Charlie Self wrote:

building and slab, and that doesn't even include electrical, insulation,
sheetrock or HVAC.

Yuppified. That's ridiculous. You're in an area where ye ol' basic house
goes for about $75 a SF finished, including land. Get fancy and you can

Um... Yeah, I guess you're right, even now. That's about what it's going
for now that the property values have been artificially inflated
county-wide. Until last year, it used to be $37.50. At least tax-wise.
About $40 in real life. So I guess that means it's about $80 in real life
now, and I have a $160,000 house now. (No, actually, it means I'm just
paying taxes out the ass, and I still have an $80,000 house.)

I could probably do it much, much cheaper than that too, but only if I
knew something about carpentry.

Yeah. My shop, 1200 SF, cost me roughly $11,000 to $12,000 bucks. It's not
perfect and I'm not a great carpenter, and I was one helluva lot older
than you before I got started on it, but my wife and I did 98% of the work

I'm a rock bottom dead crappy carpenter. I have no idea what I'm doing at
all. That's kind of a down side.

I think I'd have to be a weenie and use a plan. Maybe even a kit.

all the wiring in (200 amp Square D with 40 holes), and a scrounged

The wiring is going to suck bigtime. I either go with separate meters and
pay my electric bill twice, or I put a new panel in the house so I can feed
out to the new panel in the shop. There's nothing in between.

Major mistake: do NOT even think about putting up posts before you've got
help and material on hand to gird the top. Twisted like a sumbitch and
required some fancy stepping to get the thing close to square at the top
edge afterwards. In fact, it's still several inches out.

Ugh.

Even scrounged the post holes: a friend down the road came up and drilled
'em with his post hole differ on his tractor.

It's a good friend who will let you borrow holes.

Helps if you marry a farm girl. At least she will know what end of the
shovel goes in the hole when it's time to make the holes a bit larger.

That's a big down side. SWMBO is absolutely 100% useless for this. I might
get Mom to help. Mom's a farm girl by breeding if not by upbringing, but
she's getting old, and she has back/knee/shoulder problems.

On the bright side, by the time I can *actually* afford this, my son will be
old enough to help. Hell, he'll probably be as old as I am now by then.


--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/