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Showing posts with the label how to build a house and stay on budget

Building our House (Part 3: The End?)

So here we are, finishing up our house.  The appliances were bought, the drywall was being finished, the windows were framed, and thanks to a painting party our trim and walls were painted. Having that painting party saved us about $5000, and if you don't know how to paint it isn't that big of a deal to learn.  If you look up some good tutorials on you tube and practice on some discrete areas, you will get the hang of it in no time.  Grab some buddies, order some after painting food, and prepare to save! (I should note that I was busy with other work, so my in-laws, parents, and wife painted most of the house/trim:) Where did this leave us? Well at this point we had already spent a significant amount of time and money(10-15k) out of our pocket to make sure our house stayed within the original loan amount.  I was not going to go over budget gosh dangit! So after all this work we realized we were still going to be over budget in the flooring category.  No...

Building our House (part 2):

For those of you haven't read part 1 just click this here LINK and you can check out where we left off.  For those not wanting to read part 1 or for those who have already done so here is a quick refresher... We left last time with the simple fact that we were 4-5k over budget.  This left us with a few options, work, cut expenses, and save more so that we could come out on budget. The Framing: After all of the concrete curing, and french draining, the real progress began.  The house was quickly framed in the basement, the sub-floor went on, and then the main floor was framed.  Next the trusses went up, sheeting went on, and the roof was ready to be done.  (During this entire process, every day after supper at about 5:30 my wife and I would drive out to see progress on the house.  This also allowed us to clean up after the construction crew.  I am not sure how much money this saved us, but I know it didn't hurt in the end!  Cleaning up the mat...

Building our House (part 1):

This building our house series of posts is going to be about what I underwent to obtain my first piece of property...and then what I had to accomplish to put my first house up. No it isn't a tiny house.  Too bad because I really like the idea and the small amount of money required to build one.  My house is a modest 3 bed 2 bath ranch.  It has a full size basement (unfinished) and a 24x24 garage.  When we moved in we did not even have a sidewalk!  Oh the humanity!  The horror.  I ended up building the sidewalk myself. In fact I put a lot more work into the place then I originally thought and the place still cost us over 200k!!!  I am getting ahead of myself.  First we must go back to where we once were... The Beginning: The land grab Getting a piece of land shouldn't be that hard.  Especially when we had someone (grandpappy) who was generous enough to deed us the property.  Well it isn't that easy and this is partially w...