Building a Home? How Do You Even Begin?

Building a home from scratch has to be one of the most challenging yet enjoyable experiences of your adult life that will demand patience, a level-headed approach to finances, and plenty of hard work.

The thing is, while technically the best thing about building your house is the fact that you can control the building process and include the ideas and design concepts you deem important throughout the process, it often happens that you lose control of it all precisely because you were too engaged in it, to begin with.

This may seem a tad counterintuitive at first, but it makes perfect sense if you think about it.

While it is certainly enjoyable and recommended that you should pour your soul and personality into your house-building project, it’s also true that you have to assume a certain approach of detachment. Otherwise, if you have a tendency toward perfectionism and never good-enough mentality, you can end up with a project that takes way too long to complete and with expenses that far exceed anything you could have imagined when starting the project.

In this article, we’re going to talk about what it takes to start a house-building project. We’ll discuss the groundwork (both literally and metaphorically) and why it is important to do your homework before embarking on such a demanding project. As you will see, proper preparation, realistic expectations, and imposing limits on your project early on are the key to managing the stress and the often unpredictable nature of this complex venture.

Here’s the deal.

Come Up With a Budget

Representing probably the most important part of the planning stage for building your house, establishing a budget for the project is an absolute must unless you have money to burn.

One of the biggest mistakes many folks make when it comes to designing and building their house would be to trust in their organizational skills too much and thinking that it’s alright to take things slow because it’s their own house they’re building.

This approach, however, almost inevitably means that you will end up spending more than you previously thought. Not only that, but the increased spending won’t even guarantee that the project will be completed sooner.

What’s more, the added costs will likely make the project drag along for months, and you can get to a point even where you’re forced to stop the building due to money-related problems or take loans to finish it off.

So, to prevent such a terrible turn of events, sit down before you start planning anything else, and come up with a budget for the upcoming project.

Pick the Lot

… and do it after you’ve established the budget, but not after you’ve done anything else.

In particular, never try to create or buy blueprints for the construction of the house before you’ve bought, or at least chosen the lot. (In case you aren’t making a straightaway purchase, for example, but want to pay for the lot in installments.)

Anyway, the reason for this would be that, depending on the state of the lot, the composition of the soil, and a myriad of other environmental factors, you would likely be forced to change the blueprint to accommodate to the situation at hand if you make the blueprints in advance. This means you would have to pay for the blueprint to be corrected, so why would you pay for these schematics twice?

Once you’ve picked the lot, inspect the condition of the soil, the surroundings, the geographical location, and the local climate to know which way the windows will be, how to slope the roof, etc. Simply having some patience in this regard can save you a lot of money and time down the road.

Tackle the Paperwork

More often than not, building a house comes with quite a few rolls of red tape and paperwork that you need to take care of before you can begin.

Indeed, the prospect of starting with the building process only to have someone destroy it later on due to legal issues you could have handled earlier can be a spanner in the works that you can’t afford to deal with.

Typically, assuming you’ve taken care of the permits for the lot and for building the house itself, one thing that you will have to do is submit the building plan to your local residential planning department. They will determine whether or not your idea for the house is according to the guidelines, and if it meets the standards set by that department.

All permits and licenses obtained, you can proceed to further steps in building your house.

Concoct a House Plan

This would probably be the most important part of the entire preparatory operation for building your home, as it is here you will decide where the kitchen will be, how big the living room you want, where to put the larder, and so on.

To get the most of this arrangement, it’s important to understand that there is nothing wrong with hiring an architect to help you out, as they will be able to explain to you the optimal position for every room.

Of course, you will always have the last say when these organizational matters are in question, but having someone in the know who can help you amend your ideas, so to speak, can be quite helpful if you are not sure what to do.

Choose the Building Team

The team of builders you pick will play a major role in how fast and how efficiently the project is going to go, as the experience and the expertise of the folks involved are of great importance for the success of the building tasks.

The size of the team also matters here.

The more members your team has, the quicker the house is going to be completed. Of course, this also means you will have to spend more money to pay for them. On the other hand, you can also do fairly well with fewer members, as long as they are well-trained and have good leadership. Also, it can be useful if you can find a team of new home builders, who specialize in building homes from scratch. (Rather than just mending them, for example.)

Speaking of which, unless you’re a professional civil engineer or you have experience in building houses, hiring a professional overseer would also be a step in the right direction because that person will determine the dynamic of the building process and help you save time where possible.

Last but not least, as the project is closer to getting completed, you may want to start looking into various other teams of builders including teams of painters and home décor experts.

All in all, building your house is an enjoyable experience that is more of a marathon than a sprint, as it can take months or even over a year to complete from start to finish. Therefore, the better you prepare yourself for this project, the more impressive results you can expect.