My Ingredients for an Owner Built Home

Sorry for the delay in this posting.  The truth is, it is time for a confession - I am stuck!  I am also sorry in advance - this is a long one!

I have been in a hole I do not seem to be able to dig myself out of for many months now – 300 days to be exact.  You see, this was the day that I found out that the Municipality I lived in (District of North Vancouver - DNV) was not as ‘green’ as I had anticipated/hoped, and I was going to have a FSR (floor space ratio) issue with my fatter-better-insulated-walls.

But more on that in next month’s posting, I want to talk now about the ingredients I think are needed for an owner built home – some of which may surprise you (they did me). The basic ingredient list for your owner-build recipe might be something like:

•           Money

•           Skills or willingness/ability to learn

•           Component knowledge or willingness/ability to research

•           Health

Money – Obviously you are going to need a sizable quantity of cash or credit.  In my region this can be anywhere from $75/ft² at the extreme low end, $130-$150 as an average value, and $200-$300/ft² and up for a highly custom home with high end finishings.  These are the costs to have the home built 100% by others, any sweat equity that you put into the process can allow you to lower your costs or increase the quality of your finishings.  It is important to define a budget right at the beginning, as this will allow you to make decisions throughout the process as to how to best meet the budget and goals of your build and see, quite clearly, where it makes sense to put the money. We have an initial budget of $300K-$350K.

Skills – Sure, you have built a greenhouse or garden shed – but do you really have the skills needed to build your own house, including installing/constructing each of the components that make up a finished dwelling?  It is important to realize your limitations early in the process so that you can focus on what you do well at, pay others for what you really are poor at, and practice on what you probably know how to do but are not great at.  This will also allow you to get some training and practice in those areas to hone and polish your skills in these areas before you get to the ‘big tent’.

Knowledge – Skills are great, but if you do not know what you need to do, it really does not matter that you have the ability to do it. Knowledge can be gained in many ways and often at very little to no cost.  There is a vast array of free knowledge on the internet.  Building forums, manufacturers websites, and consumer review sites are just some of the resources available to you, at no or very little cost, on the net. There is then the local technical school courses available on most of the systems and components found within a home. These are often just a few hundred dollars for 6 or 12 weeks of instruction. They will give you a fundamental in the system of interest and show quickly areas where your knowledge may be weak.  One of my favourite sources of knowledge is to attend industry sponsored seminars.  The BC Building Envelope Council, Thermal Environmental Comfort Association, Home Protection Office, and the Electrical Inspectors Association of BC are my personal four favourite seminar sources.  You hear directly from industry experts what are the current challenges and solutions available in the marketplace.

Knowledge and skills are probably interchangeable as to which is more important in this list.  You really need both to proceed.  I personally listed skills as more important for me as this is probably the area I am weaker on and is harder to improve. You can of course have natural skills, but most skills are learned by watching others.  You usually need to physically see someone else doing it right to understand the steps to doing it right yourself. This, of course, is the fundamental element of ALL apprentice, articling, or residency type programs out there.  You Learn by Watching and then Practicing and Applying.

Knowledge can be read or researched.  It can be studied and reviewed.  This is for me fundamentally easier and more available than honing my skills. You can research on the internet, read books, take courses and, go to seminars. All of these will help you gain knowledge, but how do you gain skills?

I have found a few ways to do so. Courses that include hands on components are an excellent start.  The BCIT Building Envelope Lab is a great example of this type of course and has been invaluable to me. In it we have been physically practising the application and detailing of rain barriers, air barriers, flashing, window detailing, etc. It has reinforced that having knowledge alone without skills is not good enough. I was horrified when the window I thought I had so carefully detailed --- leaked! Another way to practice your skill is to volunteer at an organization like Habitat for Humanity. You can work on an actual site and be guided by pros in the various construction fields. I have also found that helping with neighbourhood projects has been a great benefit. You can learn from others or if you are at the top of the knowledge pole, can practice doing it right before tacking something much larger or more expensive.

Health – Obviously you need to be able to physically do the work.  While this is taken for granted for many, the requirement has delayed our build for years now.  We have had plans to ‘start’ at least 4 times over the last 6 years. Two lengthy illnesses (thyroid and back), each a year or more in duration, each 100% debilitating to the point that all normal life activities stopped during both, managed to derail all previous attempts to start. The back issue in particular, I had two bulged and torn discs, can haunt a person.  Is it going to hold out? Or will it fail part way through? I do not know the answer and instead will take a leap of faith and do everything I can to protect it during the build and strengthen it prior to the build. I have discussed this with my wife, who has a lot less confidence than I, and said, “I need to try and do this, if it fails we will just have to hire someone to finish the build”. This for me is probably the biggest wild card in the plans, and we just have to make an assumption that I will remain healthy or this project dies before it ever begins.

The above four ingredients were the ones I was expecting going into this process.  The next items were ones I did not anticipate needing in such large quantities:

            •           Organization

            •           Optimism

            •           Support

            •           Resolve

Organization – this has turned into the most needed skill of all. As I do not normally work in the construction industry, I needed to find ways to catalogue the huge volume of information I am amassing because I would not otherwise retain the information.  Whether it was a tip I saw on a TV show, an article I read, a product I saw on the way home one day, or an insight I gained at a seminar or class, this all needed to be stored in a way that was easily retrievable and in a format that was flexible for the different types of information I needed to store. I have gone through at least 6 iterations of this ‘knowledge database’.  I started with an Excel spreadsheet but that soon became unwieldy. I then transitioned to a Word document, but it became too difficult to navigate and add information. I started to build an Access database and realized quickly that it would be too rigid.

I was then exploring a new laptop I bought for my wife one day and came across a program from Microsoft called OneNote. My search was finally over!  This was a program that acted like a database, was searchable, infinitely flexible, had tabs along the top that I could use for all my major components groups (like plumbing, electrical, exterior, interior, …) and then each tab had ‘pages’ and ‘sub-pages’ down the side that would let me break up each major component into as many sub groups as I wanted. So for instance, I could take Exterior and break it up into Cladding (and break that up into main and feature sub-pages), Windows and Doors, Roof, Flashing, Water Resistant Barrier, Sealants, etc… Each page then allowed you to store pretty much anything you wanted in any format.  There was no structure, I could just click on any part of the page and start typing. I could embed videos, pictures, sketches, and hyperlinks - and of course text as well. I have been using it for over 6 months now and have not found a shortcoming for the type of data storage I need on this project.

Optimism – When everyone around you is telling you that “you are nuts”, you need to have a healthy dose of optimism to proceed down this path.  Most people I know are interested in the process and some of my professional colleagues actually support me. But those who know me the best doubt my ability to build this by myself.  I do plan on getting some extra hands at key stages where one set of hands just will not be able to lift something or hold it in place and secure it at the same time.  But for the vast majority of the build, I plan on performing the labour myself.  I will fully admit, many have tried and failed, but many have also tried and succeeded. So I need a very healthy helping of optimism to take me through this.

Support – This comes in many flavours.  Emotional support is something I crave and probably have the least amount of (and probably will not be able to increase as I do not have any one around who has the same ‘dream’ as I). As I stated above, most people in my close circle just think I am nuts. Technical support is also very important and an ingredient I feel I am blessed with. I have developed some great technical support relationships in the construction field, and feel well covered in terms of building envelope, building code, electrical, HVAC, general design, roofing, tile and brick, and interior layout. Many of my technical support networks could also most likely lead me to trades people should I ever get stuck (this allows me to have optimism that I have a chance of doing it myself).

Resolve – The last ingredient is probably the most important, and one I have not totally mastered yet. Because I have never attempted anything like this before, I do not have a good blue-print on how to proceed.  What needs to be done? When does it need to be done? How does it need to be done? How does one item tie into another? This list is endless and unless I break it down into one small chunk at a time, it is all-consuming and totally overwhelming! I need to figure this all out as I go, but the problem is, I am not one to jump into the deep end. I like to know where I am going before I start. I am known for endlessly researching a topic. I am having the most difficulty with this ingredient, and am stalled on making decisions and moving forward. I am always wanting to research just a little more, or consider one more alternative. Some of this is healthy and even required, but I guess I am so scared of screwing up, I am unable to start.

So I blame various setbacks (like the meeting I had with the district back in Sept 2011) on the delays in the design and engineering. I make excuses that the delay is actually a good thing because the codes are changing and I would have had to re-design the plans if I was already done at this stage. 

However, I think the real reason I find myself deep in a hole right now is because I am just too chicken to stick my head out and get moving!