/diy/ - Do It Yourself

[Anonymous No.1507964]

>Always dreamed of building my own home
>Nothing fancy or elaborate, just something simple that I made with my two hands, to live cheaply and distance myself from the massive financial stress renting/mortgages bring
>No real construction experience outside of basic maintaince skills such as painting, patching drywall, etc.
>Fine dining chef by trade, have been working in it since childhood
>Can litterally make anything food related, from pasta by hand, to cheese, to butcher anything, charcuterie products, etc
>Couldn't even think of where to begin building a home as simple as an A-frame
>Spent my life building a skill-set that has nothing to do with my drean

Is there any hope for me /DIY/?

[Anonymous No.1507974]

There are some classes that teach how to build with clay and earth. But that can be tricky to get permits. And all the plumbing and electrical instalation may need a licensed pro, depending from where you are.

[Anonymous No.1507980]

>>1507964
>Is there any hope for me /DIY/?

I would say no, not really.
Mortgages arent as scary or oppressive as you think, and home ownership is pretty nice.

Reality is, its not cheap or easy to buy land and build a house to live frugally.
If you actually have that urge to create non-food with your hands, I would say just channel that energy into metal working, or woodworking, or some other /diy/ hobby.

Home ownership is a nonstop list of things to fix, youll get that experience just by buying a house. It may not be the house you built from scratch, but its yours and you know the good work you are putting into it.

[Anonymous No.1507983]

>>1507964
Start “doing” and less “saying”.

[Anonymous No.1508025]

>>1507980
I'd always known it would be an uphill battle if I ever did try just with the legal/permit side of it. But it's not so much needing to make something non-food. It's always just been a home I've wanted to make. Even if it was just some shit cabin. It's something I'd always wanted to do since a young age. As my grandfather did it, and I remember him always talking about how it was the greatest expience of his life
>1507983
I promise you I am "Doing" a lot in my life. I run a multi-million dollar buisness and work a minimum of 13 hours a day of manual labor, 6 days a week. And my day off consists of meetings, and hours of paperwork. If I had the time to get a second job in construction to learn, I would have.

But thanks guys, I'd thought it was far-fetched to start this late into my life. Just hoped there was some chance or way it would be within reach

[Anonymous No.1508033]

>>1508025
>It's something I'd always wanted to do since a young age. As my grandfather did it, and I remember him always talking about how it was the greatest expience of his life

Build a detached garage in your back yard.
It can be done for like $5-6000. You can take your time and do it as you see fit, learning as you go.

Once you are done, you will have bought all the tools and gotten enough experience to really understand your capabilities of building a house. You are essentially building a 1 room house.

It can be a long term goal.

[Anonymous No.1508043]

I would start with the foundation personally.

[Anonymous No.1508165]

>>1508033
Thank you greatly for the advice. I've actually considered something like this, to build some type of man-cave/bar. But never considered it as a better starting point

[Anonymous No.1508172]

>>1507964
Just had a convo with a friend who knows a girl that builds small 800 sq foot houses in Taos, NM. It's like a small hipster town but she said the foundation costs like 2 grand and then builds the houses herself. It was brief with not many details but maybe there is a way to look into it online? She apparently only makes 15 grand a year but was able to buy 3 large houses and rents them out, owns a strip of land near a river and is going to build the small houses on it.

[Anonymous No.1508177]

Try one of these

[Anonymous No.1508200]

>>1507980
>>1507964
>its not easy
There are people that have done it with some skill. The link below is to a couple that did it in 120sq ft and documented costs etc.
Personally, I would think buying an affordable used RV then parking it on some rural land that youve purchased would be a good start.
Youll also need a truck good enough to drive from your site to the nearest building supply and or walmart.
Live in the RV on the site whilst you work toward building your cuckshe-er-uh, tiny home. This will allow you to take your time and do things correctly.
Just remember, a stone foundation and extended overhang from a pitched roof is a must if you dont want to rebuild the structure in your lifetime.
http://www.120squarefeet.com/?m=1

[Anonymous No.1508271]

>>1508200
You're fucking kidding me with this tiny house horseshit, right?

[Anonymous No.1508298]

>>1508271
Click the link, then click on pics or photos or whatever they called it and just look at what two people can do with 120sq ft.
Cost a lot less than 2000sq ft and can be built much more quickly than a larger home.
Also, you can still keep the RV onsite as a multi purpose room or whatever.

[Anonymous No.1508302]

>>1508271
>wants to build whole house from scratch
>doesn’t want to try a cuck shed first to make mistakes and learn the processes
You kidding me? Start small broseph, no sense in learning that you’ve been framing wrong after building 500 linear feet. You’ll kill yourself or more likely just build a really shitty house if you try to blow your whole load on your first time out.

[Anonymous No.1508311]

My pops has has been working in carpentry and construction for about 40 years now and he built his retirement house. I helped him and I would say its definitely doable.
We built on a half acre plot that we cleared out ourselves.
Legal issues were easy since the plot sellers knew that people would use those plots for houses and gave a checklist of who to contact to get what permits.
I didnt know dick about construction at the time but I helped my pops build the foundation, frame, floor, walls, and roof in the summer of 2012. We worked 8 hours on weekdays sporadically, and 10-14 hours on weekends not including about 3 hours if driving each day. In a lot odd ways it was "weekend" project until we had enough built that we could live there and get more done on weeldays.

The physical aspect wasn't hard at all, I only had to follow instructions, but there's nothing that seemed impossible even to a semi-unskilled 18 year old. I was being directed by someone who had built several houses in his life so maybe that's the trick.

Note that I had some carpentry experience at the time. I had built kitchen cabinets, and hotel bedroom furniture from raw materials to painting and finishing.

If you could find a reliable mentor you might be able to get build a small extension to a home or a garage. After that you might have the skills to build your home or cabin.

[Anonymous No.1508354]

>>1508025
>multi-million dollar business
>professional chef
Guy Fieri?

[Anonymous No.1510027]

>>1508311
nice

[Anonymous No.1510033]

There are super-cool homes being made out of shipping containers. Lots of plans online, and they are not expensive.

[Anonymous No.1510535]

>>1507964
YUP!

Get a high paying job as a chef on a cruize ship. Travel the world busting ass and making money. Find a trustworthy GC to subcontract out you a little cuckshead on some land you buy. Come home and open your own restaurant near there.

[Anonymous No.1510536]

>>1507980
Can confirm. Have 3 houses. Home ownership is gayer than aids. And it's also playing financial russian rullete

[Anonymous No.1510537]

>>1508025
With that sort of credentials just blow 50k on 3 acres and a cuckshead

[Anonymous No.1510538]

>>1508165
Beware of drainage and grading...

[Anonymous No.1510540]

>>1508354
If so i owe you a kick in the fucking balls. Just got off a shitbox tub with a highly talked up flavortown burger joint. Always a line and it was shit. FUCK GUY and tell him to shove his nasty ass hamburgers up his greasy asshole

[Anonymous No.1511185]

>>1507964
>Is there any hope for me /DIY/?

YES, memorize the infographic! If you stick with history proven concepts of quality house build its more simple than it looks!

[Anonymous No.1511189]

>>1507964
>>Spent my life building a skill-set that has nothing to do with my drean

Unless....

[Anonymous No.1511193]

>>1507964
i taught teenagers with bare minimum asvab scores how to build pic related. basic stick frame construction is piss easy and dirt cheap. the real pain in the ass is getting utilities in and finding a parcel with proper zoning.

[Anonymous No.1511197]

>>1511185
>>1511185
thats all red herring bullshit written by someone who doesn't know anything about the US real estate market or basic engineering practices.

[Anonymous No.1511199]

>>1511193

I always dreamed of having a home liek those in your pic.

I'm a goat, btw.

[Anonymous No.1511200]

>>1511197
>thats all red herring bullshit

sure it is, american houses are top quality, anyone who says otherwise and doesnt pay a lifelong mortage for a house that lasts 20 years is a liar

[Anonymous No.1511216]

>>1511200
if you could put away your tinfoil hat and irrational fear of authority, you could see that its not a bunch of crooked contractors perpetuating some shoddy housing design/build philosophy to make themselves rich. these cheap houses are a conscious market decision by home buyers. if you understood how mortgages and land value in the US actually worked, you'd see why.

there are several other fallacious comparisons in croat posters posts, but thats just the first one.

[Anonymous No.1511217]

>>1511216
>croat posters

lol find one

[Anonymous No.1511221]

>>1511216
>these cheap houses are a conscious market decision by home buyers.

total bs, only thing you can buy today are houses made out of OSBs, all "airtight" which is a gift that keeps on giving for people who do mainintence + bad foundations. Try buying a basic brick house with a basement, basic wooden house (not the OSB wood house but proper wood), those are considered luxury today

[Anonymous No.1511222]

>>1511216
everyone who buys a house expects it to last until the end of his life and more, if people knew what they were buying there would be a riot

[Anonymous No.1511238]

>>1511221
that is a complete lie. the builder will put whatever sheathing you request when you ask for a bid. people do not want to finance midgrade+ materials because it doesn't really have an effect on resale value.

>>1511222
>everyone who buys a house expects it to last until the end of his life

no. man you don't even understand how the game is played and where the money is going. all the value is in the land (note: when i say land i mean the actual dirt AND all the zoning, utility hook ups, roads, easements, and rights pertaining therein). the land is where all the appraisal (read: resale) value comes from, not your granite countertops and solid masonry exterior. you only need that house to last long enough to flip it into something better.

[Anonymous No.1511246]

>>1511238
>sheating

Im not talking about damn sheating, Im talking about the structure of the house. Structure is crap.

>no. man you don't even understand how the game is played and where the money is going. all the value is in the land

You do agree that less mainintence is better than more? Why not build out of brick? Less labout intensive than the OSB house, more durable. Sure, land, whatever, keep the land and flip the land, but why pay for major mainintence of a crappy house in the meantime? Any what if your goal is not to flip?

[Anonymous No.1511250]

I bought a house 7 years ago tottally remodeled it and now it's done. I like my house it's is 100 years old and built well. I learned everything I would need to know to build one from scratch. You do not know what I know because you haven't done what I have done. You would not be able to build a house from scratch.

You can get heavily involved in the design and read about quality materials, but you will fucking hate trying to figure out how to build a house on the fly like I did. It's terrible.

[Anonymous No.1511254]

>>1511246
of course less maintenance is better in the long run. i don't disagree with the premise that McHousing is a thing. i do disagree that it's a scam being done by contractors or that the design methodology is deliberately sabotaging the customers purchase. that is not true at all, customers know (or should know) what they are getting.

if you want a brick house, you can still get brick houses built. if you want your foundation 36" thick, you can have that too. few people do this because it's harder to finance and requires more of a down payment. financing drives everything. if you are just paying straight cash, you can do whatever the fuck you want for pretty cheap.

[Anonymous No.1511263]

>>1511246
>Less labout intensive than the OSB house
no, no it is not. contractors WISH they could do nothing but brick houses all day because the margins in construction are in the labor and masonry takes time. a builder would love nothing better than to park mr, bricklayer on your house at $25+/hr for a few weeks. framers can bang out a mcmansion in a few days.

[Anonymous No.1512470]

>>1507964

[Anonymous No.1512679]

>>1511246
>Why not build out of brick?
What kind of car do you drive? It is basically the same question. You could go down to a car dealer and pick up a Toyota Corolla and it would probably last you 15-20 years or you could spend several hundred thousand and pick up a Unimog or a Phantom or some such. Why would you ever not buy the best? Well, because you might not have the ability to pay for it.

Sure, I could have gotten a brick house built. It would have cost me three times what I paid for my current home for the same size/features and I wouldn't have been able to finance it. Well, not unless they offer 90-year mortgages. Or I could have lived in a 10'x12' shed made of brick. OR I could have bought a normal wood frame house that has already lasted 65 years without issue, which is what I did.

[Anonymous No.1512874]

>>1508200
Stone foundations are superior? I've roofed hundreds of new houses over here in the Pacific Northwest, where there's no shortage of rain, and I have never seen this. Fuck half the houses are built on wetlands, don't know how they got the permits for that. A framer in this one development even told me a couple of the houses were already starting to sink a little after only a year or so. Poor homeowners man...

[Anonymous No.1512883]

>>1507964
Building a house is barely more complicated than making a linguini as long as you don't need anything fancy.

[Anonymous No.1513272]

>>1512679
>Sure, I could have gotten a brick house built. It would have cost me three times what I paid for my current home

its not because of the price of brickwork its because the industry is standardized differently. similar when laptops were extra expensive...

[Anonymous No.1513391]

>>1511189
Underrated

[Anonymous No.1514229]

you are not alone OP

im an architecture student in the desert. slowly planning a small house for me and my gf, made out of rammed earth, and in a segmented construction style so i can live in one small room while the others go up around me

pic related, similar to what im going for except im not an absolute retard and im using a nice thermal mass instead of steel panel for the ext. facades

[Anonymous No.1514232]

>>1514229
>except im not an absolute retard and im using a nice thermal mass

thermal mass might bite you in the ass if you dont connect it to foundation, especially in desert since cooling effect of earth

[Anonymous No.1514237]

>>1514232
my thinking is to have the house 2-3 below ground level, maximize themral mass effectiveness plus using the earth as a thermal mass as well. also want like 4' thick walls. pic was a bit misleading, while it may be possible, suspending thermal mass walls above the ground seems like a pointless feat of engineering, works fine for rick joys little rust boxes tho

[Anonymous No.1514240]

>>1514229
As a student you have literally none of the skillset required to even properly produce SD drawings let alone a full permit set.

[Anonymous No.1514245]

>>1514240
as a student i literally have all the resources right here at my university and a bunch of people to ask.
i do appreciate your feedback tho, its true, ill graduate in two years and maybe then ill be able to. however two years is not very long and i can use that time to hone down my design, get really specific with a schedule, find some good dirt, take classes on rammed earth, test any venturis that i implement to promote airflow etc.

[Anonymous No.1514251]

>>1514245
You will be employed, and then you will see.

[Anonymous No.1514258]

>>1514237
>my thinking is to have the house 2-3 below ground level, maximize themral mass effectiveness plus using the earth as a thermal mass as well.

no we are talking. 1m thicc rock walls with basement is the best option you can do but that is a project...

mind you you dont have to necessery do basement which is offcourse complex, but you have to be aware that big thermal mass can go both ways - its a dark art since every building style is proprietary to climate and available materials.

[Anonymous No.1514266]

>>1514258
>every building style is proprietary to climate and available materials

this

this is originally what led to rammed earth, as its basically just squeezing dirt into a madsive monolithic sandstone block. here in the sonoran desert the main concern is how building behave in the the dry heat, so looking at the oldest building around here (old missions, forts, churches) all the walls are around 3-4-5 feet thick and in the dead of summer inside is a confortable cool temp. its also seeing a bit a trendy resurgance being super expensive luxury desert modern building technique that would be super cheap to do own my own labor, since all the cost is in the labor.

[Anonymous No.1514272]

>>1507980
Good post.

Mortgages aren't that scary. If you even have a state minimum wage, you can own your own home fairly easy.

Lets say you make ~10/h and work 40 hours a week. That's $1600 before taxes. -15% taxes leaves you with $1360. Then -$100 for health care. Now you're left with $1260.

For the first 5 years, get a room mate a friend you can live with. Pay ~400-500/month on cheap rent. Take bicycle/ebike/public transportation. Thats $760/m left in spending. Now you need food. A single person can live off of $150 per month easily. I had to do frugal food consumption at ~$50/m for few months. Ramen diet is not healthy, but it gets you something. $150 is more than enough for a normal person. Now that leaves you with $610. Suppose you spend $100 per month on whatever extra stuff you don't need but want to buy. That leaves you with $510 per month in savings.

Each month, if you put $510 in savings (or stock/investment each year), you will have $30K in savings by the end of 5th year.

If you're living in any flyover states, that will get you a house or almost fully paid house. If you're living on the coastal cities, that's the 20% downpayment for ~$150K house.

If you've living in coastal cities, your income should increase by small amount. If you increase from $10 to maybe $15/hour, now you have ~$77K. That's 50% of your house payment done.

[Anonymous No.1514334]

>>1514272
>~$77K.
>50% of your house payment
>coastal city

[Anonymous No.1514358]

>>1514334
Your coastal city doesn't have cheap houses that go for $150K? Just look at its smaller neighbor city and get it from there.

[Anonymous No.1514486]

>>1514272
>no phone bill
>no electric bill
>no water bill
>$400-500 rent for a place close enough to jobs that you don't need your own vehicle
>$30k houses

also, in the areas with cheapest houses (fly over land) minimum wage is below $8 so you can cut your $1360 monthly net income to $1020

[Anonymous No.1514495]

>>1514486
Yea that's minimum wage too. Anyone who can do more than minimum will be more than able to afford anything with some small planning.

>electric/water
With room mates, rent includes those.

>phone
$30/m for standard, if you're frugal, you can go for $20/m similar package or even half that if you're looking for the deals.

[Anonymous No.1514521]

>>1514358
150k is mobile home and slip in an old person community. In Oxnard. (Where you will get shanked for being white)

[Anonymous No.1514554]

>>1514358

Barren _plots_ in my county are worth more than that.

The house I live in is a 60-year-old Suburb Special, thoroughly ordinary by US metrics.

It's worth like seven hundred thousand fucking dollars, in a shitty (though not full-on ghetto) part of the city. The ONLY homes in that price range here are out in the middle of nowhere, mobile homes, projects, or a combination of the above. The current median price for a house in Orange County is $720,000. Beyond the fact that I don't like living in a population center in the first place, based on price alone there is no way in hell I'll be anywhere even near here if/when I move.

This is ignoring the radically increased cost of living, perhaps most notably, insurance. As an example, my mother recently moved to Idaho. She was paying like $60/month for bare minimum liability coverage on a 16-year-old car. I think she said she pays like $15/month where she is now. At a cursory glance, staple groceries were like 40% cheaper there, too. Admittedly, not totally sure what the job market's like, but, based on what my sister and cousin there make (neither have any special skills beyond being competent beyond a basic level), it's nowhere near what that sort discrepancy would suggest.

Realistically, right now? The only good solution for living in a coastal city without a good job is to leave the fucking coastal city.

[Anonymous No.1514667]

>>1514554
>orange county
>standard

>>1514521
Then again, california has outrageous housing prices way above median house price of US.

>mobile home
Why the fuck would you ever consider such a thing? You're basically renting with no control over what happens if the landlord decides to fuck you in the ass.

[Anonymous No.1514680]

>>1508043
I would start with shipping containers.

[Anonymous No.1514775]

>>1514667
>orange county
>standard

You're right. It's small as shit compared to what you'd expect to see where land doesn't cost outrageous sums of money.

>family friend buys "house" in Texas
>7 bedroom, 5 bath, god knows how many square feet
>barely over a third the price of my house

I know it's Texas and all, but JFC that's absurd.

[Anonymous No.1514781]

>>1507964
I dropped out of high school, built my own house I'm still living in, and am now retired and farming. Building is really damn easy to do. You'll need to look up local regulations, codes, and laws about what you can build and how it needs to be built. In some of the worst areas, you'll have codes out the ass and labor unions who lobbied for laws preventing anyone without a license to do many parts of the jobs like installing your own gas, water, or electric. Shit they even have regulations about how high the grass is allowed to be x feet from a house, even out in the middle of fucking no where (land grab laws).

[Anonymous No.1514784]

>>1514554
>living in California
>using it as a metric of standard for the rest of the world

I somehow doubt the mental logic processes of persons who voluntarily live in an area of high immigration, high risk of yearly fires, high risk of earth quakes, and little to no seasonal rainfall that amounts to a hill of beans. They have rainfall catching laws there for fuck sake.