Actually, this isn’t the beginning at all. We bought this property about three years ago, and it already had a house on it. The house wasn’t in great shape, but the property was gorgeous, and ticked so many boxes on our list that we’d been looking for over many years. We thought we were good with fixing the house up bit by bit. As the Brits like to say, things didn’t go exactly to plan. Frankly, I should probably make that the subtitle of this blog. A DIY House Building Blog: How Things Didn’t Go Exactly to Plan.
But, I digress. After we had an architect review the house, including the awkward architecture, the myriad leaks, and the buckling foundation discovered when we gutted the basement, he turned to us, and said, “Have you considered starting over?” Like music to my ears, the architect tapped into my secret desire to build an environmentally sustainable house designed just as we wanted it. To my husband though, those words were more like the discordant screech of a record needle signaling the end of his particular renovation vision. No worries, a couple of months and a lot of Internet searches on house kits later, my husband was on board (more or less).
I meant to start this blog in the real beginning, but little things like a full-time job and kids got in the way, so even though we’ve just about completed the basement, I’ll use the next several posts to bring things up to date. Before I close this post, I’ll just say a word about guiding principles. I’d like to be as honest as possible about the experiences we’ve had with the process and products, so that other amateur owner builders can get helpful information. However, unless you’re building in the Washington, DC area, I don’t thinking naming local contractors will be of much interest, so I will mostly discuss products that can be purchased nationally. If you are in the D.C. area, and would like names, feel free to contact us directly.
OK, one more word before I close: budget. Ugh, but it’s unavoidable. I’ll spare you all the good advice about making a budget and sticking to it, any book from your local library will tell you that, but I’ll share our decision-making and trade-offs in hopes that they can contribute to your thinking. Part of the attraction of building our house ourselves was to save money. I think the jury’s still out on that given all of our delays, some of them due to our rookie mistakes, but hey, it was a good operating theory going in. I’ll try to get my husband to write a detailed post at some point as he is the keeper of the spreadsheet, for which I’m eternally grateful as I can’t bear to look at all those miserable numbers in one place. I’m happy to do research and shop around for the best price, but I leave it to my husband to provide me with updates on where things stand – preferably not at 10:00 at night when I’m usually feeling the most despondent as we have “discussed” many times. I will definitely devote a future post to tips for maintaining a healthy relationship with your building partner.
But for now, that’s it for this first post. Up next: House Kit or Architect.