I'm not a home-builder but I am a home-owner. Let me add that any work you do yourself the flaws will be about 10 times as noticeable and annoying to you as if you'd hired someone to do the work and it had the exact same flaws.
For example: I re-did some grouting in my bathroom, and only after that started to notice the imperfections in other areas not by me. Bits of tile I'd seen everyday for a years, that only after I had experience grouting I realised had grout smeared over them and let to dry.
Also, if your house is in the right area people will buy anything.
My first build (this summer) was a playhouse for the kids, 8 square meters single story. I built it mostly like you would a real house, omitting a few details (like insulation between inner and outer walls, since it's not heated anyway). I ended up with a budget overrun of 40% and spent close to twice the number of hours I estimated up front. It turned out really nice though.
If you're thinking about building a house, I would definitely recommend doing a playhouse or a shed first.
I estimated 20 hours, with another 4-8 of uncertainty. The job took 43 hours. So >100% overrun on my best-case estimate, >50% over my worst-case. If you don't have experience, it isn't just estimating the time that's hard, it's hard to estimate the uncertainty too. And I'd done a couple of decks before, just never any with as much railing or a second story.
I nth everybody else's suggestion to take on a couple simpler projects first. If you've never painted, paint something non-trivial. Then build a playhouse.
Sounds typical for construction.
I'm not directly involved in that process in-industry (ended up in light fixture manufacturing), but my impression is that BIM models are usually good enough to kick out a set of drawings, but you wouldn't want to count on any information that you pull out of it electronically being accurate.
So you still have "contractor to verify quantity" notes on everything, and presumably someone going through the drawing figuring out how many "Type F 2x4' troffers" and how many faucets and how many of every other little detail that will take money or time.
It's a pretty intensive process, but given the amounts of money at stake if you screw it up, hugely important to get right.
At least that's often the case in huge organizations trying to do crazily ambitious projects (esp. given their general incompetence). I tend to consult on such shitstorms because it pays well. The scars are for life though...
Once you've built a house, you realize that every single little thing you see, and every thing you don't see because it is covered, involved a decision about technology, materials, crew, method, minor adjustments, and sometimes fixups. I mean, EVERY ONE. Each square inch. It did not get there by accident.
As for the list, the good news is that most of the knowledge and experience came from others. For most of those things, I just needed to find our enough about it to know whom to turn to, or to make a decision to NOT to do it because it involved more costs and complications (i.e. basement).
What kind of house do you want to build?
I'm an initial cleaner, a type of cleaning that takes place for new buildings.
We use a host of specialized tools and techniques, here is one tip on glass. Typically removing concrete, paint, plastic, plaster, caulk from it.
Most cleaners and builders use Stanley blades and score lovely scratches all over your expensive windows - today can be 15% of materials costs. When the sun rises you'll want to cry. The more modern or expensive your window the more surely it shall be damaged.
There are three options. 1.2 mostly works on older glass types, usually not to be used on toughened glass or low e-glass and never interior door glass or veluxes.
1.1 Protect the glass using plastic and tape. 1.2 Use this with a water soaked applicator https://www.homedepot.com/p/Unger-14-in-Window-Scrubber-with... https://www.ungerglobal.com/en/trim-10-1 1.2.1 Use plastic blades 1.3 Use applicator then red pad (special grit of buffing pad that won't harm glass) and a cream abrasive.
https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/all-3m-products/~/3M-...
http://www.cifclean.co.uk/product/category/971337/creams
The construction trades are filled with a zoo of techniques that individually seem obvious - which must be why few doing DIY do it the right way ever. I subscribe to Fine Homebuilding and read their articles because I know I can't wing it on everything when I self-build - even caulking is a specialization, and few professionals seem to know how to airseal or fully flash a building.
Engineers should be aware that building has one of the lowest rates of automation. The main difference between builders today and builders half a century ago is pneumatic tools. When you think of it - all house are built by hand, and the factory built housing paradigm has tried to get off the ground and failed dozens of times, prefabs aren't much more common than they were centuries ago.
You won't automate the construction of your house and profit (the important bit - or it means you invented a kind of toy) without a giant breakthrough in AI. The nearest you'd get to automating a process and profiting from it will be gang cutting studs with a circular saw.
I am building a house for the first time (hired a GC, but making the infinite number of decisions involved and writing the checks) - I went in knowing it would be more work and more expensive than I was planning, and it was even more work and even more expensive than that still.
"Whenever you can build a shed, you've got it made"
"I'm a shed builder. If I was just left alone, I would build sheds. I would plan them at Bob's Big Boy Coffee Shop, and I would become very excited with these coffees and a chocolate shake. So, when I left Bob's, I would be racing home with plans for certain parts of a shed, right? Then, I would find the right kind of wood and I would start cutting them up with my power saw, nailing it, fitting it and working it. And I would be almost in heaven with happiness"
http://www.thecityofabsurdity.com/quotecollection/sheds.html
I'd say it's an excellent way to get a feel for what it takes to build a home. There are a TON of details, especially if you don't want it to rot.
If you intend to heat it in the winter, be sure to consider the effects of condensation. I made the mistake of building my first shed without proper ventilation, and it was like indoor rain when I turned on a space heater. For my second, more permanent shed I've followed building codes for real homes to avoid making any more big mistakes like that.
It was fun! Like a "hello world" for human habitats.
First, try to understand a process. Draw it. Imagine going through the process of building it. Draw it again. Look at your friend's house to see how it is different. Try to imagine how that one was built.
I have an interesting tale of how the patio door installer almost caused my kitchen countertops to be installed 2 inches lower. The story is a bit convoluted because many things are tied together in the house. You have levels for your foundations, sills, door bottoms, door tops, window tops, subfloors, and floors. Different layers have different widths. Wood flooring ends up being a certain width, and tile flooring another. If you want things to be flush when you're done, you need to plan everything meticulously, backwards, across months of time and different crews.
Moral of the story: pay attention to the levels of everything, across the house, all the time, in one place. Double-check this and verify all the time.
There are architectural programs that will render a 3d space to help with visualizations. Or any 3d drawing program like autocad can help as well.
Generally the linting is done manually when you ask for bids on your plans from contractors. If your plans are really poor they won't bid or they will come back with suggestions or prices that incentivize you to rethink things.
Painting is one of the things I do myself, in part because it's something I do often enough that I more or less know the various gotchas, techniques, etc. It's also the case that, when redoing areas that were already painted which is most of what I do these days, I can take some very timesaving shortcuts that someone I hire can't. I can repaint a ceiling without bothering with meticulously masking all the edges and corners. If I don't repaint 100% of the area it probably doesn't matter unless things are in really bad shape.
The last time I did a wall or ceiling, the crown molding had been painted so many times, it would have been nigh impossible to tape it and get a satisfactory result. But I've been living in old places.
Are you in a newer place with fewer uneven spots to tape around?
Nope. They either use something that looks like a trowel, or freehand it.
Learnt that lesson the hardware, I do not have a steady hand.
Also if you go the tape route, buy trade tape (in the UK it's commonly known as Frog Tape (though that's a tradename there are generics), comes off without lifting paint, doesn't suffer from creep and is brightly coloured (green) so you can see it against the underlying wall.
Hah. 200 years old.
I've used masking tape when I've been making changes in color or it's been around new cabinetry, windows, etc. As I say, when I'm touching up, I'm usually pretty sloppy. No crown moulding.
For everything else it's way faster and neater to do by hand, but it takes a lot of practice to get right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulating_concrete_form
> Do you have enough funds to do it this way?
For basements they are cheaper than traditional ways, for above ground they cost more initially, but are cheaper longterm.
In addition to the parent's advice, I would say for you to prototype/test the technique/task you are trying to accomplish before doing it in the actual part.
You will screw it up even the simpler tasks so make sure you screw up something that you don't care about before trying it in "production".
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McH3Cha7dnk - 1 minute video on priming a wall
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETRU3AxYq0w - 15 minute video on the same topic
A few takeaways:
- Things seem simple from the outside, before you do them for the first time. They are in actuality quite complicated. Even something as straightforward as painting a wall will be hard when you are doing it for the first time. You will make mistakes if you do it yourself. Try to do it yourself only in areas where you can tolerate such mistakes.
- The more project management experience you have, the better off you will be.
- Keep things simple. If you are trying to do things non-traditionally, you are not only attempting a non-trivial task for the first time, but will also have limited or no resources to lean on when questions or problems arise. Walk first, then run. If this is your first house AND you are trying to build it autonomously, you are trying to do two things you have little experience with. Consider building your first house using traditional methods. Try to automate it when you build your 5th house.
- Why a concrete house? How will you insulate it? Do you have enough funds to do it this way?
- Learn as much as you can before you even buy a plot of land. Read about foundations, building materials, roofing, windows, exterior doors, interior doors, wood flooring, tile flooring, concrete flooring, flooring in general, wall tiles, plaster, drywall, painting, insulation, plumbing, electrical work, stairs, waterproofing basements, ground settlement, building codes, gas installation, pest-proofing, garden planning, driveways, carpentry, weatherproofing, heating, cooling, ventilation, sewers, patios, exterior finishing, fences, gates, garage doors, how heavy a truck full of cement is and whether they can access your property on the type of road that is present, liability insurance, permits, weather forecasts and what things can be done in what type of weather, dumpsters & garbage disposal, portapotties, area maps to see what is planning in your neighborhood, earthquake considerations, flooding considerations, wind and snow loads, glass & mirror installations, safes, interior and exterior lighting, and particularities of hiring crews.