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Hi, Any suggestions on a really inexpensive home we can build/have built.
My husband is on disability and until recently did almost all our projects.
We've had to sell our house of 25 years and move to an old farm house
his Daddy built years ago. It has a tiny kitchen, medium liveable livingroom
and master bedroom. Just a shower so he has put in an old clawfoot
bathtub and now I need to do something to the floors. I think I'll try the
stained plywood that looks like old planking. We have a screened in
porch we are going to try to make into an all season room. We have
a spot on our property that we would like to build our own house but
with very, very limited funds and having to pay someone to do a lot
of the work this will probably not happen unless we just get really lucky.
Where we'd like to build we have to have a basement so a mobile
home is out and then when you get to modular they're moving into
being too expensive. Look forward to asking for help in
moderizing our little farm house but any suggestions would be so
appreciated.
I swear I posted a reply to this earlier, but now it's not there. Something weird going on here today! I'll try to remember what I said earlier...basically it was that the cost per square foot to build a modular house (including the delivery) is generally cheaper than the cost to build a traditional stick-built house (unless you plan to do a lot of DIY, which you said you didn't). So if the modular ones are too expensive for you, I'm not sure what other options there are for building an entirely new house. Your best bet might be adding on to and/or renovating the existing house--additions are much cheaper than a whole new house, plus you can do things a piece at a time to help with the budget.
Are you familiar with the panelized houses? We've looked into those.
But, again we'd have to do most of the inside of the house ourselves or
pay to have it done.
The rule of thumb that I've always heard was that you need to multiply the cost of the outside shell, (panel house, log home etc.) by 3 to come up with a close estimate of what the complete house would cost. If the shell cost $50,000.00 including the roof and windows it seems like the cost to finish the inside with restraint in spending and shopping flooring and appliances etc. that it could be done for less that $50,000.00 We can do a good bit of the cosmetic, painting, etc. he can't climb ladders or crawl anymore.
thanks for your reply
ps you haven't lost your mind. I realized that I posted my question on
an existing thread so I deleted it and reposted
No, I saw your post on the other thread too but decided to answer it over here since you started the new thread, then when I came back later it wasn't here so I reposted. Something weird was going on yesterday, some other people were having similar issues so I think it was some sort of bug in the system.
And no, I'm not too familiar with the panel houses so can't give you too much advice--but before you jump in and assume you can afford to do it that way I would figure out everything you're planning and price it out, I'm sure you can manage to do it for less than that $100,000 that the 3x outside shell formula would tell you, but I'm not sure if you can get it down all the way to $50,000 without a lot of DIY (on the heavy stuff, not just the painting). I agree that you can bargain hunt on appliances and flooring, but I think those are a relatively small part of the cost of building, and the rule of thumb was probably based on average appliance and flooring costs, not top of the line stuff anyway so I don't think you're going to save half the average cost of finishing the place just by painting yourself and choosing bargain flooring/appliances. Plumbing, electrical, things like that are hard to bargain hunt on unless you can do them yourselves or want to take chances!
Building new is never cheap, and don't forget you will need a new well and septic in the cost analysis. Also, check with the electric company to see if their lines are close enough to run service for you without extra cost. If it's too far from the existing poles it can be very expensive.
Is the farmhouse you moved into of historic interest? If so there is a remote chance that someone might buy it and move it from your property. What about conventional trailers?
FYI Dwell magazine (current issue) had an article about a home built for 100,000 (finished) in Texas. Again, modern style.
