on our way.

 

So, what about the budget. Well, reality quickly set in as we began looking at lakeshore cabins and/or lakeshore-land only. (Just for your reference we started the process in 2001.) Well as you can imagine our eyes were opened quickly as we began to see the prices. Now reality set in! Could we really afford this, and did we really want to commit all of the monetary resources that it would take ? Well to make a long story short, we went ahead. Yes, we would take the financial risk.

 

The up side is having a place that our family and future grandchildren could enjoy as a family. The potential downside, the investment it would take. Is this a reasonable investment? Could we get our money out and could we make a reasonable profit if we decided to sell sometime in the future? Well after many discussions and research we decided to go ahead.

 

We spent a year looking and even subsequently putting a bid on a cabin only to be disappointed. By this time we had narrowed our search down to two lakes just South of the Hayward, WI area. Of course based on the requirement within 2.5 hours our home and newly evolving requirements; a lake that has relatively clear water, has some character to it (islands and bays), and of course from my perspective good fishing.

 

As serendipity would have it (of course the old adage came into play: "chance favors the prepared mind") after a year of looking we encountered land for sale on one of the lakes we had been keeping our eye on. So, I put on my negotiation hat and we struck a deal. The land would be ours! Now what? We had never built a house before. We had no idea what we were doing nor how to go about it. So we sought out and hired a Subject Matter Expert, an Architect. Oh no, another negotiation we had to deal with: do we pay him a fixed price just to draw up the plans or do we keep him on for the entire project overseeing the construction from beginning to end and pay him a percentage of the final price of the cabin be were about to build. What do you think we did? Well we took a risk. In order to save some money, we decided to pay him a fixed price and just draw up the plans. We decided that we would seek out a "good", reputable builder and that would minimize our unknown unknowns and our know unknowns.