Building Our Dream Home with Google

As soon as my boyfriend and I closed on our new house and we started talking and dreaming about what we wanted to do with our fixer-upper and then we started talking about what work we need to do…and let’s just say dreaming was a lot more fun. Right now our to-do list is a bit daunting (we both nearly cried) and we know that the sooner we start checking some stuff off, the better the list will look. In combination of my OOD (Overly Organized Disorder) and my love of Google products, we’re using everything Google to project manage our renovation:

Gmail - Gmail offers a great way to keep track of all communications with contractors and each other.  The Labels are awesome and help keep everything organized and easy to find.

Blogger - Hosts our blog that is our one stop to share our progress with friends and family, but also to see where we are today and what’s next.

Google Calendars - We use this to keep track of contractor appointments, when everyone is working, etc. This is a great calendar that can be shared among a group, we even use it here at Tierra.

Google Docs - We keep all of our contracts, budgets, and any other house related documents on Google Docs for accessibility from anywhere at anytime.

GoogleSites – An interactive To-Do list provides us the ability to divide and conquer, but at the same time keep on the same page. The countdown on the side is to our desired move-in date. As of today we are are still on schedule and getting ready to move from our temporary rental.

Picasa - Hosts all slideshows and photos taken of our progress and shared on our blog.

YouTube - Hosts our little bit of comic relief as seen on the blog, our silly cross-eyed cat never ceases to amuse us.

Google Notebook - An online resource that can keep all of our renovation ideas, contractor’s websites, and inspirations in one place.  You can just select text or images and right click “Note This” and it will save it to the Google Notebook of your choice.  I love how we can daydream and come up with ideas and share them online.

GoogleMaps - Our families do not live in the area, so sharing our house’s location with family on GoogleMaps helps my family gain perspective on where the house is in relation to NYC and to the beach.

All of these resources allow us to see not only the current state of our work, but also how far we’ve come in the past few weeks—which is very encouraging.  Since I embarked on this Google journey, I have learned of other people using Google to plan their weddings, prepare for babies, and coordinate all kinds of parties and events.  Wish us luck and check back to see if we survived this adventure. 

And YES I am trying to see if all of this free Google advertising will get us some money to buy some new windows

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 9:32 am . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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