Farmhouse From Scratch has a big announcement guys! Before we share though, let me give a little bit of background information.
We started building our own house in 2016. Moved into our unfinished house in 2017, and have been living in it for over 3 years. Now, you have to understand that this was our plan from the beginning. The idea was that we would build our house with cash and move into it unfinished and finish building it as we lived in it so we could save more cash upfront.
I want to be clear about one thing. We do not regret our decision. We are incredibly happy with the way things have turned out and financially it worked for us. Unfortunately, life changes and things come up. I am sure you can all relate. I want to share a big problem we have encountered that helped us with our next step.
When we moved into our house in 2017, we thought it would originally take 5 years to totally finish our house. That was just going off of how much money we were putting into our house every year and what we thought we could accomplish every year. So, 5 years seemed like a realistic goal.
Some big things we’ve accomplished over the last few years while living in the house are a big chunk of the flooring. Almost all of the siding – which was not on when we moved in. All of the interior doors are done. We finished a second bathroom – we moved in with almost 1 bathroom finished out of four. A lot of shelving in the pantry and closest. Put on our garage doors, We have added a bunch of concrete outside. We love concrete but it can be crazy expensive.
We still need to finish flooring – even thought we have a big chunk of it done we do still have the kids bedrooms that don’t have carpet. We need to finish the two remaining bathrooms, our soffit outside and the deck work. The Laundry room and kitchen are fully functioning, but we used older cabinets that we painted so that it could be useable. Towards the end of our project we would like to replace those but for now what we have works!
We still have a lot left even though it’s been 3 years since we moved in. Our plans have slightly changed now. Neither of us are bothered by this plan. Yes it might feel like a construction zone to some, but our family is totally used to it. We have everything we need, it’s just that not everything looks pretty yet but its getting there slowly – one step at a time.
The Big Problem.
We thought it would take us 5 years to finish the house, but prices have gone up. Obviously you cant plan prices and what your life will do or be like five years in advance. Over the past few years we have had hurricanes, huge natural disasters all over the world, CoVid19 – obviously, and even a huge building boom. Contractors are a lot more expensive if you are hiring out is way more expensive and even if you are doing it all yourself, material cost is much higher as well. Some things have doubled and tripled in prices since we started building our home.
We thought it might take us $100,000 to finish our house but because of time and more expensive costs it will most likely be closer to $200,000.
So for the past while, we have been looking at other ways to help bring in more money to help us finish our build. Farmer and I are trying something totally new and something we have been planning for a long time.
(drum roll please!)
We are pausing our build. I know we sound crazy, but we are going to try our hand at house flipping!! I know, I know. Why would I stop working on our owner build to then go work on another house?
Let me explain, Farmer and I could keep putting $15,000 to $20,000 into our house slowly building it and every year that money wont get us as far. Or we can change and adapt and find ways to use our skills that we have learned to bring in extra money to be able to finish these things faster.
We really do enjoy construction. I have LOVED learning about building houses and learning how things work. I look at everyones houses differently now. I see all the things that I would want to do or change and it makes me excited to see houses that need a little love and even new houses that are going up. I love it. We want to take the skills we know and put it into a different project and go work on a different house that is a shorter faster project and flip it. This way we can make extra money to then be able to put more money into our house and get more done. This will give us a break from our house which is much needed.
Don’t be worried, I want to stay true to Farmhouse From Scratch style. I will remain totally transparent and open about prices and problems and advice. I want to include our fix and flip in our owner building journey. Follow along with our helpful and informative YouTube videos to see the tour of our new fix and flip house! We hope you learn something along the way!
For a YouTube video sharing a little bit more information about our exciting news watch this one!
FREE checklists and schedules
Access to the resources I created that helped Farmer and I save over $75,000 building our own custom dream home.
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