I Spent Over $1m building a house. Heres what I learned

1. Lesson 1: Unpredictable Project Costs
2. Lesson 2: Impact of Price Fluctuations
3. Lesson 3: Dealing with Government and Complexity
4. Lesson 4: Lengthy Approval Processes
5. Lesson 5: Challenges with Complexity
6. Lesson 6: Importance of Erosion Control
7. Lesson 7: Costs of Change Orders
8. FAQ

Lesson 1: Unpredictable Project Costs

The first thing I learned in my experience building a house is that the prices for things change a lot, and the price you get as a bid from your contractor is not going to be the price you end up spending to actually build the house. So, our original bid was hundreds of thousands of dollars different from what we actually ended up spending to actually build this house.

Lesson 2: Impact of Price Fluctuations

Now, just to give you a case in point, when we got the bid on what it would cost to build our house, timber, which is a big component and probably one of the biggest costs of any house, went up six times. Okay, six times higher. When I went to build my house, timber was about 250 dollars per whatever, and then it went up to fifteen hundred dollars. Big difference.

Lesson 3: Dealing with Government and Complexity

The other thing I learned was that governments are corrupt. I learned that complexity causes chaos. I learned that you have to really concern yourself with erosion, and I learned that changes cost a lot of money. But I'll go into each of these now.

Lesson 4: Lengthy Approval Processes

Government corruption - I saw this firsthand. Just to get approved to build my house, it took three and a half years. Now, I'm living in the state of California, which is one of the most litigious, with all these BS regulations, of any state in the nation.

Lesson 5: Challenges with Complexity

One of the things that we had... You know, I'm actually going to move this now. One thing that you'll notice with my central hallway here is that the levels are different.

Lesson 6: Importance of Erosion Control

The next thing that's pretty important is erosion. Now, during the build process itself, and even the design process, erosion happened. We have a support wall on my driveway that wasn't properly retrofitted for erosion control.

Lesson 7: Costs of Change Orders

And the last thing that I learned is that change orders are very expensive. When you're going through the home building process, you have the option of saying, 'I want this store, actually I think this coat of paint would look better over there, or I'm not too hot on this light, I'd like to change it up and do a different sort of light.'

FAQ

Q: What is Lesson 1 about?
A: Lesson 1 is about the unpredictability of project costs in the context of building a house.
Q: What is Lesson 2 focused on?
A: Lesson 2 discusses the impact of price fluctuations, particularly related to the cost of timber in building a house.
Q: What does Lesson 3 cover?
A: Lesson 3 deals with the challenges of dealing with government regulations, corruption, complexity, erosion, and costly changes in the building process.
Q: What is Lesson 4's main point?
A: Lesson 4 highlights the lengthy approval processes, government corruption, and regulatory challenges faced during the construction of a house.
Q: What aspect does Lesson 5 address?
A: Lesson 5 touches on the challenges posed by complexity in the construction process.
Q: What is the focus of Lesson 6?
A: Lesson 6 emphasizes the importance of erosion control in the build and design process of a house.
Q: What is the key takeaway from Lesson 7?
A: Lesson 7 underscores the high costs associated with change orders in the home building process.