Housing is such big deal in your life. Building your own is the ultimate experience. I’m here to show you how I did it and trust me you can do it too.
My step one was buying land. I knew I wanted a minimum of 2 acres. I wanted to make it doable and for me 20 acres and building my own house was not doable, I stayed realistic, you can always buy more. I just kept reminding myself you can always buy more later.
Another thing I knew I wanted for my land was to have it zoned agricultural. I knew I wanted to keep livestock, which is hogs, horses, and chickens. And whatever else my little heart desires.
Just buying land can be an ordeal. When I started I had nobody to help me, I had to learn it all the hard way. That’s why I wrote an ebook to touch on some of the key points you should know when you buy land. You can get my eBook Becky’s Guide To Buying Land here.
Once I had my land then I started thinking about the type of house I wanted to build. I already knew it had to be a small simple simple simple design. Next was just deciding on the actual building material, logs, cement block, wood framed, shipping container, there’s a lot of choices. You have to choose which one fits your situation best, look at them all, consider them all and then choose what’s the best fit for you. There’s no really wrong type or right type. Whatever type fits what you think your abilities are.
You can build your own house even if you’ve never built anything before. What determines your success is how simple you can keep it. If you choose a small simple house, put all the plumbing on one side, don’t put a million windows in there, don’t get a roof line with complicated angles, keep it simple simple simple and have faith in yourself because people have been building there own houses for hundreds of years.
You can learn how to do each step when you come to it by reading books and watching youtube videos. It’s never been a better time to build your own house. When I built my house youtube wasn’t even a thing yet, so now it’s even easier today because you can watch youtube videos that teach you anything you need to know. Take it one step at a time, don’t worry about the roof when you’re doing the foundation.
The next thing you’ll need are engineered stamped blueprints and a building permit: my log cabin kit came with stamped blueprints, then I just had to apply for the building permit. Some counties are much easier to build in, I cover that in my land book.
You can’t get a building permit without stamped blueprints. If you’re building a regular house and not a kit, you can find a local engineer and you can get everything you need form them.
Let me give you a little tip, if you can swing it get help pouring the foundation. It’s doable to do the foundation yourself, but if you where going to choose to spend money on a project it’s worth paying for help with that so it’s level and smooth. Building a foundation is not only hard physical work, it’s also time consuming and you need it perfect.
The rest of your house can be “rustic” but the foundation needs to be level and square.
The concrete guys do it all the time, they’re good at and have all the tools to get your foundation right. But if you’re going to do it yourself my advice is take your time, it’s worth every effort.
Then it’s just step by step, framing, plumbing, electrical, roof, and finishing. Don’t try to think too far ahead, yes you have to have an overall picture and an overall plan. But once you get going it’s self defeating to think too far ahead. Don’t worry about the roof when you’re working on the foundation. You get much more accomplished with a good attitude if you take one step at a time.
When it was time to do the plumbing I would read the plumbing book, and since I was doing such a simple house the plumbing was a simple layout. If you where doing a 3 story house with a bathroom on every floor it gets much more complicated. If you’re truly building your house yourself why not make it easy.
When it was time to do the framing I did the same thing, I made sure it was a simple layout, I read the book on how to build the interior walls then took it step by step. I kept that mindset for the whole build and it came out good. That’s how I did it and I was successful and you will be to, you can do it!