Organize Your Build: The Owner-Builder Home Planner

 

 

Do you have a big goal of building your own home from scratch? A dream of creating your one-of-a-kind place on this Earth? A place that you can truly call home and maybe pass down to the next generation?

You know you want to build your home while you have the opportunity. But you have to be careful.

Not having a plan in place can get you burned.

I know because we’ve been there. But it doesn’t have to be ultra stressful. 

Imagine waking up in a bedroom that you built for yourself. Eating a home-cooked breakfast in a kitchen you created with your own hands. Sitting on your own porch at the end of the day and watching the sunset knowing that you’ve created your perfect spot on this Earth for you and your family. 

You can do it. I know you can, because we did. And our system will help you get there.

The easy part is figuring out how to put your materials together and actually build the thing. You can find videos on YouTube. You can read books and manuals. Heck, you can volunteer with Habitat for Humanity and learn some tricks of the trade. But that’s not what’s scary about building a home.

The real fear is wasting tens of thousands of dollars building a home that ends up being unlivable at the end. Of not following codes and ending up having your permit denied at the very end. Of ruining your family financially because you didn’t budget well enough.

I’ve seen countless people fail because they didn’t know how much of a house they could *actually* afford. Or didn’t realize they couldn’t legally build on their own land because of its flood or fire risk zoning until they’d already plunked down tens of thousands of dollars of their hard-earned cash. Or learned partway through that they couldn’t get insurance on their size and type of build.

But that doesn’t have to be you. You already have the skills you need to build your own home, you just need a system to help you get there.

In 2014, we started our own homebuilding journey. Maybe you can relate to this:

We dreamed of building a house on our own land for a LONG time. We got married as broke college kids (because LOVE) and rode the financial struggle bus right into the Great Recession. In spite of ourselves, we managed to buy a very unfortunate looking foreclosure. That was the little midcentury ranch I often talk about on the blog and on social media. We got to cut our teeth, so to speak, on building and working as a team by rehabbing that house. We gutted and redid the kitchen on a dime. We ripped down every last shred of wallpaper (so. much. wallpaper.), ripped up the carpet (who covers hardwood???), rewired the entire house (goodbye, aluminum wires!).

We learned to plan and work as a team. 

Ultimately, that house taught us a lot about our goals. We got out of debt and learned how to manage our finances. After our son was born, we realized that if we wanted to build a house it was now or never. So we went for it!

But more than simply knowing how to hammer some 2×6’s together to stud frame a wall, or knowing the code required depth of our foundation piers, it was our knowledge of how to plan ahead and manage our money that helped us succeed in building our own home from scratch.

That’s really what the heart of this book is. 

We understand the fears and frustrations that come with building a house and want to make sure that you don’t lose your mind in the process. Building a house is about freedom! It isn’t meant to be a burden. It isn’t meant to wear you down. It’s something you do when you have big dreams and you don’t want to just follow the status quo.

It’s really tempting to spend your time looking at floor plans, dreaming of what your life in a house you built will be like, and so on. But putting off the heavy stuff like code, permits, insurance, and your MONEY situation is inviting disaster. 

If you use the planner and do the heavy work upfront, you will enjoy the process that much more. You won’t be flying by the seat of your pants quite like we did, because we broke out all of that important information for you so you don’t have to wing it.

This book will help you create a custom roadmap, and if you follow it, you can be wildly successful.

That isn’t to say it’ll be a perfect journey. You will have roadblocks. You will encounter things we don’t discuss in this book. Things will happen, yes. But will you be that much more prepared for when SHTF during the build? Absolutely.

The Owner-Builder Home Planner is an easy, practical, and customizable system that will take you through the entire process of building your own home from scratch.

This printable e-book breaks down the building process in simple terms and gives you space to write out your own plans and take notes.

With this planner, you’ll learn about:

• DESIGNING YOUR HOME to fit your family’s needs and wants.

• BUILDING PERMITS AND CODE so you can keep your build legal.

• MATERIALS COST ESTIMATION so you get a solid idea of what your home could cost and how to avoid financial headaches mid-build.

• INSURANCE FOR YOUR BUILD so you don’t jeopardize thousands of your hard-earned dollars and hundreds of hours of your time.

• WAYS TO FUND YOUR BUILD without breaking the bank or digging yourself into a hole.

• BUDGETING FOR YOUR LIFE AND BUILD so that you don’t go broke building your dream home.

• THE ORDER TO BUILD IN so that you build your home right the first time and don’t have to double back because you missed a step.

I also included some important, straight-forward organizational tools to help you all the way from designing your home to moving in with:

• COMMUNICATIONS LOG of the sub-contractors, code officials, insurance agents, financial officers, and other important people so you can make sure you’re getting exactly what you pay for.

• PRICING WORKSHEET to make sure you get the absolute best deals.

• BUILDING TASK MANAGER to take the fear and anxiety out of the big jobs.

• EXPENSE TRACKER so you know exactly what every dollar you spend is doing for you.