I've been looking for a house to buy on and off for a couple months and
it's really starting to bug me. In this city in the midwest, in a safe
area with decent schools, a 1400 sq ft all brick 3 BR 2 bath house with
a 2-car attached garage is about $115,000. There's several in that
range. This seems ludicrously high.

What am I missing ? Is it possible to actually build a house yourself,
as in act as your own contractor, and save money ?

Land is cheap here, relatively. Couldn't I put in like about a 60 x 30
concrete foundation, build the perimeter walls out of split block, run
joists across the crawl space, put a roof on, and have a shell ? I
could fill the split block with sand for insulation. Sand is cheap. I
could just do drylock over the split block on the inside, I don't care
what the walls look like. Build some interior walls, run the
mechanicals, and voila.

Am I nuts ? Don't suggest prefab, I want something built out of
masonry.

In article .com,
wrote:

I've been looking for a house to buy on and off for a couple months and
it's really starting to bug me. In this city in the midwest, in a safe
area with decent schools, a 1400 sq ft all brick 3 BR 2 bath house with
a 2-car attached garage is about $115,000. There's several in that
range. This seems ludicrously high.


The same house in my neighborhood will cost about $700K. Which price is
ludicrous?


Dimitri

wrote in message
oups.com...
snip
What am I missing ? Is it possible to actually build a house yourself,
as in act as your own contractor, and save money ?


Sure, but depending on where you live you will have to pull a building
permit and get inspections done for electric and plumbing and whatever.

I was my own contractor on an additon a number of years ago and saved quite
a bit.

Google groups "house addition (long) deck house contractor" and toss in my
name and you will find a story about from Sept 1997.

In article .com,
wrote:

Land is cheap here, relatively. Couldn't I put in like about a 60 x 30
concrete foundation, build the perimeter walls out of split block, run
joists across the crawl space, put a roof on, and have a shell ? I
could fill the split block with sand for insulation. Sand is cheap. I
could just do drylock over the split block on the inside, I don't care
what the walls look like. Build some interior walls, run the
mechanicals, and voila.

Many people are thinking about that these days. So many people
have been locked out of the economy due to lack of jobs and
high cost of housing. People by the millions are taking RV's
down to BLM land and abanonded air bases in Arizona, New
Mexico, and Texas. Others are moving to areas without zoning
to build alternative houses. I have been looking at old school
buildings, shipping containers, abandonded missile bases, rail
cars, school busses, and various kinds of pre-fab and kit homes.
One of my favorite ideas so far is to get an old airliner and
put it up on pilings over the Mississippi River.

Am I nuts ? Don't suggest prefab, I want something built out of
masonry.

No, you are not nuts. You may be seriously underestimating
the time, effort, and cost involved, and you may be overlooking
the fact that you can really on do this in areas where you
are effectively off of the grid. And finally, you are most
likely going to end up with something that is not possible to
sell. Few people can pay cash for a home, and you will not
get a mortgage on an alternative home.

There are a lot of web sites out there from people who have
gone the alternative house route, and some good magazines.
Do some research, and make sure you have a realistic view
of what you are getting into.

-john-

--
================================================== ====================
John A. Weeks III 952-432-2708
Newave Communications http://www.johnweeks.com
================================================== ====================

Thank you all. 700k for that size is is ludicrous except that where
that's the case (San Fran ? Manhattan ?) the house will appreciate;
here in the Midwest if you're in a good area houses appreaciate what,
4-5% a year, in a bad area it's 0-1%, which puts a hole in the theory
that renting is a bad thing, renting means never having to buy a new
roof or HVAC.

Here is the article DT wrote in '97:

"I just finished up an addition to my home for which I acted as the
general contractor. I thought I would share my story with the net
community since the question of being one's own general contractor
comes up occasionally.

A number of years ago my wife and I decided to add on to our Deck
house contemporary home. Deck houses are contemporary homes which are
manufactured by Deck House Inc (www.deckhouse.com). The parts are
all made in their factory in Acton Mass, and trucked to the site.

A Deck House architect designed our addition which is a 24x26 kitchen/
family room with a two car garage under it. They put together the
entire package of building materials for one price. Many of the
materials are Deck house specific. They make their own mahogany framed
windows and doors, the ceilings are tounge and groove cedar.

They also recommended a general contractor (GC). The GC gave us a
contract with a price. The price seemed high, and when I asked for a
breakdown, he refused, saying that when 'you buy a car, you don't get
a separate price for the engine, the transmission... etc". Warning
bells went off in my head. My lawyer reviewed the contract, and made
a few changes. I mailed the changed contract back. (It needed 3
stamps!) The GC called me back a few days later and said he had
changed a change. I told him to just mail me the page he had changed.
Hey, why spend money for 3 stamps if one would do I figured. So he
sent me the one page. Federal Express. I quickly realized that this
guy had no concept of cost control, so I began to investigate what it
would cost me to get the addition put up.

Called a foundation guy. Got an estimate. He referred an excavator.
Got an estimate. Excavator referred a carpenter. He and I talked,
and I liked his attitude. Got an estimate. The price I had received
from the GC did not include electric, plumbing, or interior finish, so
the estimates I had were for the same work the GC would have done. I
added up the estimates. Got a number. Multiplied by 3. And the total
was $30,000 less than the GC. Called the GC and told him to take his
Federal Expressed contract and shove it. Hung up.

( Do I hear the cheering of thousands of people who have been screwed
by General Contractors?) I should mention that this guy had done
an addition around the corner which was twice as large and he had
charged about 1/2 of what he quoted us. We found out that he had
lost money on it and we guess he was trying to make it up with us)

Called the excavator and we were off and running. Foundation guy came
and put in the foundation. Excavator came and backfilled. Deck house
delivered the package. I hired a crane to unload it. Took about 3
hours. I then took 2 weeks off of work and worked with the carpenter
to put up the unfinished shell. It took 10 working days to get a
weather tight shell. A point to note: The only major argument the
carpenter and I had was that I wanted to pay him for the time we ate
lunch, and he refused to accept it.

Excavation cost was about 3/4 of the estimate. Foundation cost was a
little under the estimate. I had figured 4 weeks to a weather tight
shell (at $1000 carpenter cost per week) and it took two weeks. I was
starting to be a happy guy. Also, everyone had shown up when they said
they would.

The carpenter and I had gotten along very well, so I kept him on to
do the siding (vertical red cedar). I hired an electrician to upgrade
my service from 100 to 200 amps. I pulled a DIY wiring permit and
wired the addition. In Massachusetts you cannot legally do your own
plumbing, so I hired a plumber to plumb the running water and drain.
He was so reasonable in his price that I also had him install the hot
water heat. Got my wiring inspected (passed!) and I installed the
insulation. My carpenter referred a plasterer and up went the finished
walls.

Don't forget that I was working a full time job during all this except
for the two weeks I worked to put up the shell. I would meet with the
workers in the morning and I would drive home from work during lunch.
At the time I worked about 10 minutes from home.

I was under budget so we put in a hardwood floor. The guy who put in
it was an idiot and talked me out of aging the wood in the house
first. So it expanded and caused some buckling. But I had gotten
pretty far before I hit this first problem, and it was resolved when
he fixed it. The carpenter installed the cabinets and he referred a
counter-top guy. We did a combination of Corian(tm) and Formica. I
wish we had gone all Corian.

I then started a routine of working on finishing up the 100's of loose
ends by tackling a project each Saturday for a few hours. This went
on for a number of years. They were small things, and did not prevent
us from moving into the space. I contracted out some of the larger
jobs, such as re-walling the old kitchen and installing new hardwood
flooring in the old kitchen space.

But, I recently had my final inspections and passed. Yay!

So, I ended up with a finished addition for ~20k less than the price
the GC quoted me for an unfinished addition. (Taking into account the
price of the materials)

And, I learned an incredible amount on the way. I can now measure and
cut wood correctly so the pieces actually fit together. What a
concept!

Would I do it again? Well, if I could go back in time and know what
I know now, I would do it again. But will I do another addition?
Probably not. "

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 22:05:43 -0600, someone wrote:

Many people are thinking about that these days. So many people
have been locked out of the economy due to lack of jobs and
high cost of housing.

So many people have been rushing to buy houses or trade up to bigger
ones due to a strong economy and low intereest rates.

People by the millions are taking RV's
down to BLM land and abanonded air bases in Arizona, New
Mexico, and Texas.

Millions? C'mon. Let's see a picture of these millions.

One of my favorite ideas so far is to get an old airliner and
put it up on pilings over the Mississippi River.

Why the pilings on the Mississippi, just leave it on the abandoned air
base. Have you actually been to any abandoned airbases and seen these
millions of RVs?


Reply to NG only - this e.mail address goes to a kill file.

On 22 Mar 2005 18:25:46 -0800, someone wrote:


What am I missing ? Is it possible to actually build a house yourself,
as in act as your own contractor, and save money ?

Sure, if you know what you are doing. What you are missing is that
you seem to implicitly be thinking that you will know all you need to
know just by asking a few Qs on the internet.

You also seemed to be combining apples and oranges, in that what you
were talking about was merely a cheap or substandard structure; thus
you'd save money that way separate from whether you saved by being
your own GC.

A lot of the things you seem to think are "just" or "merely" or
"throw" are major and expensive undertakings.


Reply to NG only - this e.mail address goes to a kill file.

In article . com,
wrote:

Thank you all. 700k for that size is is ludicrous except that where
that's the case (San Fran ? Manhattan ?) the house will appreciate;


Not always. It's just supply and demand, same as in your area.


Dimitri

In article ,
(v) wrote:
People by the millions are taking RV's
down to BLM land and abanonded air bases in Arizona, New
Mexico, and Texas.

Millions? C'mon. Let's see a picture of these millions.

Over 250,000 RV's registered with the BLM to stay on public
land out west this winter. You have to register and pay a
$140 permit if you want to stay in the same spot for an
extended period of time. It is estimated that an equal number
simply parked without registering. Over 100,000 RV's parked on
BLM land at Quartzite, AZ, this year, plus another 50,000 parked
in commercial parks or private land. The Quartzite RV show was
the biggest RV show of the year this year. In Ajo, AZ, 30,000
showed up to park on the alert pad at a former bomber airbase.
An entire economy grew up around the former airbase with vendors
delivering water and propane, pumping sewage, and running illegal
TV and electrical cables. The RV industry is estimating that
aproximately 3.5-million people spent at least 90 days off of
the grid in the south-west this year, with just slightly more
going to the gulf coast and Florida to stay in more traditional
RV parks for the winter.

One of my favorite ideas so far is to get an old airliner and
put it up on pilings over the Mississippi River.

Why the pilings on the Mississippi, just leave it on the abandoned air
base. Have you actually been to any abandoned airbases and seen these
millions of RVs?

Most of the abandoned air bases are in out of the way locations.
I love the area along the Mississippi River and the great river
road. You have the spectacular scenery of the mountains, the
drama of the river, the trains, the riverboats, and the eagles.
It is pretty hard to build right along the river these days
given the problems with flooding. But having something built
over the water might be nice--I could have my boat and put
floats on my airplane and tie them up without worry of
flooding. And these airliners are built very strong, so no worry
about tornados, either.

If you want to get real tricky, there is a company that makes
a swivel base for a Boeing 727. You mount the plane on a
single pylon, and it can swivel in the wind. The swivel is
built to bring in power, water, gas, and handle sewage even
when the 727 is turning.

-john-

--
================================================== ====================
John A. Weeks III 952-432-2708
Newave Communications http://www.johnweeks.com
================================================== ====================