Ideas to plan a house
When you're ready to plan-a-house there are a few steps that makes the process easier. First of all you need to get your ideas and plans on paper.
Before building your own house you need to make a good plan that involves important information. You need to consider first of all, how big you want to make the house, and second, how much money you can realistically spend. Most of the time, people are limited on the size they want because of the lack of capital they have. I was faced with the same thing. I decided to start out small and make the house expandable with future considerations in mind.
If you are a low-income wage earner, you may want to start out with something around 1500 square feet. You can roughly estimate that the cost per foot will be around $35. Thus, a 1500 sq. ft. home will average around $52,500. This depends on many different things of course. If you live in the city or the country, if you want fancy fixtures, or if you want expensive sidings and trimmings, then the cost can be substantially more. Suffice it to say, the base price for materials, is right around $35 per square foot. The idea here is to find a way to have a nice home, when you otherwise wouldn’t have a chance to buy a home outright because of low income. That is what I faced ten years ago and I still wouldn’t have a nice home today if I hadn’t taken a chance to improve my lifestyle against the odds. Before building your own house you need to plan-a-house and that part involves important information. You need to consider first of all, how big you want to make the house, and second, how much money you can realistically spend. Most of the time, people are limited on the size they want because of the lack of capital they have. I was faced with the same thing. I decided to start out small and make the house expandable with future considerations in mind.
The best thing to do while the idea is fresh in your head, is to go and buy graph paper, you know, the kind we used back in science. The paper has little grids that help keep everything to scale.
When we made our first plans, we drew a big rectangle on the paper and every square was one foot. That helped us get an idea of how big we needed to make our house. Take a tape and measure just how big the rooms are where you are staying now so you have a comparison. Get it all down on paper to scale and even go to the appliance store to get the right measurements on all the appliances so you can plan the rooms. You’ll need measurements on beds and dressers, desks and tables and all the things you will put in your house.
It will help you get a good idea of what you “need” instead of what you “want”, because sometimes our checkbook determines the difference between the two.
Our plans to begin with were relatively simple, but then we made several changes before we did our official blueprints. After making several adjustments, we ended up with this for our final design. It totaled right around 2100 square feet.
When we started to plan-a-house we did all the necessary research. The dimensions for all our appliances and cabinets were known before we started construction. We didn’t want to build a house that cost a lot more than we could afford. It was essential that we had the basics covered. Each person in the house needed a private room. Two bathrooms is not really a convenience anymore, it’s pretty much a necessity.
While bathrooms are somewhat expensive to build, when you plan-a-house there should be at least two bathrooms regardless of the size of the home. A cozy family room is very important because most of the family time will be spent around the TV or computer. We didn’t opt for too many extras in our house, yet we probably overspent to raise our comfort level a little. We put a large jetted bath upstairs for $1500, a gas fireplace for $2000, a dishwasher for $300, and the Redwood decks for $2500. Although we were on a modest budget, we did flip for these extras. They raised the house value by about $12,000, so it was definitely a good move.
At the time you’re building, the last thing that’s probably on your mind is the resale value of your house. This is one thing that should be considered when you plan-a-house before construction even begins. Your house needs to be attractive to buyers because the future is always so precarious. We don’t ever know where we’ll be a few years down the road. In other words, try not to build your house too unique.
Unique is a matter of taste and the majority of homebuyers don’t have the same taste. Just try to build something that has value and a few eye-catchers. If I was selling my house and some people came to look at it, I would bet the things that would stick out in their minds helping them to make the decision to buy, would be the jetted bath, the cozy looking fireplace, or the Redwood decks.
Continue reading here: Installing bathroom exhaust fans
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