Things to consider when building a house without a builder….

If you’re reading this, you might be considering building or maybe you’re just curious. This blog post is a long time coming. There’s a lot to say and am finally getting a chance to sit down and write it all for you!

Spring of 2018, my husband (Blaine) and I built a custom house… without using a builder which is INSANE! I still can’t believe it because my husband and I had no experience whatsoever! Thankfully, my brother-in-law (Nick) helped us and acted as our general contractor. Blaine then assisted him. My main role was designing and picking out all the finishes/materials/fixtures.

I will point out…doing it yourself is NOT for everyone. I can’t stress that enough. I actually recommend using a trusted builder to save on the MANY headaches and stress of trying to do it yourself. 😉 If you’re in the Des Moines or surrounding area, please let me know if you want recommendations of builders!

Being your own GC is no joke. I legit think we’re crazy for doing it 3 years ago and…. AGAIN. Yes, you read that correctly. If you didn’t see my latest LIFE UPDATE BLOG POST, head over there because we are building AGAIN this year! We’ve done it already and to be completely transparent, time has healed the “I don’t think we’re doing that again” talk. It’s kind of like having a kid… your body is in pain after having a baby that you don’t want to think about having another child. Then months later, you wouldn’t mind having another kid! 😉 Plus, we’ve learned from our mistakes and hope to not make the same ones for the next house.

Ok, how about I just go ahead and give you the real REAL on this experience, and then you can decide for yourself! Below is what to consider as well as what we learned.

• GO TO THE BANK

See what your options are. How much are they willing to lend you to purchase the lot and house? About how much will your payments be per month with that loan? Your budget is going to determine what size and type of house you’ll be building. Your vision of what your house will look like may not be realistic with what you can build with the loan amount. Also, just because the bank will lend you an amount doesn’t mean you have to use all of that. Be smart about it. This is a big investment!

• COVENANTS / REQUIREMENTS TO BUILD

Figure out any covenants / requirements / codes before building. In our development, there are covenants that houses have to meet. Here are some of them: 1) There is a minimum square footage of finished space on the main level. If a specific amount of the basement is finished then the minimum square footage of finished space on the main level is reduced. 2) The exterior of the house has to have a certain percentage of either brick, stone, or stucco. 3) If you want to have an outbuilding, it has to have a similar exterior as your home. 4) Also, no farm animals allowed.

• FIGURE OUT WHAT TYPE OF HOUSE YOU’D LIKE TO BUILD

1-story, 1.5-story, 2-story, multi-level? Typically a 1.5 story is the most expensive. 2-story is usually less expensive than a 1-story because a 1-story uses up more foundation. How long do you plan on being in the home? Is this your forever home? If it is, do you want to deal with stairs when you’re older? If it’s your forever home and you don’t want a 1-story, consider putting the master bedroom on the main level.

Since we live in the midwest and tornados occur, having a basement was important to us. My husband and I decided to build a multi-level house. Our very first home was a split level home. I loved how the different levels separated spaces of the home, and there were only a few steps to get to each level. The laziness in me is coming out…ha! Also, we went to various DES MOINES HOME SHOW EXPOS to get a feel of various styles. We loved how DREAMSCAPE HOMEBUILDERS incorporated a split level modern twist to their homes that we fell in love with!

• MAKE A “TOP 3” LIST

If you are building with a spouse, I highly recommend making a top 3 “must have” list. We both have in our head what we want in a house, but it’s not always realistic to be on the same page with everything. We each made a list of what we absolutely want to have in this house.

Here was mine:

1) multi-level floor plan 2) black windows 3) hidden pantry

Blaine’s:

1) black windows 2) spacious living room for our family of six 3) walkout basement

• FLOOR PLAN

Now you need a floor plan. You can actually purchase floor plans online! There are so many available. Unfortunately, there were no multi level floor plans that I saw online. I sketched what I wanted the floor plan to be. We then hired Nick’s friend to create a floor plan and elevation drawings from my sketches.

Here’s my sketch of the floor plan I wanted:

Here’s the exterior drawing of the first initial drawings sent to us:

Some of you who have been following me for awhile can tell that these 2 drawings are not what we built. We definitely had revisions to the original drawings to bring cost down. We decided not to put transom windows since that would be an additional cost because we would have needed a steel beam. Another thing we did was simplify the roof line. As far as the floor plan, we originally had about 2400 sq. ft. on the main level and revised it to about 1850 sq. ft. on the main level to bring cost down. We had the engineer look at the property and he gave us a suggestion of where we should place our house.

• BIDS

Once you have a floor plan, send them out to get bids! Ask around to see who people love working with. Also, compare prices and bids. Make sure to look at it VERY closely. This was one of our big mistakes. We assumed everything was included in the bids. There were a couple subcontractors who sent us invoices that were a lot higher than we were expecting and come to find out their bid didn’t include some specific items. YIKES! Because of that we didn’t finish everything with the house. The grass, concrete for sidewalk, concrete slab in front of garage, and front stoop were finished in phases after we moved in.

• STAY ON BUDGET

This is SO important! That sure sounds easier than it is though. We had a spreadsheet of all the bids so we knew exactly how much it would cost to build the house. We (or I should say Blaine & Nick) were looking at that spreadsheet every day making sure we were still on the right track. Nick did a really good job making Blaine and I stay on track even though it was also annoying. I can laugh about it now but there were many eye rolls from me behind Nick’s back..lol.

• TIME / ORGANIZATION

TIME is a huge factor in determining if you are able to be your own general contractor!! If you are busy already and don’t have an extra hour in a day, then I definitely WOULD NOT recommend being your own GC. Between Nick, Blaine, and myself, we had to get bids, design the house, make sure we stayed on budget, figure out the timeline, pick out appliances/materials/finishes, coordinate material delivery, schedule when subcontractors should be in the house working, pay subcontractors, cleaning and picking up the job site daily, etc.

A flexible schedule is also important. There are times when you’ll have to drop literally everything and head to the job site because a subcontractor needs you or has a question. Thankfully, the location we were living at the time and the location we were building the house were in the same development!

Also the more organized you are, the less headaches you’ll have!

• THINGS WILL GO WRONG

Repeat after me: THINGS WILL NOT GO PERFECTLY AS PLANNED

Wrong items will be delivered, items will come damaged, subcontractors won’t show up, rain will delay work, costs will be different from the bids, time frame to finish the house is longer than expected, etc.

RANDOM TIPS (in no particular order):

-Have vents painted so it blends with wall and ceiling. Blaine ended up spray painting the vents in the bathrooms and bedrooms so it blended with the flooring.

-Spend some time figuring out where you really want lighting, switches, and outlets. If you’re like me, how far do you have to run in the dark from the hallway to your bed after turning off the lights in the hallway….lol. I’m not even ashamed to admit this.

-Choose furnace with humidifier included (important for us folks in Iowa).

-Consider IKEA! We used IKEA for our bathroom vanities and am so glad we did! Great price, nice modern look, and works well!

-Include a pull out trash bin in bathroom vanity. (We couldn’t with the IKEA floating vanities we chose.)

-Grass is important. 😉 We didn’t realize how much we’d miss grass until we didn’t have any. We held off on grass until after we moved in. Blaine tried to do it himself in 2019, but unfortunately it didn’t work so we finally hired someone in 2020 (2 years after we moved in). Next time we build, I would like to have the yard seeded or sodded before we move in.

-Saving money sometimes is not worth it. 1) We tried to save money by having one company do the sheetrock hanging and another company do the mud and taping. It would have been better off if we chose one to do everything. 2) Blaine did some of the work such as paint, insulation, front porch, and railing. We did save money by having him do it. Blaine had mentioned though that with the amount of time he spent, he would have rather paid the extra money. It takes him longer since he isn’t a professional. Also, he already has a full time job so working during the day and then working on the house right afterwards was exhausting.

Here is Blaine and my father-in-law putting in insulation:

Here is Blaine painting:

If you made it this far, bless your heart! Let me know if this was helpful! I hope you enjoyed all of that! If you haven’t yet, make sure to SUBSCRIBE because I’ll be sharing more details of this current house (sources of finishes / materials / fixtures used, a few things we would have changed, etc) as well as our new build journey to follow along!