Building a house

[zummy]

We are starting house plans. We both kind of like the minimum maintenance of something like this Steve & Kathy's Home » Morton Buildings » 3400 but we are open to anything. Probably won't start anything until spring.

Any helpful tips? Also anyone who has built lately what was you cost per sq ft?

[Cray]

Wish I had done something like that when we built. Really nice looking place.

[Scouts Out]

No tips, but that sure looks nice! Good luck with everything.

[Rees Guide]

Zummy pm me your number sometime, let me share a little info with you.

[KAG]

We are starting house plans. We both kind of like the minimum maintenance of something like this Steve & Kathy's Home » Morton Buildings » 3400 but we are open to anything. Probably won't start anything until spring.

Any helpful tips? Also anyone who has built lately what was you cost per sq ft?

We bought, designed, and build a large rural home. For years I held a limited contractor lic so I had a good idea of how it all works but even then.

From land purchase, house design, rural utility install, well, sewage, dirt work, road building, and .....dealing with subcontractors and general contractor.......we learned a lot. We did a lot of the misc work ourselves. The metal building route has many advantages and some things that could be less than appealing.

The whole cost per square foot thing is very inaccurate for planning.....but afterward can tell you what the cost really was. Lots of unknown variables to use as a guide. If you have an interest sometime let me know and we will share what we learned.....somethings to building are a complete scam, but how involved do You want to be? The more involved the money you can save.

[zummy]

There is some stuff I can't do. We can do painting, and I can lay flooring if push came to shove. My BIL was in construction for years and my father in law built the house my wife lived in when we met, so there is some help back there. The metal building style homes will bid just the shell, or they will bid the whole job. We close on the acreage Friday. I have some clearing work to do on it, and we have a few months to try and get ironed out exactly what we want.

[fishlessDan]

I install flooring for a living. If ya need flooring recomendations I might be able to give some info on different products.

[BuckeyeKdog]

I like the Modular Home concept and have worked on several. However, if I were doing anything other than a ranch, I would have a builder do it.
Floor Plans - All American Homes

This is company that promotes DIY and this link is a house a friend bought and we put it together.
Modular Homes by SPARTEC, LLC - Two Story Homes - Salem Model

Techniques are different when assembling one of these homes but it is simple and straight forward. The house we put together was finished and occupied 41 days from breaking ground. IMO impressive as it was our first time doing something like this. 90 percent of the assembly was really, "thats all you gotta do?". Most of our problems were with delays caused by local building inspector. Of course a really good crane operator would have been nice to have. But it only took us 3 days to have the house assembled and ready for siding and roofing. Plumbing and electrical were less than a day each and the Heating and A/C guys took 2 days mostly because they could not follow simple instructions, I honestly feel that after foundation is done, with the proper communication and cooperation from building inspectors this house could be occupied in 2 weeks from start of assembly,

[zummy]

Modular is difficult to get long term funding for, at least from what we have gathered from lenders so far.

[zummy]

So we have learned the post frame houses are difficult from a loan perspective. Construction loan isn't an issue but financing after the fact is. We have the land and water meter. We also are not looking at starting until next year. How early is too early to approach contractors? The wife wants to select a contractor, floor plan, etc so when we are ready we can make a call and get on the build list.