This probably belongs in the remodeling forum but since it applies to my organizational habits on nearly anything, not just remodeling, thought I would bring it up here.

I have numerous flaws but one that is ruining our remodeling efforts is I can't seem to develop a grand plan. I do fine if you tell me you need the corner to look pretty or some part of a room but if you want me to design/decorate a whole room, I'm lost. My decisions are terrible or very high risk at best. If I do a grand plan anyway because there MUST be one, I always make a huge number of changes because my vision changes as something is built (usually).

My nephew is a contractor and is now building a deck for us which will actually be a back porch and is rebuilding the front porch because boards need replacing/etc.

I just realized today that my problem of organizing from the bottom up instead of top down may be genetic. My nephew who can be very creative and a very good carpenter is designing the porch as he goes along. He works on the stairs. Then he works on the first step, next maybe the posts or maybe in a different order but my niece who is helping him pointed this out to me today when I asked how things were going, that he doesn't have a grand plan.

All his work has been great, very high quality but I wander if there is some problem with our "left brain" or "right brain" that prevents us from being able to do upfront planning on a grand scale. I wish I could change this. It is so painful to try to do this remodeling. If I was doing the work myself, it wouldn't be so bad but it really causes problems when you're trying to direct others. It makes it seem like you don't know what you want because the bottom up approach sometimes uses a lot of "iterations" until its right.

If and when I do finish some design project, I always get a whole lot of compliments. My husband defers to me and he is a very critical type but he likes what I do but taking such a huge long time because of my methods is really wearing me down.

Just thought I'd mention this in case someone else has this problem and has figured out ways to improve their brain/habits in this respect.

--Alice