Useful Tips on How to Build Your First Home

Building a new home is not merely a challenge to overcome – it is a milestone in one’s life. While it is not uncommon to see people selling their homes down the line, most embark on creating a perfectly comfortable abode for life. Future can bring a lot of unpredictable factors into the equation, but for as long as the experience lasts, it is a profound step.

This is why you do not want to make any excessive mistakes along the way, so use at least some of these useful tips on how to build your first home.

They say that preparation is half the job in the bag, and that is an undeniable truth. The logistics of building a home can get complicated and you want to know how every dimension of the project looks and what it contributes.

For starters, you need a reasonable layout of your dream home that fulfills all your wishes but which is also realistic. It’s a balancing act that can be hard to tackle alone, so it’s best to seek help from learned professionals. In other words, find an architect.

Remember to take the holistic approach during the planning stage. Your house is not a unidimensional building unit, it consists of several important spheres that intersect. For example, you need to meticulously plan your electrical grid, the access to sockets, fixtures and switches. In the same vein, you have to plan your water pipe system.

People tend to underestimate the extent of the financial output they will need for their building project. However, “going overboard” is practically a rule due to several simple factors.

One, people tend to be over-optimistic when it comes to the time window needed to complete the project, but when it comes to building homes it usually goes over schedule. Two, it is in human nature to imagine an “ideal” version of events – where everything goes smoothly – but the chaotic nature of life tends to throw us curveballs.

Furthermore, always consider that there will be some extra items or materials which are not included in the initial financial estimate, the shadow costs which come in the form of “extra concrete needed for corrections” or electrical and gas usage. In order to approach the overall price tag of your home-building project, add another 20% on your initial estimate. If you want a more specific number, you should hire a quantity surveyor who will do the math for you.

Now, there is a very simple way to minimize a chance of these extra costs. You need to vet the professionals which will “get their hands dirty”. Utilize the power of the internet to comb through forums, reviews and recommendations to find the right contractors, but don’t hire them just yet.

The best case scenario is that you find the most reputable company that operates in your vicinity (at the very MOST in your county) and check if your acquaintances have had any previous experiences with them.

The word of mouth is just as important as the judgment of the online community. In other words, look for credentials, testimonies, references, validity of documentation and, of course, price.

Just before the building process begins, you need to have a detailed conversation with the team-leaders of the contractors and learn what can or cannot be changed as the house is erected. This can make all the difference in the world, so don’t be insecure about it and stay assertive. After all, it is you who will end up living in the finished product.

Once the work has begun, there is really not much you can do to help but stay out of the way of the workers. They are the professionals with experience who have done this before and if you’ve vetted them properly, you should trust them. On the other hand, this does not mean that your presence on the lot is unwarranted – quite the contrary.

By checking on the progress every three to four hours and spending some time around the lot, you can see if the project is coming along as planned. If you’ve done the financial planning as it has been advised, you will have some elbow space with the finances to make a course correction or two if things go awry, but try not to do this unless absolutely necessary.

If the workers seem to be unwilling to do the extra steps without a good reason, do not back down. This is supposed to be the house of your dreams, so “settling with less” should be the last phrase in your vocabulary while the bricks are being laid. In other words, let the people do their job, but be very clear about what you want.

Once the house has been built, you can actually save money by proceeding to make the finishing touches yourself. Painting the walls or slapping wallpaper over them is mostly a simple process that usually ends up being a DIY sort of arrangement. Even a complete layman can learn how to do this properly.

Still, if it is within your economical capabilities to hire an interior designer and another group of professionals that will do the necessary work, you will be in safer hands.

Building your own home is, above all else, a rewarding experience. After the work is done and all the hard choices are finally behind you, you are left with something that is unequivocally a work of your own design and a possession nobody can take from you. Because of this, building your first (and possibly last) home is an undeniably ennobling experience that changes you forever.