To holistically design your own home, it is important to consider your personal and family needs as well as the particularities of your building site. In consideration of your personal needs, it is important to consider your emotional and spiritual requirements along with physical space requirements. People tend to thrive in an environment that reflects their personality.

Evaluating your needs and engaging your creativity is the beginning of the design process. An exploration of home building plans and ideas, along with consideration of the resources and assistance you need is the next step.

As I develop this section, my goal is to provide you with information and resources to help you to effectively design your own home. The following list are some of the areas that I will be covering. Please contact me for further information or to suggest other areas of consideration.

* home design programs – software to help you plan and design

* energy efficient home design – aspects of consideration for a more comfortable and cost effective lifestyle

* green home design – choosing healthy materials and sustainable practices

* not-so-big house building principles – living better with less

* small home design – principles to maximize use of space, materials, and energy

* universal home design – designing your home for your changing needs over time

* specific design ideas – we will cover many areas like traditional American home design, contemporary home design, log home design, etc.

* home building plans – we have available a large variety of traditional and unique home plans that will be linked to this page.

Building Methods and Materials

Using conventional framing to build your own house also allows for much flexibility and is easily adaptable to some form of prefabrication. Appropriately designed, stick building can be creative, energy efficient, and cost effective. But, there are many alternative home building methods and materials to also consider. The following list are some that I will be focusing on as this site develops. Please contact me for more information now.

* Post and beam construction – uses heavy timbers for the primary structure, which becomes part of the interior décor and is often finished with structural insulated panels (SIPs).

* Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) – uses foam forms to build a structure that is filled with concrete. It provides excellent longevity and is very energy efficient.

* Log home construction – this classic American building method is continually upgraded to provide a reasonable 21st century option for do-it-yourself home building.

* Steel home building – using recyclable materials, building with steel is growing in popularity with many green home builders

* Straw bale – Using very sustainable and insulating materials, this building method provides an alternative resource for a growing number of owner builders.

* Adobe and rammed earth – in an appropriate climate this is another feasible alternative method using readily available and sustainable materials.

* Cob and earth bags – also using earth as a primary building material, these two up and coming methods offer incredibly creative flexibility to build your own house.

One of the primary owner builder advantages is the potential of 100% financing and the ability to move into your new home with instant home equity of 15% – 30%. The difficulty is finding mortgage or construction loan lenders that are willing to offer owner builder financing. There is added risk involved for the lender, along with added cost and hassle for you. We have established relationships with a variety of lenders that provide an owner builder construction loan with minimum added costs and hoops to jump through. With sufficient credit rating and employment history, we can help you find an appropriate financing solution.

Some things to consider in exploring home building loans are the mortgage and construction loan rates and the ease of moving from a construction loan to perm loan. Interest rates tend to rise and fall with the stock market and it is helpful to watch the trends during your dreaming and planning phases. It is also helpful to use a construction loan calculator to help you determine how much home you can afford to build.

Another area of consideration that I would like to address here is debt management. Much of the current problem in the real estate market is associated with having unmanageable debt load. We are very sensitive to this issue, personally striving for and moving toward debt free living. We have available some of the best resources and tools to facilitate effective money management and debt reduction strategies. We also have resources to help obtain bad credit construction loans.

Please contact us for more information on home building loans, money management tools, or mortgage and debt reduction resources.

Home Building Costs

Among these practices are establishing a reasonable home building budget, careful choices of materials, and diligent record keeping. Often the first place to start is to consider new home building prices in the area you are planning to build your home. This can be done by looking at new homes that are for sale and also by talking to home builders. It is good to establish a range of square foot pricing that are relevant for the style and amenities you are planning.

The next step will be to get estimates and proposals for your projects actual home building costs. Estimates usually are preliminary guidelines to establish a budget while proposals provide a fixed cost to solidify your plans. Estimates can help you decide on priorities during the planning phase, but detailed proposals are absolutely necessary, before starting to build, in order to avoid any surprises.

I will be adding information and resources to help you consider home building costs, establish a budget, get the most for your money, and maintain appropriate accounting records. In the mean time, please contact me for more information in this or any area of diy home building.

Among the the advantages of using a kit to build your own house are efficient use of material, quality control, and considerable savings of time involved in construction and the management of the project. Depending on the amount of prefabrication, site work is significantly reduced – after the foundation is finished a completely prefabricated home can be move-in ready in as little as two weeks.

There are many options for home building kits. Using standard stick built construction methods, prefabrication can be as little as panelizing the structural components (wall, floor, and roof framing) to building a complete modular home in the factory. In addition, home building kits are available that use alternative building methods – primarily post and beam construction, structural insulated panels (SIPs), log home construction, and prefabricated steel framing.

We are working with a few companies to prefabricate custom home designs with green home building options, and can provide a variety of construction options and design features. Please contact us now for our most current information on custom prefabricated options.

I have gathered many sources for great home building plans as well as a few good designers that will reasonably modify existing plans or collaborate on a custom design. Please contact us to discuss your specific needs and sources for a plan that is appropriate for you.