How Was Building Your Home Yourself?
I get asked this a lot... Right up there with "where do you start" and "what did it actually cost."
And honestly? I get why.
Building your own home sounds like this huge, romantic, HGTV-style adventure until you're the one standing in a muddy field with a stack of permits, trying to figure out what a grading plan even is.
So let's talk about it. The real version — not the highlight reel.
We planned to GC it ourselves from the start
When my husband and I sold our starter home and moved in with my parents to make this whole thing work, we already knew we wanted land, we wanted a modern farmhouse, and we wanted to be our own general contractors.
This wasn't something we fell into halfway though — it was the plan from day one.
We did the math early on, realized what a general contractor's markup would cost us, and decided we'd rather put in the sweat equity than the extra dollars.
If you've read my post on what building actually costs, you know that math matters a lot when you're both working full-time and trying to fund a build at the same time.
What "doing it yourself" actually looked like day to day
My husband ran point on the build itself — scheduling subs, walking the site, solving the problems that popped up basically every single day. He worked full-time close to our home, so he had more flexibility to be there (this is key in my opinion to successfully DIY your GC).
I was working my full-time job, commuting my usual 75 miles one way, and handling finish selections, budgeting, and all the behind-the-scenes decision-making in the evenings and on weekends.
If I'm being honest, my husband carried most of the build load. I am a blessed woman!
But that doesn't mean there wasn't stress on our marriage, life as parents (I was pregnant at the time with our second), and the fact we were living in my parents basement...
That's the part nobody tells you — building a home while working full-time means you're not just building a house, you're building an entirely new rhythm for your life at the same time while juggling everything else, especially living in a basement of your parents home haha.
The stuff we had zero clue about going in
Soil testing. Grading. Easements. Septic and well permitting.
All the pre-construction pieces that have to happen before a single wall goes up.
I've written full posts on a lot of this because I remember feeling completely lost trying to Google my way through it.
If you're early in your own journey, this is genuinely the best place to start — long before you're picking out flooring or debating paint colors, you need to understand what your land can and can't do, and what your county requires before you can break ground.
Do we regret being our own GC?
No. But we also won't pretend it wasn't stressful, because it absolutely was.
There were weeks it felt like every decision was ours to make and every mistake was ours to fix.
No one was coordinating it for us.
If a sub didn't show up, that was on us to chase down. If a decision needed to be made fast, it needed to be made by us, immediately, often without enough information.
But it also meant we had full control over where every dollar went.
We got to make the calls on materials, layout, timeline.
We saved real money doing it this way. For us, that trade-off was worth it.
It isn't for everyone, and that's okay too.
Why we did it this way at all
We wanted land.
We wanted privacy.
We wanted a home built around how we actually live, not a floor plan built for the average buyer.
Buying an existing home on 20 acres with the layout we wanted just wasn't realistic in our area — so building became the path. And with that came a little sacrifice.
Living with my parents during the build.
Long days after long commutes.
Making decisions about a house we couldn't fully picture yet.
None of it was glamorous in the moment.
But almost three years later, sitting on our front porch looking out over our own 20 acres,
it's still hard to believe it's actually ours.
If you're thinking about doing this yourself
Start with my free build guide, budget tracker, and finish selection organizer — they're the resources I wish I'd had walking into this.
I built them because I remember exactly how overwhelming those first few months were, and I'd rather hand you the blueprint than have you start from zero the way we did.
If we can do it — two working parents, no construction background, living with my parents through the whole thing — so can you!!
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