Preparation to take before building your own home

Making the decision to build your own home and / or homestead is an exciting one, but definitely a big one. I'm going to share what we did to prepare once we decided for sure we were ready to tackle this massive endeavor.  As we move along I'm sure there will be preparations we overlooked. We will share those as we progress.

We also put together a quick printable "Before you begin checklist". This post is by no means to deter you from making the decision to build your homestead yourself. On the contrary, we really hope you do take on this exciting adventure and use our posts and tools to make your build as smooth as possible.

Budgeting for a new home build

The first question you should answer is "What is your budget?". Some great questions you should think about are:

• How much do you WANT to spend?
• How much CAN you spend?
• Are you getting a construction loan?
• Can you qualify for a construction loan?
• Do you have saved up funds for large ticket steps (land purchase, first lumber purchase, doors and windows)?
• Do you have spare funds for surprises and problems?
• Can you afford to hire extra labor on big tasks not safe to do alone (clearing trees, raising trusses, roofing)?

These are the questions we considered before making any rash decision. We've put together an expense spreadsheet file that we are using to track and estimate everything.

Time management when building a home yourself

The next crucial consideration is your available time to dedicate to getting your build done. My first piece of advice coming from my experience of being a DIYer who has remodeled and flipped two houses. For every task along the way, however long you think it will take you, double it. I'm sure if you are an experienced builder you have possibly already fine tuned your time estimation capabilities, but for those who are new to this type of work, trust me, double your time estimates when planning.

Things to think about prior:

• How many hours can you work a day / week on the build?
• Do we have full time jobs that eat up most of our daily hours and energy?
• How long is your commute to the property?
• Are you allowed and willing to camp on the property for days at a time to save time and money on commutes?
• If you have kids, do you have other afternoon and weekend time expenses such as trips to daycare, sports, homeschooling, etc.?
• How many total man hours are you realistically capable of putting in? (number of people X daily hours)
• Will certain tasks be better and quicker to hire out, not just for quality, but for time efficiency?
• Can you wait 1-2 years to move in?
• How much time do you have for researching tasks, product hunting, designing, etc.?

Definitely don't underestimate how much time it takes finding the products you will need. After flipping a couple house, we learned quickly how much time is spent choosing the right flooring, cabinets, fireplace, vanities, etc. It adds up quickly and can easily become a massive overlooked time expense.

Bank account management

I highly recommend setting up a new checking account just for the build and only use this account for all things related to the build. A lot of expenses go unaccounted for such as cleaning supplies, miscellaneous materials such as screws, glues, trash bags, small tools, gas fill ups, and the list goes on and on. This will allow you to keep a very tight eye on your budget.

Have reliable help on stand by

There will be tasks where an extra set of hands will be extremely helpful, safer, and downright required. Decide early on who you will ask for help or hire when these days come.

You'd be surprised how much you can actually accomplish alone with a bit of creativity and hard work but is it worth it or is it a large time waste?

Take hanging trusses for example. Is is possible to do alone? Sure, you can rent a machine, lift the truss in place, hop out of the truck and run to one end of the truss, climb a ladder, realize it's in the wrong spot, run back to the truck, move it around a bit, run back over to the truss, nail it in, go down and to the other side of the truss, climb a ladder, nail it in, move your ladders for the next truss and so on...

Or you can have two buddies over, offer them some pizza and beer after work, have one guy on each side while you lift the truss into place, while they are securing it, you get the next one ready. Depending on your house size, doing a task like this alone could easily be a week as opposed to a single days work. Was it worth it?

Even if you can't get any friends or family out for a task like this, find some cheap labor on craigslist, facebook, or a home depot parking lot early in the morning if you're desperate. $150 a day for a couple of days work may still be worth you shaving off 3-4 days of solo work. Not to mention much safer.

Your final preparation before you get too far ahead of yourself

The most important preparation you should take before building a home yourself is you and your families mental endurance

For the DIYer, a project like this will probably be one of the hardest things you have opted into doing. It will be stressful some days, there will be problems, there will be disagreements, there will be setbacks. Worst of all, there will be days where you want to quit, days where you regret your decisions, and days where you don't think you can take it any longer.

Being prepared for these days is a must. But how do you prepare for this?

• First, understanding these days will come and remembering the goal in sight is why you prepared for these days.
• Understanding every problem has a solution. In fact, most problems have many solutions. When a large problem arises, take a quick breather, maybe a 1-2 mile walk, then get right to brainstorming solutions. Don't dwell on the problem, the quicker you devise a plan, the quicker the problem goes away.
• If you are tackling this project with family, don't ever resort to the blame game. Things will happen. Mistakes will be made. The most seasoned builders make mistakes all the time. Get past it, and get to the solution. You'd be surprised how much time you can waste dwelling on problems instead of solving problems.
• The days you are struggling mentally, take a step back and appreciate what you are doing. You are building a house, with your own hands. I'm sure at the start of your project you thought a lot about how proud you will be to say YOU built this house. Something you can share with your kids, your grandkids, and everyone important to you. Many people won't get the opportunity to even pay a builder to build their house. You're doing it yourself. Of course it's hard. If it wasn't hard, their wouldn't be any pride in saying you did it.

Ok, you are ready!

If you made it this far in the post and I didn't scare you, then you are strong minded and ready. Use our journey as your resource into your project. We are a DIY couple. We will make mistakes, but then we will share them. That is why we are doing this. To document our story in hopes you help you write yours.

Make sure to subscribe. We will be covering every single step in as much detail as possible as we move forward. If you are thinking of taking on a similar project, we hope to help you determine what to do, and more importantly, what not to do. We are also offering special paid content that will expose every task required to building your house and homestead in fine detail. Things like full tutorials on complicated tasks such as roofing, installing a fireplace, water management, radiant floor heating, etc.