Home Garden Patio
Anyone can point me to the process of building a home?
So you buy the land. Then, do you find a builder that takes care of the whole process or do you have to pay an architect, then find a company, etc? Are there companies that take care of the process A-Z? Any ideas how I can save money? I think I can do a lot of the interior work myself, but the grading, and exterior is harder. I plan to use lots of recycled materials so its cheaper, want to build it green and don’t need a very big house, a 2 bedroom + convertible office, 2 bath, 1000-1350 feet. My passion is having the garden/patio be the focal point.
Anyone can provide some input on the time it takes? A ballpark figure. I know getting plans approved takes a while.
Also, is it better to buy a home and re-model it than build one from scratch? Time-wise, money-wise, hassle-wise?
My husband and I built our own house. It’s cheapest to do the work yourself obviously. We subed out the excavating. If you pay an architect you could get into a lot of money. There are alot of magazines with nice home plans. We visited new plans of homes around us and chose one we liked. From there we drew it up ourselves and had a friend who works for an architech firm finalize our plans.
My husband is a contractor so he has all the knowledge and know how. I did learn to drive the bobcat, I hammered nails, cut & carried shingles, Insulated the place myself, ran electric and drilled every hole in the house for the wires. It took us nine months to complete the hole thing from the start of excavating to finish. We hung our own drywall but had a company come in to sand and finish it because its mess and if not done perfect you will see the joints. Even though my husband could have done it, for the money it was well worth not having the mess and burden. We also subed out the brick layers however we laid our own block foundation and poured our own footer.
We built our house by ourselves with basicly the help from only one other guy (evenings & weekends) while still working our regular jobs. We took our 2 weeks vacation time to do the framing. Our friends came together and helped when we poured our foundation and when we poured concrete in the basement.
One important thing I didn’t mention is before you start anything, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR UTILITIES ARE. and how you will be getting them to your house. That was our biggest obstical and I hated plumbing!
To answer the other parts of your question. My husbands company builds the house on your own lot and pretty much will handle everything from a-z. You of course would need to find a reputable company around you. Word of mouth and other people who had good work done are the best ones to ask. Don’t just look in the phone book. Check them out and get at least 3 bids. Make sure the builder is not going to be doing other jobs and working on building your house in between. If you choose to do some of the work yourself, be prepared to have it accomplished on time so that it doesn’t hold the builder up.
If you wanted to remodel instead you need to consider factors of resale value and how much $ you would be putting into the house if it would be worth it. My husband always prefers building new because old houses have old problems, leaky basements, old pipes, old windows, poor insulation, It all adds up.
Urban Survival Patio Gardening – Episode 1
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