Planning Our Dream

TRAVEL | BARBADOS | REAL ESTATE

Achievements and setbacks while creating a Barbados dream home

Deciding to move to Barbados was only the start of a multi-year project. Here’s a look back at what happened next when our family committed to a relocation.

Seven months after we’d spotted our plot of land in Barbados, it was finally ours. This was relatively quick by Barbadian standards but had seemed an eternity to us. House sales typically took two to three months in the UK. Plus we’d been spoiled by the super-quick sale of our previous home.

In the interim we’d spent the summer rehabbing our new home. There was a lot of bad DIY work to undo, and plenty of work to get ready for the birth of our baby daughter.

By the time we finally acquired the land, we were in the full throes of new parenthood, complete with sleepless nights. Once the jubilation had passed, there was a burning question : what could we afford to build on it?

Dream vs. Reality

Like most self-builders, my husband and I had had a couple of ideas about what our dream home would be like. It would be a mansion, of course, with separate rooms for all leisure activities (library, music room, computer room, a playroom for our daughter) and a standalone sauna and pool outside.

Each bedroom would have an en suite bathroom and dressing room. There would be air conditioning or under floor heating throughout, depending on the location. Yeah, right. I could almost feel the rustle of pigs’ wings as I looked back at the list. Clearly, our dreams were way bigger than our budget.

We started again and came up with a more realistic plan. There’d be a bedroom for each of us, plus a guest room (when you live in Barbados, people visit) and a granny flat for my mum. We also needed a utility room and a downstairs loo. An office was a must, since we both worked from home, and a library to store our ever expanding collection of books, was practically essential. Anything else would be extra.

The Spatially Challenged Draftswoman

Next, we thought we’d try drawing it to see what it could look like. This was the era when home design software abounded. That’s maybe not so surprising as Britain is a nation of DIYers. The price range was pretty wide, but we went for something in the mid range, and then I had to convert our dream into a design.

This probably wasn’t our greatest idea. I’m great with words, but have poor spatial awareness skills. That made it unlikely I’d be able to properly visualize a 3D building. But I persevered, and eventually we had something we could show to an architect to get the ball rolling. All I’m going to say on that is that professionals are professionals for a reason, and if we self-build again, I won’t be taking that particular task on.

Finding an Architect

It made sense to choose someone with local knowledge, so we were forced to make another trip to tropical climes. (Oh, the hardship!) Our contacts pointed us to someone who was about to set up her own firm, so we arranged a meeting. I mentally awarded her brownie points for not laughing into her drink when she saw our amateur home design efforts.

She asked us a lot of questions to get an idea of what kind of building would suit us best. What kind of people were we? What were our likes and dislikes? How did we use our current living space? She also gave us some magazines to look at, which featured Caribbean style homes with long verandas and balconies, shutters on the windows and cool, open plan spaces.

We spent the next couple of nights looking through those mags as if our lives depended on them, choosing and discarding layouts and colors with reckless abandon. Eventually we came up with some workable ideas and met her again to get the architect’s-eye-view. Would our plans pass muster?

The Final Design

Thankfully, they did and she went away to design us a small-scale palace. In addition to the usual complement of bedrooms and bathrooms (four and three), it would feature a double height sitting room, with a mezzanine gallery around the top level where we would keep our books and music. This was an innovative alternative to a purpose-built library and we were getting excited already. We also thought about having an outside dining area on part of the veranda, screened in, Florida lanai-style.

A Dream Deferred

At this point, we thought it would only be a matter of months before our dream home was ready, We were wrong. Due to various bureaucratic nightmares, it would be another two years before we were able to start building. Learn about those setbacks in the next instalment.

© Sharon Hurley Hall

Sharon Hurley Hall is an anti-racism writer, a professional B2B writer and blogger, and co-host of The Introvert Sisters podcast. This is a revised and updated composite version of a story originally published on Sharon’s Writing Lab.