Building a house is not all that difficult. I know, I did it. And I don’t mean that I hired a bunch of trades and wrote a bunch of cheques, I mean I swung a hammer and did most of the work myself. I did hire trades for some thing that I didn’t want to take a chance on, like plumbing under the concrete floor, and installing the steep pitch steel roof. Before building my house, I didn’t have any significant building experience (I built some shelves, a planter and a shed), but I did do a lot of reading.
Why would I want to build my own house. Mostly for economics, but also because it is something that I had always wanted to do. As for the economic side of things, by doing most of the work myself, I figure I saved about $100,000 and remember that is after tax dollars. The main construction took about 8 months, during which I did not do any outside work. At that point we had a building that we could move into. We took another 5 years to get it finished while I did other work to earn a living.
To finance the project, we took the savings that I had, plus the appreciation from the house we had before we started, giving us a starting budget of approximately $100,000. We had bought the land (40 ac) a couple of years previously (also from savings). After moving in, I found a new job (that didn’t pay much) and used that income to finish the house. So by saving beforehand, having a bit of luck in the real estate market, and being able to live in a construction zone for 5 years, we were able to build mortgage free.
If you are interested in building your own house, I would suggest that you get a subscription to Fine Homebuilding Magazine for at least a year, or get back issues, or borrow them from a library and do some reading. It won’t make you a great builder, but it will give a good idea of what good building looks like. Another resource that I found invaluable was the Ontario Building Code Manual. If I needed to see what was required by code, all I had to do was look it up.
The most important part I found was to have a house design that was fairly straight forward and simple to build. No turrets or bump outs. Just a simple 2 story box. We did make some complications by building into the side of a hill, but they were not insurmountable. I did my own design work, because I had a pretty good idea what I wanted, but if you don’t feel up to that challenge, pick a plan that is simple. Simple designs do not go out of style, are cheaper to build, and are easier for inexperienced builders.
There is a certain satisfaction in having done the work yourself, and you have the advantage of knowing where every pipe and wire is located. I would suggest taking a lot of pictures during the process, so that you can document were everything is located, and it is also fun to show off to visitors once you are finished.
I documented the process in a photo diary that can be seen at www.ownerbuilder.ca