They say it’s easier to steer a moving ship than one that’s stuck in the docks.

As Backyard Architect sets sail, your invaluable feedback has helped chart a clearer course. What began as a simple newsletter has now set its sights on greater ambitions.

In the interest of transparency, I’ve outlined Backyard Architect’s roadmap for 2024 and beyond. Below is what you can expect from us in the coming year, I trust it will ignite your excitement.

TL;DR

• Background

  • Public perception is that contractors practice the dark arts

  • People are eager to build with their hands but don’t know how

• Our Objective

  • Become the go-to source for property development in North America

  • Empower 10,000 homeowners to play architect 2024

• 2024 Roadmap

  • Release the complete guide on how to build a garden room

  • Craft and launch an AI builder assistant

  • Create and ship the first garden room build kit

Background

Every time I go to the mechanic, I’m reminded how little I know about what’s actually wrong with my car. As I furrow my brow and pretend to follow along, the mechanic holds the power to request an arm, a leg, and 12 weeks in order to fix my problem. I’m not smart enough on the subject to push back; for all I know, mechanics practice the dark arts.

It took me a while to realize that for most people the same perception extends to home improvement. The average experience of receiving a quote has the contractor take cryptic measurements, retreat back to their truck for some quick alchemy, then return with a estimate far beyond initial expectations. Having studied this space and operated as a contractor myself, I see past the mysterious facade and recognize the core problem: a widespread lack of knowledge and education.

Today, people are quicker to understand code, content strategy, or cameras than craftsmanship. The days of the average person being able to build their own home now seem as foreign to us as making a fire without a lighter. Even though this education gap exists, there is clearly a demand for learning here. Videos on off-grid living and people building homes from scratch rack up millions of views. We’re interested in the core human experience of building shelter, but we’ve lost touch with how to do it.

Aspiring To Empower Home Builders

In the early 1900s, the Sears catalog sold over 70,000 home kits across North America. To contextualize, constructing a home from a Sears kit in 1923 would have cost $32,000 in today’s dollars—a price tag unimaginable in our current market. This affordability stemmed from the advantages of kit-based housing, leveraging factory automation, reduced shipping costs compared to pre-built homes, and the potential for homeowners to undertake the assembly themselves. Such kits offer a path for empowering the average person to once again create their home… if their assembly is made easy. Sears catalog kits were comprised of raw materials similar to those found at Home Depot today. In order for there to be widespread adoption, it’s modern revival will need to look a lot more like Lego.

Our Objective

Long term: The goal for Backyard Architect is to become the go-to source for residential property development in North America. We’ll begin with garden room build kits, then work our way up to accessory dwelling units and full-scale homes.

Short term: Empower homeowners to build in their backyard. Do so through educational content paired with accessible plans and materials. Our aim is to empower 10,000 homeowners through our content and products in 2024.

2024 Roadmap

Release the complete guide on how to build a garden room

This summer I completed the construction of Char’s Office. I filmed the entire build with the goal of turning it into a full guide on how to create a garden room. I just finished the rough edit and expect to release it at the start of the year. It’s extremely value-dense, includes narrated footage of every step, and provides hand drawn explanations when beneficial. I’ll be releasing the guide on my YouTube channel with an associated plan set that will be free to subscribers of Backyard Architect.

The aim here is to grow the Backyard Architect community, build trust by providing high quality educational content, and capture all of my learnings from building Frise Design + Build, a custom garden room development company.

Craft and launch an AI builder assistant

OpenAI recently unveiled their version of the Apple App Store: Custom GPTs. It allows developers to create custom versions of ChatGPT that are tailored towards specific tasks. You can tell it to talk a certain way, upload documents for it to pull from, and give it certain rules to abide by.

I’ll be toying with this platform to create a builder assistant for backyard architects. The digital handyman will be able to walk you through the garden room build, help design new projects, and teach you a thing or two about construction.

Comment on this post what you think it’s tone should be; right now I’m thinking “if Bob Ross was a carpenter”.

Create and ship the first garden room build kit

Garden room build kits offer a shippable product that can reduce the barrier of entry for residential construction. When paired with high quality content on how to assemble the kits and an AI builder assistant, users will have the choice of building it themselves for the cost savings and experience or hiring a contractor who will work more efficiently due to their ease of construction and lack of waste.

As a subscriber, you’ll get first access to these kits when they come out. I’ll be fully documenting their creation through this newsletter.

100x Impact

During my time creating Frise Design + Build, it became clear that the business had a fundamental issue: it couldn’t scale beyond me. Heck, I was in the name.

Because it was tied to myself and my crew, it was confined to only serving Toronto. As my YouTube videos started attracting viewers from across North America, prospective clients sought garden rooms from locations beyond our reach. I knew that if I wanted to impact a larger audience, I would need a different approach—bringing us to today.

If you know someone enthusiastic about the idea of constructing their own home, invite them to join us as we embark on this exciting journey. Let’s build something incredible.