Building a home yourself

I have noticed so many of people these days looking for a more sustainable way of life. So many of us were affected by the economy fall. Were all looking to save money, but still be happy. I thought I might share the story behind my house in hopes to inspire some of my readers to embark on their own adventure of building their own home. I sort of inherited the land that I have now. I haven't always lived here, in fact while my husband was in the Army, we lived all over the place. Then about 7 yrs ago my mom gave us about 2acres of her land, and we decided to build a house ourselves. Building yourself, allows you to start small and build on as you can afford it. We started out with a 16ft x 24ft house. It was very small, but only took us about 6 months to get it completed . We live out in the country so there are not any building regulations. For those of you considering building in the city, be sure to check your build codes before you begin! We used a simple pier and beam foundation which is a pretty cheap way to go and much easier than pouring a cement slab foundation. I would be happy to go more into detail about how to use this process for you foundation if you have any questions. We ended up with a two bedroom one bath home. Being that it is so small we are able to keep it heated and cooled easier and were able to spend more on better windows since we used less money on lumber. That was about 5 yrs ago. Since then we have added on one more small bedroom of about 10x8 and are now adding on another room of about 12x14, which will allow us to open up our living room and give our kiddos a bigger bedroom. The greatest part about all of it, NO RENT, no payments of any kind. We don't have a bank or landlord taking half our paychecks. It's such a great feeling of freedom. Actually the best part for me is now that we dont have to pay rent or a mortgage, I'm able to work from home at my own pace and spend everyday with my kids.  We are always looking for new ways to live off our land more. We have a garden full of veggies and I think I might even do some canning this year. We also have a couple ducks and 6 chickens that provide us with eggs.
The point here is anyone can do it. It takes some hard work at times, but the freedom of being out from under so many bills is worth every bit. You can find many things for your house construction for free. Start asking around, many people have windows or doors even sometimes decent lumber just lying around that they would be more than happy to give you. Another great way to find free lumber is shipping pallets. I will be doing an entire post on how we are reusing the lumber from the pallets to construct this new addition to our house. The best way to find them is to ask large manufacturing companies in your area. Most places just break them down and throw them away. you can find brand new lumber on most of them including 2x4s.
I think the only things we laid down a large ab=mount of money for was the septic system, which we paid for out of tax return. We did our homework and shopped around for the construction of it though. We got several different bids from different people before we chose one. In the long run we only spent $3500 for the whole thing including labor, where as some companies wanted as much as $6000 for the same exact work.
 I will tell you a little secret on how you can make due until you can afford you septic system, look into a thing called the incinolet. It's an electric toilet, I know it sounds crazy, but If you live in an area where it may take you several years to get a septic system done you may want to look into this alternative, we had one for two years before we got out septic put it, and never had any problems with it. Here is a link to their website: http://incinolet.com/    The company is great and they will help you figure out exactly the model you need.

 If anyone has any questions at all on how we have built our home I would be happy to answer them and help you on your journey any way I can :)

Pieces of Home:

 Just a couple of pics of our living room, small, but it's home....

On another note, everything you see in these pics was either free, something someone was going to throw out, or it was thrifted, including the couch which I picked up for $50 at a thrift store! It has some pretty throw pillows that go with it, but for some reason throw pillows annoy me....  In fact I have furnished pretty much our entire house this way. I should really do a post on how to decorate your home with thrift store finds, maybe even make it a weekly thing, hmmm......