Recently, I got an email from a reader asking for advice about building a home. While I do have some experience in home fixing-up and I can paint All Of The Things, I have nooo clue about actually building a house!
Image thanks to Armchair Builder via Flickr Creative Commons
However, I’m positive that some of you have been through this process and have some wisdom to share. Read the email below, and please do leave your advice in the comments!
(Email subscribers: so that this reader can see your comments, click on the post title to come to the actual blog and leave a comment. Clicking reply will send your comment to just me!)
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I’m in a bit of a desperate hunt for house building advice. My husband, three older kids, and I just sold our house (had to actually pay money to do it), but made ourselves free to move to our 5 acres with the intent of homesteading. Anyway…..
The only debt we have is the land payment and we are stuck on what kind of house to build. We have chosen a few smaller home plans (1300-1400 sq ft) but when we add in a basement option, a mud room option, hardwood floors (I don’t want any rugs at all), a metal roof (good in warding off any fires from the forest), non vinyl windows…… it all adds up.
We can swing such a payment but were kind of hoping to have a very small mortgage payment. We even considered converting our 30’x40′ garage on our land not our home. But we fear, in the end, it would add up to be as much as a house built for us. And we certainly need a garage if we homestead. There’s a lot to consider.
Have you come across people who have built their own homes? What have they done in order to remain frugal? When I look up frugal homes on the internet I find tiny, tiny homes or ones that are just plain strange.
Thank you,
Karen
engineermom
Saturday 19th of July 2014
Ana White. She and her husband built their house in Alaska, and recently built a duplex for their moms, the Momplex. Anawhite.com
Connie
Saturday 19th of July 2014
Here's a suggestion: Build the garage first while you are paying off the land. Plan to live there for at least a couple of years while you are getting yourself together financially for the bigger project. Put in a small basic kitchen area, a bathroom, and at least two bedrooms while planning the layout so that when you finally build your dream home, you can easily convert this space into whatever type of storage/workhouse, etc that you may need. That way you are not sinking yourselves into a mountain of debt, nor are you resigning yourself and your family into living in an RV which can be extremely uncomfortable, especially during the winter months, or hot summer months if you are from a southern state, not to mention confining. Not only will you have peace of mind, but you will get your toe in the water as to how the whole building process works. You will also quickly get a good idea of how rapidly the costs for such projects add up. My family spent a summer in an RV one year when we built one of our houses. Things can deteriorate pretty quickly when you combine the stress of home building, maintaining your careers, confined living, and construction mud and barrels of musty laundry everywhere all the while trying to keep family morale up. Not to mention hauling water and emptying the sewer. We vowed we would never do it again.
Jen Y
Friday 11th of July 2014
I've never built a home but I have a friend who built a metal home. It is beautiful! It was basically a metal building they built & designed it into a home instead of a shop. It's all hardwood inside with gorgeous high ceilings in the front & a stairway leading to a balcony that over looks the main living space & leads into the private bedrooms & baths.
On the outside they added a beautiful porch & landscaping so it doesn't look like a shop at all but a cross between a modern home & a farmhouse. It sits in the middle of their wooded land.
Maybe your reader could search metal homes or converting metal shops to homes for ideas?
Dana
Thursday 10th of July 2014
So many great ideas here. We have not built but have remodeled. A few tips that might be helpful: --Big box stores (like Lowes or Home Depot) will price match. You can also purchase coupons on ebay for 10% at these stores. 10% can be a huge savings on cabinets, lumber, etc. We found that Menards has the best prices + 11% rebates sales at times + you can use those big box 10% off coupons. --On Craigslist, you can find whole kitchens for sale for pennies on a dollar. Granted, you have to plan your layout according to theirs. But the kitchens can be really nice. People sell everything (cabinets, countertops, appliances) when they want to upgrade.
Kari S
Thursday 10th of July 2014
We had a home built in 2011. We originally left the upstairs unfinished, but my husband has started working on that now.
We went ahead and did the expensive things that we thought would save us money in the long run, like energy efficient windows, an on-demand water heater and foam insulation, but we went with inexpensive countertops (laminate) and flooring (stained concrete). Other things we did to save money included doing all the interior trim work and painting, as well as construction cleanup and final grading and cleanup outside.
If you're looking at house plans, watch for plans with minimal exterior corners, simple rooflines and minimal unused interior spaces (such as hallways). While it is nice to have special architectural details, they all add to the cost.
As another commenter stated, it is almost always less expensive and 'greener' to buy an existing home. I love my house, but I was shocked at how many resources go into building a home from scratch, as well as the impact on land that I was already attached to. Everything went fairly smoothly for us, but I'm not sure I would do it again.