We started on my house in mid-September 2008, and I'm hoping we can move in before the end of April, this year. The builder has 3 other workers and has subcontracted the plumbing, tile, electricity, HVAC, exterior paint, the concrete and all the dry wall. Everything else they're are doing themselves. It is their only project. That said, my house is less than 1700 sq ft and is one level. It is, however a raised house (we're on the coast) and there are 2 screened porches which add an additional 1000 sq ft. I'm going to take a look at your link...

We had a builder but did a ton ourselves. Started last May too and we just moved in 2 weeks ago. We did all the electrical, painting, staining, clean up, tile. We also have 3 young kids to work around. We were in a rental condo for 18 months. You can do it! It is worth it in the end.

Hi,
We started the 28th of May 2008 with Excavation...now we are almost exactly 9 months into construction. We had a builder through interior rough ins and complete exterior except for paint, patios and decks. He worked with us into October. We have done all the painting and now we are working on interior trim and tiling. We are not in a big hurry and think we are looking at 12-13 months total. Our home is a 4 bedroom, with 4 1/2 baths just under 4000sf plus garage. We have a teenage daughter who is also impatient...I feel your pain! I checked out your blog...you are very funny! You should post a pic of your polar fleece outfit-it deserves to be documented. :) Good Luck!

We were the OB/GC on our build. DH worked full time while I wrangled the kids (3 boys) and construction. We took down the first tree on 3-31-08 and moved in on 12-5-08. We could have gotten it done sooner, but took a break for a month to get our other house ready to sell. The house is just under 4300 HSF. :o)

Our builder broke ground in July 2007. He did the complete framing and exterior. We took it from there and did all the wiring, drywall (had someone tape and mud that), painted, cut and edged all our trim and moulding, did the floors and hung all the cabinets and did the plumbing. We finally moved in the last weekend in October 2008. During that time, however DH had a fractured pelvis and I had a fractured ankle and foot. His accident happened at the house doing wiring but mine was at his brothers house. We made it but it wasn't easy. The best part is that we are in and settled, the old house is sold and this one is paid for.

My son and his wife were OB/GC of their new house. She is an RN and he is a taxidermist but also worked off and on with a friend who is a carpenter. My son and the carpenter started the house in April of '08(he subbed out wiring, plumbing, drywall, and HVAC) and they moved in the second week of Sept. During that time they lived in a little travel trailer with their 2 kids! I was amazed at how much time my son spent on the house; he was doing something 7 days a week and it is about 2800sq.ft. with an attached garage. It is a beautiful home! Can't tell I'm a proud mom or anything :)

We poured our footings July 30, 2006, and moved in Feb 26, 2008 after the 10 of us living in a 35 yr old single wide mobile home on the property for 23 1/2 months...Boy, were the kids glad to see that hauled away! (Ok...DH and I were too.)

But as for when the house will be 'finished?' --Who knows?! :-) We DIYed almost everything, with the kids doing their part, which depended on their ages and skills. (They were ages 2-18 when we started.) It was actually a pretty wonderful family experience, and we couldn't have done it without everyone pitching in to some extent, whether that meant major carpentry tasks, or watching younger kids and fixing dinner while I worked on the house. We are still working away at building and/or finished many of the built-ins, the window trim, the kitchen details, etc., etc.

We planned the house to have a family room addition, so that we could build the major part and get in faster. We hope to do that soon, finances permitting, which hasn't happened yet.

We have been 5 years working on our new house. It should be complete this summer. Husband, son, and myself have done every ounce of it. It is a log home, around 3300 sq.ft. The reason it took so long is we paid cash to build the house, many times we had the time and no money to work on it. I guess in the long run the 5 years was worth not having a mortgage. Good luck.

We're in our 6th. year, but God willing the move in is coming up shortly. We also paid cash for about half of the build, then we had to stop so DH could take care of his customers after Katrina. When we had money we had no time and when we had time we had no money. LOL

It took us almost 6 years but we did almost all of it ourselves and paid for most of it as we went. So it was worth it. We lived in an old single wide mobile home on the property during the build. If we had all the money to build in our hands at the start, it probably would have taken two years.

8 months (plus 14 months of planning and research). We GC'd the project ourselves, and it's not for the faint of heart.

Probably the best advice I can give if you want the project to move quickly, is treat your subs like a 3 yr old with ADD. Everytime you turn your back, they'll be off goofing around.

Also, don't kill yourself DIYing all sorts of things.

jemr: We are in the same boat you are

We dug the hole mid-August.

We hope to start insulating next week.

Alot of our delays were due to the unusually bad winter. Between the almost record breaking snowfall and sub-zero temps (during the day), we had a tough time during December and January.

Also, I used large, reputable contractors for electric, plumbing and HVAC. The good part about this is that you get quality work. The bad part is that owner/builders are the last on their to-do list, since there will not be any repeat business like they would get from a regular home builder.

We hope to get out of our rental soon. It's been 20 months for us!

We built our home as owner/builders. It took us 13 months to move in and we had about 1.5 months of weather related slowdown/stoppage. Our house was difficult to build do to terrain (steep and very rocky) and how tall our house is (44' to the peek). We are not done with all the finishes, but are finishing up as we have time and money.

We had a few subs (foundation, sheetrock, ect.) and I did not find that they put us behind production builders. They were excellent to work with. Perhaps that was because housing starts have slowed down. All my subs were awesome about answering questions and putting up with any of the the problems I created from being inexperienced.

It took us 10 months to move in and 2 months were slowed from design changes and money issues.

This was for a 4300sqft, 2 story on slab.

we started on october 1,2008 and are currently finishing up all mechanicals and moving on to insulation/drywall by the end of march. we contracted excavation, structure construction, most of electrical, and hvac. we will be doing a lot of the work after drywall. we plan to be done by sept or october at the latest. i wish my dh would do more because he can but he doesn't have the tools and figuring prices it seems to equal out (at least on the stuff he could do). our house will be 4300sq ft with full basement (unfinshed). good luck. gcing your own house is a lot of stress and will cause a lot of spousal arguements but in the end, if you can do it time-wise you will save a lot.

Most municipalities that issue building permits have a restriction on how long that building project will take, and this restriction applies to GCs and OBs in the exact same way. In my municipality for residential construction, you have a maximum of 12 months from the date you start excavation to the date you get your certificate of occupancy.

I guess my question wouldn't be so much to a random Internet forum as it would be to my building department. It could take some people five years. Great, but if your municipality doesn't allow you five years to complete your project this information is irrelevant to your project. My first question would be to the codes enforcement department, my next question would be what if I start this build process and cannot meet this deadline? You need to understand the ramifications of not meeting this deadline, and schedule your OB project accordingly.

Our municipality also has a one year cut off for builds in our subdivision as it's the main one in the city. However, I think because we kept the work site spotlessly clean at all times throughout and everything was also neat, they never bothered us about rushing to finish the house. Then again it's a small town in comparison to some major cities. They did call us once right after Katrina and ask when we were going to finish and we told them as soon as possible, that Katrina had set us back. That was partially the truth. The truth was because my DH is a general contractor he had to stop work on our house for 6 months to go help out his customers who had lost everything in Katrina.

DH is working on the underhouse brick installation right now. Today he came home and told me neighbor's are stopping to honk their horns, yell a "good going" or other words of encouragement. They can see we are almost there after all these years. We've had people stop by and actually ask if the house was for sale because it sat so long unoccupied or worked on. Some people who just can't take the suspense any longer are coming by to ask permission to see the inside. The last one was a realtor and she said she wants to build a house just like ours and asked for our architect's name.

It took us right at a year. We had the foundation, framing, roof, brick and drywall done. We did HVAC, plumbing elecrical, flooring,trim, doors, and painting. My husband was our GC. It went pretty well. That said my husband works with the construction trades through his business and knew most of our subs. We built the Frank Betz Candler Park with a few changes. It is around 3300 square feet.