Has anyone built their own home?

[diana_of_the_dunes]

I'm still daydreaming/spazzing a bit about moving.  DH and I have looked at the kit homes from Shelter-Kit, and like the idea of building our own home.  But, with both of us working FT, I'm just not sure how realistic it is.  We do have several good friends that would help, and maybe some family from out-of-town as well.  But we'd have to do something of an old-fashioned barn raising to get the frame and roof up quickly.  I think we could manage the walls, windows, and doors a bit more slowly and with less help.  As for the interior, we'd do our own framing, then hire out electrical, drywall (to a friend), and finish carpentry.  If we did PEX plumbing, I think we could do it ourselves, then just have a friend who is a plumber come out and look it over.  We seem to have amassed quite a few friends and acquaintences who are or know tradesmen.  I suppose that's what happens when you hang out with firefighters!

I've even gone so far as to draw up plans for our proposed home, creating it in such a way that it would be livable long before it would be finished.  With a bedroom and a "study" on the main floor, we could take our time finishing the upstairs, and still have a separate room for the littles to share. 

Has anyone built their own home, either from a kit or from scratch?  How was the experience?  How long did it take to have a roof, walls, and the necessities to live there in place?  I realize that the "necessities" vary greatly from person-to-person...  I'd be happy to use a sawdust toilet for a while, but I'm fairly certain that DH would want plumbing.  What about having kidlets in a home-in-progress?

Thanks in advance for sharing any experiences. 

[Linzie2]

We are finishing up our own home, but it was started by a contractor(my step-father)  We used Arxx forms with poured concrete walls, so they were done in a matter of a few days.  We're doing most of the work inside ourselves, except the solar panels and hooking up the generator.  We both work fulltime, too, so that is certainly making the progress slow-going.

It's doable, but I'm glad we have one person with the grand plan in his mind.  He answers all of our questions, and comes over if we need help figuring something out.  Also, he's very informed as far as codes and rules and such.  On that note, will you need a certificate of occupancy before you move in?  Maybe not if you're not borrowing money for the project, but something to keep in mind.

We've got our progress tracked and regularly update at our blog: darkstarfarm.wordpress.com

Good luck!

[lucyem]

We did it and I would not do it again.  My husband did the foundation, we hired a contractor to get the framing done with my husbands help.  We did an awful lot of the basics and all the finish work.  We could have done it all, and have the know how, but some projects had to get done so we had to hire people.  Plus we hate dealing with sheet rock.  We did have some help from friends but friends have their own lives and do not always show up when you need them to.  Basically it was finished the day before we sold it.  In our town as the owner we could do our own electric and plumbing and no certificate of occupancy was needed.  Not that I would have cared they would have had to pry me out of that house.  I spent a year in an uninsulated packed 3 room cottage with an infant and when the heat was working in the empty shell of a new house we moved.  So what if we had to walk back to the cottage for a shower or food.  It was warm.  We lived on the first floor for the first year.  Two years before the upstairs bathroom and a tub.  I think it took 4 years before the kitchen cabinets were going in.  In every baby and toddler photo of my kids they are in the midst of building chaos.  I have one of my oldest standing in a play pen in the middle of the rough framed living room with a hammer in hand.  Basically it took over our entire lives.  There were no vacations or lay about weekends.  Daily trips to home depot 40 minutes away were not uncommon.  And the worst was that because it took so long you sometimes found yourself fixing things on the house before the other half of it was built.  I think back to those years and get exhausted thinking about it.  We ended up with an amazing home built exactly to our needs that we sold because we had to move for work and a school system that would meet our youngest's needs.  

If I won powerball I would have someone build me the perfect home.  Otherwise I would buy something that worked for me and I would pay reputable people to remodel something in it I did not like.  

[diana_of_the_dunes]

lucyem - Your scenario sounds something like what we're living in right now!  We bought our home 5 years ago, and we've been working on it ever since.  I sometimes wonder if it will ever be done.  It's habitable, and currently decent looking, but there was quite a while (thankfully pre-DS) where the living room looked like a bomb had exploded in it.  I can definitely empathize.

Linzie2 - I am a follower of your blog already and have been following your "adventures" for a while now.  I can't wait to see your new home come together.  I believe that we would need a certificate of occupancy.  It's pretty easy to get in our area IIRC; I think you only need working plumbing, running water, 4 walls, and a roof.  We have pretty lenient building codes.  I have a friend who used to build houses for a living, and he knows all the details.  His brother currently builds houses, and we would be hiring him to help us out.

I'm just not sure where the in-over-our-heads point is.  We've done most of our own renovations in our current home, but have neither the skills or desire to do the finish work.  And I think that's a good thing, at least for us, because that's where most projects seem to stall.  We can get a room to the point where it's habitable, then it's like we need a vacation from the project for a while.  I still have trim missing from our bedroom, office, upstairs hall, stairwell, and living room.  The rooms themselves are "done", but the details aren't complete.  Because that is the part we'd be hiring out if we built a home, I think we'd have less chance leaving something 80% done. 

We also wouldn't be trying to live in the new home unless/until the downstairs is done.  Meaning walls, flooring, trim, and light fixtures.  I can live with our current level of un-finished-ness, but I won't ever intentionally do it again.  It's too easy to get caught up in other things and just let thing lie.

[Linzie2]

Originally Posted by diana_of_the_dunes 

We also wouldn't be trying to live in the new home unless/until the downstairs is done.  Meaning walls, flooring, trim, and light fixtures.  I can live with our current level of un-finished-ness, but I won't ever intentionally do it again.  It's too easy to get caught up in other things and just let thing lie.

Exactly!  We're going to try to be finished before we move in because I worry that we'll leave a ton of stuff undone and tolerate it if we're already there.  That's the advice we hear from other people and contractors!

Lucyem~  I totally hear you on the no vacations/no rest time.  It's Saturday night at 9pm right now and I'm home with the kids and DH is up trying to finish up running the gas line into the house/to the generator.
 

It's a lot of work and sacrifice and I hope that in the end I feel like it was worth it.  Right now I feel like it will be, I just hope I still feel that way when it's all over!

Oh, and DH is  a teacher, so he gets weeks off here and there, plus the summer, so that's a big bonus for us!