Designing and Building Your Own Home
The Owner-builder Experience

Maybe it's HARD WIRED INTO OUR GENES. .

At a certain stage in your life YOU JUST GOTTA BUILD!  — For some people it's even a reoccurring affliction!

It's SCARY though because building a house is complex. These days we can't just kick a bear out of the cave or tie a bundle of sticks together and call it home. Modern life involves some pretty complicated things like electricity running though wires, hot and cold pressurized water and sewer lines we want to make sure run downhill. It is all too easy to make expensive (and sometimes dangerous) mistakes and almost nobody is master of ALL the skills necessary to build a modern house.

Does that mean you have to leave it to "the experts"? Not if you build a simple small house or cabin. The framing of a small rectangular house is something almost everyone can do. Building a simple post and beam foundation will not tax your skills. Most people get a great deal of satisfaction and confidence from starting small with the building of a small simple home. What you do beyond that — whether you do your own plumbing and wiring, insulation, interior finish, or go on to build a larger house — these will depend on your interest, time and skills.

Whatever jobs you do in constructing the house, the place where you will save the most money and make the greatest difference is in the planning and design phase of the project.

Early design projects:

• Picking the building site
• Determining how light will fall on the house and which rooms face which direction
• Planning the roads and driveways and how you approach the house
• Clearing and preparing the land (usually means hiring dozer time)
• Determining water, power, phone and septic systems
• Planning the house shape and layout and preparing construction plans
• Finding a builder or local building expert and determining a working relationship.

No matter what construction tasks you plan to take on yourself, there are some that are best not attempted by the typical owner-builder. These include:

• Large concrete pours - they are critical, unforgiving and involve some non-intuitive tricks
• Drywall - hanging is best done by a burly 20 year old; finishing is much harder than it looks. Use a different interior finish (such as wood boards or drywall put up with battens over the joints) if you want to do this task yourself.
  

John C. Raabe
Country Plans LLC
5010 South Inglewood Dr.
Langley, WA 98260
360-221-5535 (voice & fax)