About three years ago, my husband and I started into a relationship-challenger remodeling project on our house. We started in the beginning of the year with grand hopes of finishing it in time to host that year’s family Thanksgiving dinner. (Note my point in the first sentence; that was three years ago.) Outside of the fact that the remodeling is taking forever, it really is going to be pretty sweet when it’s all done.

After a few months of working with some architect-friends of ours, we finally settled on the plans and were ready to start making it happen. Since we remodeled parts of our last house, we thought it was pretty doable but not too crazy. Basically, we’re remodeling 70% of the main floor - relocating the kitchen to a different room (all new appliances, countertops, cabinets), opening up a couple walls, remodeling the living room (install hardwood, remove popcorn ceiling, take down paneling), and add a small mudroom. (Yeah, ok, I guess we are crazy.)

Since we wanted to do most of the work ourselves to save money, we started plugging away on research. As you may know, there’s a lot to figure out when you’re remodeling. Our main priorities: look stunning; do it for cheaper than other similar remodels; and do it as environmentally friendly as possible given the first two points. I was quickly racking up bookmarked eco-friendly remodeling sites and information about appliances while my husband was starting to plan the timeline. Before we knew it, we had both amassed information that was getting lost and not communicated to each other.

So we decided to give 37 Signals’ Basecamp web application a try to see if it would help us get more organized with our project, and it has been fantastic. Basecamp is an online project collaboration tool that allows you to assign tasks, gather feedback, and set milestones – among other features. Since we didn’t want to spend any more money than necessary, we opted for their most basic (free) plan. Included with this version are the following features with examples of how we used them.

Dashboard
The Dashboard is a high-level view of what’s going on with your project. If someone posts something, everyone sees an intro line about what was posted. Included with the intro line is the date of the posting and who posted it.

Messages
Messages are a great way to get information out to everyone in the project. We used messages to post findings on research we had done about appliance, eco-friendly materials, water filtration systems, windows, lighting, and many more topics.

Milestones
Milestones help you set goals. We set milestones like “Living Room Demolition” and “Salvage Hardwood Flooring”. Milestones can be checked off in Basecamp letting you tell others when you’ve, well, reached your milestone.

To-Dos
To-Dos help you get your goals done. We set to-dos like “Call to get a dumpster” and “Meet with the kitchen designer”.

Comments
Similar to blogs, you can post comments on Messages and To-Dos. We used commenting to talk back and forth about what was discussed in a message, or to give an update if more was learned since the time the message was posted. This way, we always had a record of what refrigerator we decided on five months after we had made the decision.

Writeboards
Writeboards are editable document pages similar to having a big whiteboard to write on. We use the Writeboard to post weekly status updates on what was accomplished that week.

Email Notification
For most of the features you can select who gets an email notification when information is posted or changed.

Categories
Organize! We set up categories for all our postings like “Appliances” and “Windows”.

RSS Feed
Feed yourself updates on everything going on. Not familiar with RSS? Get started by reading the first of three posts by Meghan about RSS basics.

Subscribe to iCal
You can get milestones from your project directly imported directly into your calendar application. (As long as the calendar supports the iCalendar standard. One example is Google’s online calendar.)

Secured Access
Your project is as secure as the username and password you sign in with.

There have been other great online tools we’ve used for this project too. One of the limitations of Basecamp’s free plan is that it does not include any file sharing, so we have been using Google Docs to share documents between us. My husband (being the great project manager that he is), created a project timeline that he updates regularly. He saves each updated version as a .pdf file and uploads to Google Docs. Then, within Basecamp he links to it.

While much of our attempt at organization comes from our motivation to get this project done (well, we’re both somewhat of organization freaks too), I know we’d be way farther behind had it not been for Basecamp helping us to keep it all together!

Julie Horton is a Senior User Experience Architect at Clockwork Active Media Systems where she helps clients create easy to use websites. She has worked with 3M, US Bank, Best Buy, General Mills, United Health Group, Cargill, ADC Telecommunications, and many more. Julie holds a B.S. in Scientific and Technical Communication from the University of Minnesota and actively participates in the Minneapolis/St. Paul user experience community.

Follow Julie on Twitter: @juliefaye