Step-By-Step Guide to Build Your Own House

Very few people are qualified to perform all the construction steps for building their home, but you may be able to act as your own General Contractor (GC), hiring your subcontractors (subs) in the order they are required.

First, it's time to get situated—literally and figuratively. Not only are you getting your project straight in your mind and on paper, but you are literally sitting your intended home on the building site.

• Clear the building site of brush and other debris, down to ground level and at least 25 feet around the planned house perimeter. This often involves a separate labor crew that performs this work.
• A surveyor stakes out the lot, based on original plot drawings that indicate the property boundaries.
• Make alterations to the site's topography if necessary to alter the water flow across to the site. This often requires a contractor with earth-moving equipment.
• Order a roll-off dumpster to handle refuse during the building project.
• Order one or more portable toilets. This is essential unless you expect various subcontract laborers to use your home's bathroom.
• Order temporary utilities from the power company.
• Hire an electrician to hook up a temporary electrical panel. This is often mounted on an existing utility pole.

Things will start getting serious now—both in terms of labor and spending money—with the excavation and installation of foundations and slabs. Everything before this has felt like annoying prep work; now, you'll feel like you're building something.

This work is almost always done by excavation contractors and foundation specialists—an entirely different group of contractors than the carpentry crews that will soon be on site. This is the point of no return. Footings and foundation comprise such a large part of your entire house building cost that stopping after the foundation has been built means that you will have wasted a lot of money. Plus, you'll have a massive amount of concrete or masonry work cluttering a site, making a sale of the property exceedingly difficult.

Usually, you or the contractor will bring in a separate company whose sole task is to build foundations, as the job requires very specialized skills.

1. The contractor digs trenches for frost footings.
2. Inspectors arrive to check the dimensions of footing trenches.
3. The contractor pours concrete for footings.
4. Footing drains are constructed, and these are designed to drain water away from the footers and protect them.
5. The contractor builds vertical foundations walls resting on the footings, using either poured concrete or concrete cinder blocks. Other types of foundations are sometimes used, though they are rare.
6. The foundation is waterproofed all the way up to the finished grade level. Holes are created in the foundation wall to allow for the routing of water supply and drain lines.

If you are laying a slab-type foundation, you will bring in plumbers and electricians to "rough-in" ​some of the services prior to pouring that concrete slab:

• Plumbers: Pipes are laid down that will eventually get covered with concrete.
• Electricians: If electrical lines will run through the concrete slab via metal conduits, now is the time for these conduits to be run.

With everything in place, it's time for the subcontractor to pour the concrete.

1. For a house slab, the contractor will first install slab foam board insulation.
2. A four-inch minimum gravel base goes over the foam board, forming the base for the concrete.
3. A plastic vapor barrier comes next.
4. Wire mesh reinforcement is next laid down and positioned, so it is raised slightly above grade. This will allow the reinforcement to sit in the middle of the concrete layer, where it will offer the most strength reinforcement.
5. The contractor now pours the concrete slab, likely from ready-mix trucks that deliver a large quantity of concrete.
6. If you're building a garage or basement, this is also the time to pour concrete in those places. It's expensive to bring the concrete contractor back for another pour.

With the excavation, foundation, and concrete work done, soon you'll start to recognize your project as a house. That's because now the framing carpenters will arrive to put up the lumber framework for the floors, walls, and ceilings, and then move to the sheathing, siding, and roofing installation. This work can happen with remarkable swiftness. In the space of a week or two, you may suddenly recognize your house as a house.

Some homeowners are able to assist with the work at this point, though normally this work will be done by a skilled carpenter crew. Some homeowners, though, may tackle portions of the work, such as laying the floor sheathing over the joists or hanging wallboard.

Here is the general sequence of work for the carpentry crew:

1. Work up a framing order of needed lumber, nails, builder's felt or house wrap, and adhesives, based on your building plans.
2. When good weather arrives, the carpenter crew arrives to frame the house walls, including the floor, ceiling, and roof skeleton. Framing is the basic "shell" of the house, minus siding and roof surface. The rough openings for windows, doors, and skylights will be framed at this time. The basic sheathing of the wall and roof surfaces concludes this stage.
3. Install the windows, doors, and skylights. Usually, this will be done by the same carpentry crew that did the framing, though sometimes a manufacturer's crew will come in to do this work. It is also a job some homeowners can tackle. At this point, when the building is sheathed, and doors and windows are installed, the subcontractors doing the electrical and plumbing work may now arrive to begin the rough-in portion of their job.
4. The finished siding surface is now installed over the sheathing after the house sheathing is first wrapped with some form of weather guard membrane. Again, this work is often done by the same contractor who did the framing and sheathing.
5. Finally, the roofers come in to complete the application of roof flashings and the shingles or other finished roof surfaces. The basic shell of the house is now completed.

Now the interior work on your house begins with the arrival of masons, electricians, plumbers, and HVAC specialists.

1. Masons build the chimney if your home has one. This generally involves the application of brick or stone veneer over a base of concrete block that was laid by the foundation contractor.
2. Electricians and plumbers do the rough-in work for electrical circuits, plumbing pipes, and HVAC system ductwork. This work is obviously easier without the wall, flooring, and ceiling surfaces in place. After completion, these contractors will disappear for a while, then return after the walls and ceilings are in place, to complete the final connections of various fixtures.
3. Inspections are made of rough-ins. Arranging for permits and inspections are handled by the contractor, but if you are tackling this work yourself, the responsibility for inspections falls on you.
4. Install insulation in the walls and attic. This is sometimes done by the carpenter crew or a specialty contractor, but many homeowners find that this is work they can do themselves to save money.