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Welcome to Farmhouse From Scratch! Farmer and I are on the adventure of our lives building our dream home, on our dream property, debt free. The only way that was possible was for us to be our own general contractor and do it all ourselves. Come follow us on this adventure and let us teach you how to build your dream home for a fraction of the price that it would cost for you to hire a general contractor to do it.
The purpose of this site is to help others like us. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to build the house they have always dreamed of for a price that is actually possible. Our dream home was quoted at $500,000. We could never afford that without going into some serious debt. We are shopping, haggling, negotiating, trading, and searching until we find quality materials and service for the lowest prices possible. Our goal is to build our home for $300,000. Yep, that is $200,000 less than it was quoted for. We have already saved thousands and we are barely getting into the building phase.
Come watch us do it!
If you are in the planning stages of your project, I strongly encourage you to look into my signature course Plan Your House. 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.
I have arranged the posts into “steps” to try and make it easier to follow. You can follow the steps in order to know what you should be doing next, and inside each step are additional posts you can click on for more detailed information.
Go ahead and begin with Step 1: Where to start when you want to build a house
Then I will list the next steps as I finish them here.
Step 3: Hiring a Designer/Architect
Step 6: Permit requests and assignments
Step 7: Shopping for sub-contractors
Step 8: Shopping for materials
Step 10: Preparing to break ground
Step 12: Concrete forms for footings
Step 13: Rebar in your footings
Step 14: First inspection and cement prep
Step 15: Pouring cement footings
Step 19: Support beams for floor joists
Step 22: Rim board and Sub Floor
Step 23: Concrete Slab (for garage)
The checklists, schedules, and printables page was created to make things easier to keep track of. There is so much information to sort through when building a house. Lists, schedules, plans, and other organization tools are so helpful when you are dealing with such a huge amount of paperwork and information. Sign up below for the FREE checklists, schedules, and printables page with unlimited access to the house building resources I created that helped us save over $75,000 so far.
If you live in Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, or Utah be sure to check out the Who should I hire page. It outlines the people I hired after doing months of research on the best deals and the most reliable service. It will save you a lot of time when searching for who you should be hiring to do each job on your home.
If you are looking for extra help CLICK HERE to visit the extra help page with a videos and tutorials option.
If you are having trouble finding something on the site or you have any questions that I have not answered, please feel free to email me at farmerswife@farmhousefromscratch.com
I want to help you have the home of your dreams too, let’s do this!
~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.
Sam says
Thank you so much for putting all this info in one spot! My little planning self is LOVING this! My first question, probably the first of many is; are you all you doing all of the bids for each subcontractor at once so you will know the final total or all you doing each bid as it come close to the time for that sub to start? I know you said it would cost $500,000 for a GC to build your house but how do you know you will be able to get it down to $300,000, because their cost (the GC) should be around 20% of the total cost of the home.
Thank you,
Sam
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Hi Sam,
I am so glad to hear that I am being helpful!
The $300,000 is our goal. That number was determined because we took the 20% off for the general contractor and then with all the research I did, we decided we could save another 20% from good planning, shopping, and hiring techniques. I budgeted out what I could before hand, but I did not write out every single thing and how much it would cost. I wish I would have though because having a written budget to follow would have saved us even more money. I had figured out enough of the big costs to have a decent estimate, but I could have done much better and should have! That is one of the reasons I am working on a complete written out budget for you guys to follow so that you can have a pretty darn close guess to what you can build your house for. We are about half way through the build and I am confident we will hit that goal of $300,000.
Good luck Sam!
Moriah says
Would you happen to have any information or advice on drawing your own “blueprints”? I absolutely love the architecture side of it though a few things are stumping me so any help or finger pointing in the right direction would be very much appreciated! Thanks again for all you’ve done so far!
Moriah
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Blue prints have to be crazy detailed to get building permits around here. And even then, I have had comments from people that my county is far from the worst that way. In my case, there is no way possible I could have drawn up my own plans because I didn’t know enough. However, I was able to draw my own version, to scale, with every detail that I knew of included, and then take it to a designer and have him put it into his computer program. If you have experience, or think you can take on drawing up your own blueprints, that is great! But if you don’t know what you are doing, then a really enjoyable alternative is to draw up what you want and then take it to a designer or architect to have it drawn up officially. You can still be the one to “design” your custom home, have fun drawing all the pictures, and create exactly what you want, and then just have someone with a computer program put it together. You can even cut a deal with some professionals because you will have already designed the whole thing, you just need his computer program basically. Our designer knocked a chunk off of our bill for that very reason. One other idea is to buy your own computer program that will help you draw up your blueprints. They are a little spendy, but you can design your house in a program that lets you see all the details with a click of a button. A friend of mine has one of these programs and you can take a virtual walk through of the house you are designing. It really helped to be able to see everything that way.
Moriah says
That was so helpful, thank you! Would you be able to tell me what program she used? Our home has a fairly simple design so I feel comfortable drawing it myself but would like to have a program for validity as well as to help my husband visualize it better.
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
She is going to get me the information on the program. I will let you know as soon as she gets back to me!
Moriah says
Good morning! It has been quite a while since I’ve commented and I know you are extremely busy but I was wondering if your friend ever got back to you with the house program information. Thanks for your help and all the great guidance and info!
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Hey Moriah, my friend didn’t get back to me dang it!
However, I can help a little. I asked awhile back and several of my readers suggested the same software! It’s called Chief Architect Home Designer Suite. You can find it on Amazon for a very low price if you ask me!
I hope that helps!
Marsha says
I have a question about your design process: how did you know what your exterior would look like when you designed your floorplan? I am interested in a country/beach/farmhouse/cottage-type exterior, but I don’t know how to reconcile the floorplan I’ve created with the exterior I’d like to have.
Thanks for all your help. I feel mostly confident in doing this myself.
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Hey Marsha, my designer had a program that showed me what the outside of my house would look like. I loved it. There are programs you can buy that will do that for you on your own computer, or you can go to your designer and have them show you.
Serghei says
I am so glad Ii found your blog!!!! Your blog is so encouraging for people planning to build the house by themselves!!! And thanks for proving so many details!!!! I will definitely use your blog when i start building my house! Did you consider using the shipping containers and reclaimed wood? What is your opinion overall about using shipping containers to build the house?
Thanks,
Serghei
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
I love shipping container homes. I think they are a great idea and you can do some really cool things with them. I also love reclaimed wood and will be using some in my own home.
I say go for it if that’s what you want to do! And send me some pictures!
Kaitlyn says
I am so encouraged by your blog! I am curious about how you are paying for the build. We would likely be near the same budget as you are. Are you financing it yourself with cash? If you are obtaining financing from an institution can you provide guidance for how you obtained it?
Thank you so much!
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
We are financing our house with our own cash. However, we didn’t begin with 100% of what we would need. We found that the price to build was going up almost as fast as we were saving money haha so we just decided to go for it and see how far our money got us. We started with about 50% of the total and we were able to make it far enough to move in to a very unfinished house. Now we will be working on it a lot slower as we save money at the same time, but it’s incredibly nice to not have a mortgage to pay even if we don’t have any carpet yet. I would do it again in a heartbeat!
Tylia Oliver-Threatt says
I love that you have given us a step by step guide on home building from scratch! I also have the same dream, and it’s amazing that now, I have a starting point.
I’ve learned that patience and diligence will end up providing you with the desires of your heart. Using this as a roadmap for our future endeavors. Best wishes on all of yours!
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Thanks Tylia! Good luck on all of yours too
Barbara Boisseau says
Did you ever share who you used for your windows? We are building in New England and have a very large picture window planned as well. We also are looking for black inside and outside windows. We think aluminum is going to be the best bet but wondered what you ended up with and who you used. Also – is there a way to search for info on your site/blog like “windows”, “insulation” etc?? Thanks in advance, Barbara
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
We used Milgard brand vinyl windows and purchased them through Perfection Glass in Tri-Cities, WA. We loved working with that company and have been happy with our windows, however, we have had some warping on the west side of our house because of how hot the black windows get. I think doing aluminum windows would fix that problem!
And yes, there is a search bar if you scroll down just a little bit. It says “what can I help you find?”, and you can type whatever you are looking for into it.
Nathalie says
Thank you for sharing.