Question

Question on home building.  I have searched the group, but just want some opinions I guess.Question on home building. I have searched the group, but just want some opinions I guess. My husband and I have decided building our home will be ideal as we need specific things in which we have not found in our area. We have a set budget to start, and a budget that we will not surpass, as we know things come up when building a home and we want to have a safety space. Anyway, how often do you go over budget? What is an ideal dollar square foot amount? Any recommendations on how to save money? Just any insights from people who have done this would be great! Also, I want cathedral ceiling in living room, but know that is money so we’ve settle on two floors as we know it’s cheaper to build up then out.  

Answer 1

If you do get a cathedral ceiling, it’s going to raise your heating bill by quite a bit. Heat rises and there’s so much empty space. Just a thought

Comments

@citronellal never saw that aspect, thank you!  

Answer 2

Cathedral ceiling- WORTH IT

Comments

@politic90 I feel like if we don’t do it I’ll regret it. If we do we’ll go over budget.  

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@siesta Oh I'm sorry I missed that part. Can you maybe put in a sunroom? After cathedral ceiling I love a sunroom. My fil just build a modest 2 bedroom ranch home and was going to have a flat roof, that was the design. The carpenter? whoever was framing maybe? HE said we can raise this living room roof into a pitch and it won't cost very much more at all (again, his kitchen- living room- dining area are not large. (My husband helped raise the frame, he is an electrician. ) So it might be more doable than you think!  

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And then you add a fan to help with air circulation/ pushing the heat back down

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I have this in my 1200sq ft home and our heating is about $65/mo and electric $123/mo (and we go hard on the AC and heat, lol, full comfort)

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(We have a split level so only the living/dining is vaulted, we have our 4 bedrooms and bathroom on the 2nd floor) then there's a den off the kitchen (2 different levels) with a bathroom, laundry room, and sliding glass doors to the patio. In 1200 sq ft. Plus a finished basement room and a half crawl (where the den is above so lower ceiling in basement). Just to give you an idea of smaller houses with really usable layout

Answer 3

You will need to research what building price per SQFT in your area is. It's different in different areas. Also, whatever timeline they say it will take, plan on twice as long

Answer 4

Heating and cooling ten feet of fancy ceiling where no one will ever be is a waste. You’ve made the right call.  

Answer 5

No matter what you think you want there will always be something you wish you had in your dream home. My laundry room is too small, I hate my soak tub because I don't use it and would rather have a huge shower, cathedral ceilings are nice until you want to paint. My favorite room is our sunroom. Think long term. One day you will sell the house. Will new buyers like the location and features you think are awesome. A one story is ideal if you become disabled or you live there in your old age. One story homes in our area have sold much quicker than two story homes.  

Answer 6

Vaulted or cathedral is worth it. We were told allow for 20-30% in total cost of home in overages. We had less than that but it was still a lot to pay out of pocket that we couldn’t get covered by the construction loan. We added extra insulation to walls bordering common areas ourselves and could have saved $15k+ painting ourselves. Make sure you accurately price out what you want for allowances before you finalize those buckets - flooring, kitchen/counters, lights, cement or asphalt, etc. our builder would have screwed us on several of these areas. Our driveway allowance got us to 3 ft from the rd ‍♀️ $1500 to do the rest or have gravel there. Our builder didn’t include a front sidewalk and the back patio ended up being smaller than we wanted. Stuff like that.  

Answer 7

Like someone said above, research the cost per square foot in your area. It’s location specific. We went about 65k over on our budget in building a single story 2300sf home. That does not include the 50k we spent in permitting/engineer/clearing/prep before we ever broke ground. We are in the Seattle are for perspective. Also, you need to have a large cash runway available as the bank loan will not reimburse you until the items are verified to be installed. We have cathedral ceilings which I love but our heating cost in the winter is about $300/month. In the end, I think that remodeling is less expensive than building. IMHO.  

Answer 8

Are you going to build it yourself, or find a builder to do all the work? We did the general contracting ourselves to save money, but it depends on your loan/bank, as well as your area. The price per square foot is really dependent on your finishes/wants/needs. Since we also did a lot of finishes ourselves, we could do upgrades at our cost, not builder's cost. We also did 10ft ceilings on the 1st floor (except the front entry is 2 story), so it makes it look a bit bigger, although not quite cathedral.