Thread: Owner-Builder

In regard to saving money. As my useless plumber would say "you don't save 30% by being an owner-builder, you earn 30%'...... gotta be willing to eaarn it. The money we saved by being an OB enabled us to get top notch everything eg $35k kitchen instead of $15k one, designer lighting etc

Tony

Thought I'd give this a bump. We've just moved into a renovator's delight, with the plan of knocking the back room off and extending a bit. Our draftsman ball-parked $150k (finished stage, hand over the key and walk right in).

I'm keen to go the owner-builder route, and do plan to do a hell of a lot of it myself (with help from a few willing mates) - especially as we don't have that much to spend.

Looking at how much I've saved doing even basic stuff so far (repairing the floor myself, damp-proofing, etc, I'm sure I could get it down to $100k - does this sound reasonable or am I kidding myself?

Hi TJAY

If you are willing to put a LOT of work into it and you have some basic skills and nothing major goes wrong, then you can definately save a significant amount.

The best thing you can do is draw up what you want, then start to build a budget in maybe in Excel. There are plenty of places to find ball park figures for each of things you need to do, plus the materials etc. Put a column for the cost if you did it and another if a tradie did it.

You will start to see what is possible for you to do and what isn't. You should also get the difference in cost at the end. The other very important thing you need to consider is a column for the amount of days you estimate for each item to. A tradie will do it much quicker than you and you probably only have weekends? Add all the times up and make sure that your marriage can handle it!

I fully agree with this from above - "you don't save 30% by being an owner-builder, you earn 30%'...... gotta be willing to eaarn it". It is certainly a second job ... but very rewarding (at times).

Feel free to contact me if I can help further as I am part way through this process and there ar eplenty of considerations and things that I have learnt.

Got to admit, the real reason I want to do it is because I've never done something like this before, until a month or so ago I'd never picked up a power saw, now I'm walking on my brand new bedroom floor that my brother and I laid, and the rest of the house's floorboards that I repaired (when one floor guy told me to rip the lot up and start again).

I really am 'delighted to be renovating!'.

I think that's a great reason. I went into it not to save money but because I wanted to know if I could do it. To some extent it is very rewarding but in other ways it is very stressful.

Do it because you enjoy it and take heps of photos, plan as best you can and you'll be right.

This site will be the best resource you could find.

There is no feeling better than sitting down in front of the fire in a home you built yourself.
Looking around remembering the dramatic events that unfolded during the project. The budget that got blown, 3 days of blasting, all those trees cut down in 3 hours, the problems with the building inspectors, the wife and kids that now live somewhere else.....

It is a great project and very very satisfying but I found that the 2 I built changed my life radically in ways I could never imagine so be ready for that. I did one at 33 and another at 42.

You know what? if I had it to do over again I probably would without hesitation.
I would do it a bit different next time around.

Dear all, I'm the instigator of this post. The house is at lock-up with a lot of finishing work to be done.

In the not to distant future I'll post the the experience, which overall has been fantastic.

Cheers
Rod