Building your own house is a HUGE job. My goal is to help you out as much as possible. Throughout our build, I will continue to fill this page with “extra” things to help your building go even smoother. I will answer questions, provide detailed explanations, and anything else you might need.
If you are in the planning stage and looking for some help with this terrifying process, the first thing I recommend doing is trying out Plan Your House the course. It’s a detailed 21 day e-course walking you through every step of planning out your new home. Every day has checklists and planners to print off and fill out so you have everything written down, organized, and prepared to start building.
If you are interested at all, you can start the course for FREE RIGHT HERE.
Videos can be so helpful through this process, so I started a Youtube channel for even more information. CLICK HERE to visit Farmhouse From Scratch Youtube channel and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any videos!
The book that originally gave me the confidence to quit worrying about it and just do it, is one that anyone building their own house should own. The Owner Builder Book by Mark A Smith is written for people like you and me who have no idea what they are doing. It is the only book I have found (and I have read A LOT of house building books) that walks you through building your own house in a way that is easy to understand. It is hands down, the best written resource I have used over the past two years. Buy it now, it’s only $20 on amazon if you CLICK HERE, and you won’t be disappointed.
Elite Hire is an email course that I created to teach you the correct way to make an offer to businesses for their product or services. Just by learning the right way to ask, we hired people and companies for thousands of dollars less than their original asking price. We have saved over $25,000 as a DIRECT result of asking someone to lower their price to meet our budget. If you would like to learn more about this course you can CHECK IT OUT HERE.
Feel free to email me with any questions you have at farmerswife@farmhousefromscratch.com
I wish you the very best on your house building journey!
~Farmer’s Wife
FREE checklists and schedules
Access to the resources I created that helped Farmer and I save over $75,000 building our own custom dream home.
anna says
I have been reading through this blog and I really love all of the insight and information you have already posted. I have been wanting to do this for several years now. I have no doubt I could be my own contractor…my biggest question is how do you obtain financing? Everything I’ve read says that it is much more difficult to get a loan to build a house, even when you are working with a contractor…they are less likely to loan money when there is no finished product…this led me to believe that it would be next to impossible to get a loan if I was acting as my own general contractor…since the bank would have no guarantee the work would be done in a timely manner and/or be done properly. How did you get past this hurdle?
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Hi Anna!
Unfortunately I can’t be of much help to you because we didn’t take out a loan, we waited to build until we could do it without borrowing. I understand that is not the best option for everyone so here is what I do know. The more money you have to put down, the more likely a bank is to take that risk on you. Where I live you are required to have at least 20% up front. Many banks won’t loan you the money if you don’t hire a contractor, but plenty of them will so don’t give up until you have found one. And the best advice I have read is to plan everything out, find out how much everything will cost, draw up a budget, a timeline, and anything else you can, and present it to the bank in a way that is so organized and well thought out that they have no doubt you know what you are doing. Show them who you will hire, when you will hire them, and how much it will cost. You need to prove to them that you are so responsible and reliable that they don’t need to worry about you. The amount of planning ahead of time will be even more if you are trying to get a loan because you have to show them that you can handle being your own general contractor and handle it well. The book that I reference almost daily has a section in it that covers how to get a loan when you are your own general contractor. You can rent it from the library or order it on amazon. I highly recommend it, it’s the only book I use now for help on the house. It’s called The Owner Builder Book by Mark A Smith. I hope that is helpful! Let me know if you have any other questions, good luck Anna!
Holly Williams says
We are using Farm Credit. They will let you GC yourself and recently introduced a lending program that would not require you to break up large tracks of land.
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Thank you so much Holly! That is very helpful information
Casey says
That’s amazing that you were able to save all the money beforehand! Have you done a blog post on your savings plan and how long it took you to save? I’d love to learn more!
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Hey Casey,
I have not done a blog post about our savings plan on this website. It took us 8 years and we only spent what we absolutely had to. We went without TV and internet for 5 of those years to save money. I am still wearing some of my old clothes from high school haha plus hand me downs from my sister. We literally spent only on necessities.
I do realize though that this is not feasible for everyone. This house has been our dream for years so it was easy to give up other things for something we wanted so bad. That’s not the case for everyone and that is totally okay. It was just the way we wanted to do it because my husband and I hate being in debt so bad that we refuse to do it ever again.
Figure out what works best for you and your family. But people do need to know how freeing it is to be out of debt, and also that if you want to save that kind of money you have to quit spending.
Holly says
Do you have any advice about purchasing trusses? Manufacturers won’t sell direct to us and big box stores are looking like $11k. Seems like we could do better. Any suggestions?
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Trusses are one of the more expensive things we had to purchase. My advice is to shop outside your area. Because it is such a big thing, truss companies are usually willing to travel quite a ways. The best priced trusses we found were nearly two hours away from our house but they were still willing to deliver. Our house is about 4,000 square feet with a very simple roof line, and our trusses cost about $15,000. I hope that is helpful and gives you something to compare to.
Georgia says
We are in the building permit process which is moving along. One of the snags we are having is getting builders risk insurance. It’s as if these insurance companies are very unfamiliar doing these policies. Two we have gotten write them as homeowner policies with content amounts, when we have not even broken ground. Did you have builders risk insurance? Any thoughts or advice would really be appreciated.
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
We did not get builders risk insurance, although I worried about it the first few months we were building. A few months into the build though we were able to get home owners insurance so we were covered. My suggestion would be to ask others in your area who have owner built what they did for builders risk insurance. The best information always comes from someone in your own area.
Michelle Vaughn says
Hi and thank you so much for all of your valuable words of wisdom . We are building our home from the ground up as well . We are wanting to buy a used tractor so we can grade and level our landnanfnalsomdig a trench for power and a hole for a septic tank and field lines. Can you tell me what should purchase in your opinion. Thank you so very much,
Michelle Vaughn
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Hey Michelle, We used a tractor with a large bucket on the front to move dirt, backfill, and level some things out. A blade on the front would have been better in some cases for leveling and flattening. Also for the trenches and septic you will need something with a smaller bucket that can reach far and dig deeper. The tractor itself doesn’t need to be large. These are pretty easy jobs so you don’t need anything powerful.
Brian Aeilts says
I am a contractor that owns several pieces of equipment. Equipment is expensive. Even used equipment. Rent what you need unless you really need it later. Also, if you can rent on holiday weekends you can usually get 3 days for the price of 2. Good luck. A mini excavator will handle all of your needs. One more thing, when you rent the piece of equipment should be in great working order and any maintenance of problems will fall back on the rental company. Good luck
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Thanks for the excellent advice Brian!