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Housing

If one is serious about homesteading you will need a home for yourself and any family members.

There are many things to consider before doing this. If you purchase an old homestead you may luck out in finding a suitable home to use as is or to renovate.

However, renovations can be quite costly and you may find that renovating was more work and more costly than you first realized because “things happen”. That is, unexpected things happen and they cost money.

For instance you look at this old home and you think, ‘I’ll just change the siding and it will look good as new’. But you remove the old siding or stucco and find out there is wood rot behind it. You lift off the rotten boards or plywood and find out the studs also have dry rot and while you’re in there you discover that there is hardly any insulation, or that sawdust was used and it has settled in such a way that the top six inches have no insulation. Now you have to take all the plaster off on the inside of the home and replace it with drywall once the insulation and vapor barrier are put up.

When all was said and done, you just about paid for a new home on an old homestead, or old foundation; that is if the foundation was not cracked and/or shifted. Having a building inspector examine the homestead before you buy may turn out to be the best investment you will ever make.

Learning from my own experience and economic place in life, I would build a 20x24 shack or something of that size with new materials on a new solid foundation or pillars, and slowly add on as money and time permits without being in debt to mortgage lenders who love to keep us in slavery to them, for the rest of our lives!

I would start out by placing my root cellar under the home for storing my food before or during the time I laid the foundation, where it is easy for an excavator-hoe to dig and then work my way up, building and finishing the various rooms as money permits. Root cellars should not be built under ground in poorly drained areas.

I would also build as much as I could with my own family members. If building seems above your expertise as a homesteader, I would make use of the public library and learn from them or ask your neighbors for help. I would try to avoid paying for labor as this is the most expensive part of building a home.

While we are talking about price, let’s remember than homesteading is about leading and living a simpler life. The bigger the house, the larger the time frame and the larger the debt you will incur to finish the house. So let us ask ourselves a few practical questions before we start.

How much room or space do I really need?
Can my children share the same room?
Can I really afford the cost to heat up the grand living room with all its cathedral ceilings? What about when I get older and/or my income changes?
Do I need a separate dining room or should I make the kitchen just a bit larger?
Can I combine the laundry into a corner of the bathroom or hallway?
Could I use a loft for a bedroom or two instead of full size rooms?
Do I really need mahogany cupboards and cork flooring?

Before you build, sit down and carefully think about all this, draw out a plan, and ask your local building store to give you a ball park figure. You may be quite surprised! At this time you may want to re-evaluate your overall plans because later you will find out the finished price to be about 25% higher than they quoted, and that was just for materials.

My Housing Hurdles

I wanted to build an inexpensive home but I was tired of living in small dingy places. We had three kids. So I planned a room for each of them plus a slightly larger master bedroom. I wanted a utility room and a large entry room. I also wanted cathedral ceilings in the living room areas. I could not find any normal rectangle plans that I could live with so I designed my own round house. Ten sided to be exact. A Decagon house.

Round House On The Homestead

Using a CAD program I laid everything out and decided to build. I went to the local inspector and he estimated $35,000 whereas I had figured a measly ten grand. Part of the reason I figured so cheap was because I was using logs to frame my home, and straw bales to insulate. Was I ever wrong! Things like roofing, flooring, electrical, plumbing, electrical permits, and permit renewals, all began to accumulate, and I had no experience to assess the real costs of building.

First, the inspector told me that my window opening had to be large enough to let a fireman through with his air tanks and so forth. I argued the “framed opening” and he insisted “the opening portion”, and he refused to pass inspection unless I co-operated. But the inspector was God so we moved on.

The cost of my windows now jumped three times. The windows totaled more than three thousand for these windowss.

Secondly, the truss manufacturer only knew how to provide trusses that fit within their pre-designed computer program and did not know how to calculate log bearing strengths, and the building inspector wanted snow stress loads to meet so many pounds per square foot.

I wanted a partial cathedral and the rest to be a normal w-truss system, but they could not figure it out, and the deadline was fast approaching, so I told them to make them all parallel trusses. This meant the whole house now had cathedral ceilings.

Oh well, I always wanted a loft! Now I have a huge loft. But, I had not figured out, or rather did not know how to figure the cost of that extra space because I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it yet. Oh, my necessary cordwood usage just increased too.

When I got the bill for the trusses they were $5,000 dollars instead of $2,000, because the parallel truss cost more to build, the trusses over the logs were overkill 2x6’s, and the trusses were six different sizes to accommodate a round building. The funny part of this is that the longest truss right in the center of the pie was only 2x4 construction, whereas the truss on the logs was 2x6’s and I actually straightened a log that was crowning upwards as it was drying with the 2x6 truss.

Without going into too much detail on over-cost runs, the cost exceeded $85,000 and I was no where near finished. That was materials only!

In fact, I am still doing the log banisters in the loft, still need doors on all the bedrooms. I scored and stained the concrete floor, but it didn’t hold up to working and living in the house at the same time, so that will need to be finished as well.

Many other things just happened and what started out with a line of credit soon piled up to me still owing $60,000 dollars. To end it all off nicely I went through divorce, she refused to pay her share of the debt, and I lost the house through bankruptcy. Due to ongoing family issues and the need to be close to the kids, I bought the house back and I am now always broke still trying to finish up the house.

It started out as a $10,000 dream but exceeded $115,000 in building materials toward the house.

How did I end up this way?

I built too big, too fast, and I built round instead the norm of square. The building stores ran gross under–estimates on things like cement and shingles because they were not taught to think or measure – round, or triangular.

Instead of enjoying homesteading the way I wanted I now have to work away from home for the next five years to pay the loan on my house – that should have been paid in full many years ago. That is called Stress!

Having said all of the above I would not trade homestead living for anything else. And five to six more years is still better than a 25 year mortgage that has compound interest! But…I could have avoided bankruptcy and a lot of work if I would have built smaller. So we have to be frugal, smart, and wise in how big, how fast and glamorous we build.

Learn from others…it is still the best way to go.

Start small, get several estimates, take your time, and think it out carefully. Real carefully! Unless, you want to lose sight of your dream!