In 1995, I built my first home without the help of any contractors. I didn’t do it to prove anything at all; I just wanted my family and me to have a nice place to live without the high mortgage payments. I paid cash for as much of the materials that I could. Most of the time, I used credit cards and builders cards.

I began the foundation and dug it out with a shovel. Then I built the cement forms and poured the cement. After the foundation, I started the first floor by putting on the floor joists then covering them with plywood. Then I built the walls that included the window and door openings.

I also did most of the electrical and plumbing systems while the walls were open and exposed. I built the stairs and started the second floor. Soon I built the roof and enclosed the whole house to keep rain and snow out. I put metal on the roof and installed all the doors and windows.

After the house was all enclosed I started making the interior walls and finished the electrical wiring and the rough-in plumbing. I needed to have those systems inspected before the sheetrock was hung. After my home passed the first inspections, I enclosed the walls with drywall and taped them with drywall compound.

I also sided the outside of the house with vinyl siding and trim. It looked great. I built kitchen cabinets and started all of the interior finish work. I then installed all the appliances and electrical systems.

The house passed the second round of inspections with the electrical inspector, plumbing inspector, and the building inspector.

I had all of the carpeting and flooring installed by professionals. Once everything was all finished, I had one final inspection left to get an occupancy permit. After we got the permit we moved into our house. We were able to consolidate all of our debt from credit cards into one mortgage loan with low interest. We had a high amount of equity in our home from our hard-earned labor and sweat equity.

My total cost of building materials was right around $60,000. The final appraised value of our home was $140,000 when we moved in.

It was then that I realized how much the cost of labor is and why modern homes are so expensive to buy. The price of contracted labor has increased so much over the last two decades that people making average to good incomes can’t even afford average homes.

Banks and lending institutions have had to take many chances and risks in financing so people could have homes. Wages haven’t increased enough to keep pace with the inflation of homes and that’s the main reason why we are in this housing and financial crisis.

Tags: build your own home, build your own house, DIY, gardening, home, home construction, home interior, home repair, home-and-garden, home-improvement, my own home, my own house

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 7:13 am and is filed under do-it-yourself, gardening, remodeling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.