How To Build House

Welcome to How To Build House. I know what you're thinking, we forgot an 'A' in our title. Yeah, even Tonya, my wife, is bothered by the title. She thinks it should be how to build a house, but that was already registered. How about we say that the home that we are building is currently named "house" somewhat like when people are pregnant they call their unborn child "baby." I'm pretty sure that we know how to make baby, but we're still learning when it comes to how to build house. From now on if we seem to use improper grammar, just assume that there's some technical reason and it's not because we're idiots, because I'm going to use phrases like "how to build house" and "how to build a house" interchangeably. What I'm saying is that we might be idiots, but please don't assume that we are. With that out of the way, let's get to why we're here.

We are going to build our own house, and we would like to have you join us on this adventure. You may be asking yourself, "Why would I want to learn how to build house from someone that isn't a professional home builder?" Well, we think that's precisely why you will be interested in learning how to build a house with us. I assume you want to build your own home (or at least learn to do some part of the overall process), and so do we. Also, probably like you, we have yet to build a house for ourselves. We will end up going through many of the same steps and learning many of the same things that you will need to know to build your own home. If we can do it, you can do it.

By the way, who are we, and why do we think that we can figure out how to build house on our own? Well, let's get one thing straight first. We don't plan to do this on our own. We have already received help, and we plan to employ plenty of help along the way. This may be in the form of relatives helping with certain tasks, or it may be in the form of hiring contractors to do certain jobs. For example, if we decide to have a contractor come in and do the mudding and taping, then we plan to explain the decision making process that went into such a decision. To me, this is no different than weighing the pros and cons of installing a drywall ceiling or a drop ceiling. My hope is that you will appreciate learning about the choices that get factored in to such decisions and use our experiences to help you make decisions about how to build your house.

So, let's get back to who we are and what sort of help and expertise we have at our disposal. I'm Ed, and my wife is Tonya (pronounced Tone-Yuh). We will both be posting articles to this site. Each of our parents have built their own house at some point in their lives. I think this is part of what makes us feel like we can learn how to build house.

My parents own land that was bought by my grandmother, which, on its own, is an interesting tale that I may post about some other time. My grandmother figured out how to build house (which for my grandparents was actually a cabin). When my parents became empty nesters, they decided to build their own home on what used to be my grandparent's cabin property. I can't say that I helped a lot during their own homebuilding process. I was around at times, though. I helped erect a large garage, and I did learn some valuable lessons about how to build a house. Maybe in future articles, I can get one of my parents to discuss some of their experiences.

I feel like Tonya's dad must have always known how to build house. My dad and I are probably the sort of guys that you might be surprised to learn could do handyman and owner builder types of things. Tonya's dad is one of those guys that you just expect to have built his own home, done all his own plumbing, excavated his own building site, etc. When Tonya was rather young, he built her childhood home. Around the time when I was getting up the nerve to ask him if I could marry his daughter, he was selling the house he built and moving his family into his father's house. Now, he can usually be found doing some sort of remodeling on their current property. I'll try to get Tonya to discuss some of these home building and remodeling experiences in greater detail.

Tonya and I have done work on our current house. With the help of friends and family, we finished the basement of our current home. This was somewhat of a drawn-out process, but we were in no hurry. We now have a guest bedroom, an extra bathroom, an office, and a large living area in the basement. We did almost the entire basement on our own, but I'll save those stories for another time.

The most important thing, to me, is that I have our family as a resource, not unlike how you now have me as a resource. In fact, I would love to get them to post here, but they're not internet geeks like I am, so that might be difficult. Maybe I can come up with a way to trick them into telling us about their experiences like asking them some questions via email and posting a Q 'n' A session here.

So, that's it. I feel like what we're qualified to do is to share our experiences and document the process of learning how to build house. We're not a experts in the field of how to build your own home, and we probably never will be. What we hope is that we can be peers that share a common experience, and hopefully we can help empower you to build your own home, finish a basement, or be your own general contractor. As peers, we also hope that you would share your experiences with us. As the website builds, we will come up with better ways to connect. For now, I suggest leaving comments on our blog posts.

Right now, it's early in our how to build house process. In future posts, we will bring you up to date on where we are and what we've already done. We will also discuss previous projects and the decisions that went into them. We hope you will enjoy taking part in our journey.

www.howtobuildhouse.net how to build house