Photo by TeBa
From the moment you start talking to designers, builders, and even the regional district building department, the question comes up: “What is your budget?”
How on earth would we know that? That’s what I need the professionals for.
When we built our first house, 30 years ago, in North Vancouver, we paid $36,500 for the large treed lot abutting Fromme Mountain. We – and some very generous friends and extended family — did much of the work ourselves, hiring subtrades for excavation, foundations and framing, drywalling, masonry, furnace installation, and carpet installation. The 2700 square foot house cost us $80,000 to build, at that time, or $30/square foot.
When you make enquiries of builders or the pre-packaged home sellers (or indeed almost anyone who wants to sell you something, at a home show, for example) the cost estimates are perfectly reasonable, as far as I can tell. But, when you manage to get written estimates or the project is underway then you can become alarmed at how much the actual costs are.
A friend-of-a-friend gave us a tour of her lovely waterfront home on the Sunshine Coast, built within the previous year. Beautiful fir clad windows, high-end finishes, lots of interesting spaces. She indicated that the cost to build it was $185/sq. ft. It included a geothermal field (below the septic field!) for heating the home. So, we thought that might be a reasonable budget number.
Oh, we were wrong, so very wrong.
As the costs for each of the stages become apparent, I will be sharing them here. This is in the interests of informing readers who might be considering a similar project. We would have appreciated such help ourselves before starting.
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Looking forward to following your blog.