I do appreciate your thoughts on saving money. That is what I am trying to do and you have given me some ideas as have others. Thanks.
-
I think there are some good points made in these dialogs.
I can appreciate your effort to save money. Whereever possible, I have avoided financing, so I wholly understand. Here would be my approach:
1) If you plan on a barn, build it first. This will be your on-site storage. If no barn and you will have a detached or semi-detached garage, build that first. Unless you find a super deal, shipping containers for storage will be 5x more $$ than they were 2 years ago.
2) Get your utilities installed - well, septic, power.
3) Consider the overall % that pre-purchases will save you. Consider what portion of that, such as wire, may never be used. Find the correct balance so you do not overbuy. For wire, consider automation options available today. I built with that in mind, so all
lighting in the home are "home-run" wires to a management panel (for the automation system) next to the circuit breaker box. Lighting today will be / should be LED, so 14ga is overkill if running a separate circuit for a single room's lights. If your code allows it (I have no idea if), consider dropping down to 16ga - the smaller it is, the easier it is to handle. I ran 12ga to all wall outlets and considered usage to avoid too many outlets per circuit. Separation of lights vs outlets also means that in room you can still get some type of lighting if a circuit is being worked on.
4) Electrical boxes and circuit breakers can be very expensive. If you use planning, time and research, you may be able to save quite a bit vs buying at a big box store.
5) Appliances? If you are trying to minimize costs, you can buy used when ready to move in, then upgrade later as long as you have accounted for the final size or product you want.
6) Carefully plan the kitchen - normally a center point or at least a very important part of a home. I thought it wise when I watched a video of a builder and his wife in their new build, using cardboard "structures" in the kitchen area to represent the exact layout - counters, appliances, island, pantry, etc. They kept modifying until they were pleased with the "flow" and spacing. If the house is in design mode, this may help to determine the exact size allocated to the kitchen.
7) If you are planting trees, do it early.
8) Be mindful that for many builds, the foundation may be 25% of the overall cost. At least that is what builders want upfront. Lots of expense to do it right. A soil test and foundation engineering is highly recommended to avoid very expensive problems later. Oh, and make sure the foundation is such that flooding, even due to a historic rain, does not result in damage.
