Here we go!

The Grassland house project is underway! We had a great Zoom call with a designer/structural engineer this morning for over an hour. Based on the call we are going to move forward with him and his team to get architectural drawings of the house fully designed over the next few weeks. At the end of the process we will have what we need to begin engaging various contractors to get the home built. On top of that we will also have 3D renderings and a walk-through of the entire home.

For 2 months now we have been spinning our wheels looking for house plans that fit what we want. We have also taken a stab at making our own drawings. Over the course of that time we have not made much progress, and in fact were becoming disillusioned with the entire ordeal.

The biggest decision was that we are going to be our own General Contractor or GC. This means we are going to have to be much more involved and that we need to step up our construction knowledge a bit. While we don’t need to know how to setup a concrete form we are going to need to know when one needs to be setup.

The good news is that we are going to be living on the job site. This means we will be talking with the various contractors everyday. We will be checking on progress daily and asking questions and checking budgets. Its going to be a lot of work but its also going to be our home so it will be worth it.

Currently we have invested in 4 books to help bring us up to speed:

Between those books and the designer we feel really good about how things are heading now. We are already talking with our excavator, who built the road and septic system, about digging out a basement. Next steps will be finding a builder to get the basement, walls, and roof up. From there we will get electricians and plumbers. Then drywall and finishing. It almost sounds easy but the truth is that this is the largest most expensive project of our lives. Its gonna be awesome!


Comments

2 responses to “Here we go!”

  1. Building my own house is something I’ve always wanted to do and simultaneously been terrified of doing. 🙂 Excited to watch the progress from afar!

  2. Yeah it has already been interesting, and we are still just getting off the ground. Excited and terrified to see how things look from 30k feet.

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