Beyond a Blog

It's part of the American dream to own your own house, with your own little chunk of land all your own, complete with a white picket fence, right? Perfect or not, it's yours.

But these days, so many can't afford the cost to build a home. And a lot of the reason they can't afford to build is because they have to pay others to do the job.

But what if you build it yourself? That's crazy, right?

Well, it's probably crazy, but we're doing it anyway: we're building our own house in Bastrop, Texas. And if you're interested, we're inviting you to join us on our journey. We'll be sharing our own experiences so that others can learn what to do—or what not to do—as we experience building a house from the ground up.

My name is Brad Craig, and I'm an Australian architectural draftsman with a background in construction and design. You can check out my portfolio of homes I've designed here too. My wife is Amanda Craig. She's a native Texas with a copywriting business on the side, and she will be helping me maintain this blog.

We plan to build a main house, guest house, a garage that includes storage and greenhouse space, and a carport.

Modular Design

We will be building a house using a simple modular layout based on 1950s mid-century design. Why? Because a modular design is easier to build, and that means it saves you time and money.

Here are a few of the features we plan for the home:

• Separate wings allows us to choose which sections of the house to heat and cool
• Solar passive design elements will help keep the house thermally comfortable
• Other eco-friendly features will include rain water tanks to water the landscape and flush toilets, a planned veggie garden, and a small orchard

Fire Resistant Design

Because we will be building in a forested area with a lot of pine trees, we will be building the home to resist fire. Australians know a bit about fire, as we experience a lot of bush fires in Oz. So we will be building our home to Australian standards, which will include using exterior materials such as galvanized corregated metal and Hardie plank (both resistent to fire), as well as fire retardant paint.

Challenges

We own the land. However we haven't done any lot clearing or purchased any materials, so we've barely left the starting line and we're already aware there will be a lot of hurdles to cross on our journey that may make this project tough to complete.

That includes getting a construction loan, getting some of our house materials approved by the local HOA and architectural committee, sourcing affordable materials for some of the eco-friendly features, and we've already been told by the water district that no one in our area is using rain water to flush toilets.

This list is just a start.

So if you're interested, follow our journey and learn along with us!