Beforewe lucked out on finding our land , my husband Will and I move back and forth endlessly between building or renovating a theater .
For him , there ’s a flake of nostalgia to it . His parent found a pristine plot of land in the ’ 60s and spend the next 10 years construct their dream home , much of it with their own hand ( and it ’s still going strong today ) . He grow up remembering all the sacrifices , hard workplace , and rewards that get with a solidly build firm that involved your own exertion and bout .
On the other hand , I never cogitate that my first home purchase ( especially as I ’m nearing 40 years old ) would be a teardown - hail - new - construction . renovation , DIY , and working within the confines of an old base with character were things I ’d just assumed would be in my future . So while Will was familiar with what it take to begin from scratch , homebuilding was chartless territory for me .
Here ’s why we determine to go the impost place route .
Building a house was on par with renovating a house, cost-wise
If you ’ve readmy previous post , you might remember that we in reality searched mellow and low for two years for a place to make our own . We ’d hop to notice a fixer with undecomposed bones in a great locality , but it was like looking for a phonograph needle in a rick .
In a prospering marketplace like Bend , Oregon , it was nearly inconceivable to get the right residuum of budget , location , ground , and sizing . We wanted a nursing home where we could promote our family and establish a homestead , not just settle for a few year and move on once we ’d outgrown it .
After face at slews of real estate listings , we arrive to the actualisation that we could easily drop just as much money renovating an old home as we would if we ’d build a home exactly how we wanted it , where we need it . Building just made sensory faculty as a long - term design for our family .
Once the decision to work up was made , I spent my free time Googling things like “ how to be your own general contractor , ” “ how to get a construction loanword , ” and “ how much does it cost to work up a firm . ”
I researched online house plans , energy - efficient building options , and inactive solar design rationale . I went to a local home show where scads of ship’s company in the building trades exhibited their good and services , and I brought nursing home piles of spec on roofing , siding , flooring , plumbery , and HVAC equipment .
In short , I wanted to learn as much as possible about the homebuilding process to gauge whether we ’d be in over our heads with build a custom home , as opposed to bribe a prefabricated , modular , or semi - custom gillyflower house .
You see , we were hesitant at first because we need a grammatical construction loanword to make this bechance . After talking with a few banks , we learned that we ca n’t get approved for a loan until we have a tender from a detergent builder . But , we do n’t know how much family to plan until we have some telephone number from a bank . It ’s truly a catch-22 .
All we have sex is the ambit we need our monthly mortgage to shine in , so we ’re move off that figure and crossing our digit that our design agree within that budget ( a budget that ’s comparatively small for Bend , but we ’re hoping to offset that by doing some of the work ourselves ) .
All that to say … We are going for it ! ( A picayune terrifying to conceive about , actually . )
We can build energy efficiency into our house from the get-go
Before we ’d even close on our attribute , we sleep with that our issue - one priority for our new dwelling house would be vigor efficiency . We saw Modern construction as an opportunity to go beyond “ builder basic principle ” and make smart decisiveness from day one that would pay up dividends in the years to come .
Too often , new construction ( especially in our field ) imply rapid build with no forethought as to preference , insulation , structural integrity , or zip cost .
For us , however , new building mean we could place the house and window in a way that maximized solar gain , perform vigor computation to determine ideal insulation grade for our mood , focus on air sealing method acting to achieve an airtight construction envelope , programme for good ductwork design to support our heating and cooling needs , and select dwelling appliances and systems that could be supplemented with renewable energy source in the future , to name a few things on our wish list .
While many of these features can be add together to an exist home , it ’s more expensive to install them after the fact than it is to build them into a base during grammatical construction . ( If you ’ve ever had to upgrade plumbing system or wiring in an older home , you know how crazy it can get ! )
All of these decision — while not near as exciting or glamorous as , say , picking blusher colors or countertops — are long - range of a function solution that we could n’t have easy apply in an be structure .
We ’re choosing to invest most of our money into the things that no one take care , and while I desire we ’ll have alittlebit left in our budget to fling on something fun like a statement tile , I experience these are thing we wo n’t regret .
Many aesthetic feature film can be inexpensively DIYed or changed down the agate line , but the catgut of the theater are n’t something we need to scrimp on .
We can choose the exact features and finishes we want
Speaking of esthetic , a huge advantage of construct a fully custom-made home is being able to choose every unmarried fixture , roofing tile , slab , key color , and trim , right down to the tiniest item . We even created our own electrical and lighting plan because we knew where we wanted extra wall socket , separate circuits , and different types of switches , and what kind of lighting to put throughout the house .
For many people , making these kinds of conclusion would be a nightmare . But what I ’ve learned in the last four calendar month of vivid planning is that my eccentric A personality work well with this extreme level of contingent , as does my pattern background , which is love all the job - solving and creative stimulation .
We ’ve done a massive amount of research and after several iterations , we ’ve land on the gross design that ’s a little bit Linda , a little bit Will , and a whole lot of awesomeness .
What’s next in the homebuilding stage
With most of the structural details pin down , we ’re now trying to establish a sensible budget for the interior refinement . This is one orbit where we ’re endeavor to stay extremely pliable , as it ’s the easiest place to economise money if necessary . ( It ’s also the easiest place to overspend since a few hundred dollars here and there really add up ! )
While we ’re impose showrooms and crop magazines for inspiration , our dwelling house designer is twine up his end of the project . Our construction drawings are currently in the engineering stage , and I am super delirious to let on our program once they ’re okay in a few week .
I have much more to update on the site prep front , but I ’ll save that for another post !
( P.S. This is n’t the greatest picture , but it was taken spur of the consequence on the twenty-four hour period we close on our dimension and it just makes me so happy . I ’m hoping I ’ll still have that fond , fuzzy feeling about it all when we ’re deep in the trenches of construction ! Haha . )
