Building Your Own House

[wsuffa]

Don't forget to include the cost of a broken arm. Sigh.

 

[Geico266]

I would just install a forced air furnace and the ductwork. Load cheaper than building a whole new house. And that 130 year-old house will still be here after the new one has rotted into ground.

We have forced heat and AC with a air to air heat pump now. We heat with wood to cut costs and it was good excersize. I don't have the time or motivation to cut wood after 15 years. I would rather be building RVs or flying.

 

[Geico266]

I think a new house would have been easier.

Yep! I've rehabbed more homes than I care to remember.

 

[Mike Smith]

This is what I do for a living, so I know a little about it. The most common mistake that I see with people who "build it themselves" is that they dont know what they are looking at. For instance, after your framing is done you need to look at EVERY stud in the walls, A bowed stud means a bowed wall. on the other hand, I have seen home owners lose their minds over cement that "wasnt finished properly" that was going to be covered with a mud bed. Also I find that the most expensive part of doing it yourself is just doing things in the right order. If you get ahead of yourself it will cost you in comebacks and do overs. And lastly, dont treat your subs as if you believe they are going to rip you off and do substandard work. If they do, fire them. Until then, be professional.

 

[kyleb]

I built my house about 12 years ago. Huge amount of work and frustration. I might tackle it again, but I think I'd get more professional help the second time around. Big problems with contractors not showing up and trying to do substandard work.

That's one of the problems when the contractors know that you're not a builder and probably won't need their services again. They have very little motivation to do anything more than the minimum necessary to get paid.

Of course, there are plenty of good contractors which take pride in their work, but there are plenty of the other kind too.

 

[Pjsmith]

During the five years I was in-house for a home builder/developer I toyed with this idea myself; Nearly all of the mid-levels on up had GCd their own homes and there was a plethora of informational sources to supplement my own experience. Somewhere I have literally everything I need to build the dream home, right down to permit-ready plans (until enough time passes that codes substantially change, anyway).

Here's the thing, and it's advice that I got from everyone: this will consume all of your spare time and some of your work time. Unless you hire a project manager (which is an option somewhere between self-GC and hired GC) you really need to visit and inspect every single day work is done on the house. As a result, they offered, never plan on doing anything yourself or it will never get done. Now this of course runs contrary to some of the advice in this thread, and you'll have to take or leave it as you see fit, but I have enough 95% done projects around my existing home to know that 'the last little bit' might be hard to motivate yourself to continue on once you get the C/O.

Mike above advocated looking at everything and knowing what you're looking at. Stellar advice. It occurs to me that here outside of Chicago I know at least a few guys who are ex-superintendents for home builders who are un or under-employed and who you could probably hire on an cash hourly basis for a couple hours' every day to walk the project with you and check everything. I'm guessing the same is true in your neck of the woods. You might even try to find one before you have the architectural plans finalized to help you review them. Of the some odd 200 models that my company built, I can't think of one that wasn't revised after our construction team looked over the original architect's plans. Some things which are architecturally possible are not practically or economically feasible on site.

Good luck with the project!

p.s. I also used to get this advice a lot: visit the home the night before the drywall is hung with a garbage bag and shop vac and clean all of the wall cavities. Seems like mostly empty lunch bags, spit cups, portable coke bottle urinals, etc. have a tendency to get closed up under drywall..........

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

Oh - no one has mentioned the really pain in the butt part of this - building inspectors.

For the most part, they seem to be guys that couldn't hack it as a contrator and wanted a cushy job where they never have to take their hands out of their pockets. Some will pretty much leave you alone. But some feel a need to throw their weight around and don't like dealing with a home owner instead of a contractor who is more likely to buy them lunch...

 

[wsuffa]

Oh - no one has mentioned the really pain in the butt part of this - building inspectors.

For the most part, they seem to be guys that couldn't hack it as a contrator and wanted a cushy job where they never have to take their hands out of their pockets. Some will pretty much leave you alone. But some feel a need to throw their weight around and don't like dealing with a home owner instead of a contractor who is more likely to buy them lunch...

Some are good, and some are bad. Like some other government employees, there are a few that like to play "gotcha" on nitpicky stuff. When I have my furnace replaced, one of the items the first inspector "failed" it on was the caulking where the pipes went through the wall (he also tried to fail it because the doors to the closet had not been reinstalled.... I just looked at him and asked him if he wanted me to put them back on right then and there - which would block his ability to see one side of the furnace.) He also failed it and insisted that the water heater needed something that was not required by code (the contractor called his supervisor....). I was using one of the top contractors in the area, who knew more than the inspector.

I got the distinct impression that he was not looking just to see if it met code, he was looking to "protect" the homeowner from the evil contractor.

The second inspector, on the other hand, passed the whole thing in 5 minutes after remarking at the good quality installation. Capable, smart, competent, even made a suggestion about what kind of replacement doors might look nice & be easy to install.

 

[Anthony]

I will echo what Bill said. Some are reasonable, and ok to work with, some are on a power trip and some are mandated by their leadership to generate additional fees through unreasonable code enforcement. I do this for large corporate, and commercial real estate projects, and local and state code enforcement really have you over a barrel. They can hold up certificates of occupancy on a whim, and change the rules at the last minute.

Choose a contractor that KNOWS the code enforcement officials personally, and has a good working relationship with them from past projects. If you do deal with code enforcement officials yourself, stress that you want any construction/installations to meet code, be safe and respect their views, opinions, and input. If you find a situation where they are just blatantly wrong, DO NOT rub their nose in it. Politely point out that there may be a mis-understanding, and get expert help if need be.

 

[Amelia]

The thing that amazes me about people who go to all the trouble and expense of building their own house, is that they then build one just exactly like all the other houses in town. If you're going to build your own from scratch, build it with YOUR needs in mind, not what mass-produced ordinary calls for. Before you decide on plan 32 in the book, think about where is truly the best place for your family's laundry, the pleasantest kitchen for the way you cook, the view from that lot, the solar gain from south-facing windows, how much north windows are going to cost you in extra heating bills. Let your fingers do the walking through your house plans for a typical day, for a party, and so forth. Our architect resisted non-standard ideas. He kept drawing a U-shaped kitchen. Horrible. I kept insisting, "I cook, and I hate that layout. Put it back the way you found it in my sketch." A number of other places (mudroom/pantry)where innovation won out over his preferred convention made us very happy for many years. To his credit, he understood our desire for much extra insulation, airlock entries, and passive solar ideas, and we wound up with one of the biggest, brightest houses with the lowest utility bills in town. We didn't build it ourselves, but were there every single day, and if something were done sloppily or a stud wasn't straight, we were there to suggest it be redone. After a while, the boys got used to doing it right the first time. We built in Jimmy Carter's term, with interest rates way up there, and we were the only building project in town, so we had our choice of the finest craftsmen in the county. Looks as if that may be the case this year, too, eh? What a grand adventure. If some storm came through here where we now live, and leveled this "somebody else's house", I'd be thrilled to build again-- got a whole new set of great ideas for how to make it better.

 

[Richard]

Amelia, that is incredibly inisghtful. I too have been amazed by that phenomena.

I had a bldg inspector red tag job after job. Then I found out he was assigning himself to my projects. I cried harrassment. It came out in the wash that he would tag my work because doing so would lead to a face-to-face meeting. And in that way he could glean knowledge from me as I explained construction methods.

 

[Richard]

For several projects I hired on as a "deputy inspector", hired by the project owner to supervise work (ride herd on the subs) and for all administrative work, including meeting with bldg & planning staff.