An Insider

An Insider's Guide to Building or Remodeling Your Own Home.

Whether you are contemplating building a new home or want to remodel your existing home, you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed by the choices you have to make and the financial implication of those choices. If your first instinct is to call a contractor to start the ball rolling for you, don't. Whether or not you intend to try to build or remodel yourself, or hire a contractor, you will first want to establish for yourself whether you can even afford to build your project, or if you can have more than you originally hoped for. You will also want to understand the overall design and construction process before you engage the services of a designer and/or a contractor.

Design, Build & Save was written to prepare you, before you involve anyone else, on what to expect if you wish to construct a project yourself, how to prepare your own preliminary and final budgets, the bidding process, and how to negotiate with subcontractors. More importantly, it serves to help you understand how to better evaluate and select a Contractor, if you choose to hire one, as well as understanding the variety of ways they price a project, to give you more command when negotiating a contract.

The Design Worksheet, included with this book, is an Excel spreadsheet template designed to take input you provide to perform a series of material quantity takeoffs, then calculate and price your project as if you actually had working drawings. It offers you a comprehensive way to pre-design and cost your project before you ever call a contractor, designer, or consultant. By using the worksheet you can avoid the disappointment of realizing, after you've spent a lot of time and money out-of-pocket to have plans designed, that you can't afford to build your project. Or that you can build, but sacrificed things you wish you could have included in your original design had you been able to establish costs before you paid for the design.

By providing your unique design input, you can develop a relatively accurate preliminary budget. If you go further and enter your own quoted pricing for the products you specify you can achieve an even greater level of accuracy. All before you ever have a designer prepare your project drawings! The labor and material pricing in the worksheet is based on current pricing in the home state of the author, so you will want to take the extra time to input your own project specific pricing in the Quote Sheet for more accuracy. If you find costs running higher than expected, you have control by scaling back the size or eliminating rooms, or changing finish selections. Alternately, you can increase size, add rooms, and/or select options to upgrade if you find the costs running lower than expected. This worksheet allows you to pre-plan your project and will ensure that the designer, and/or contractor, you hire understands exactly what you want so you can avoid costly design change fees along the way.

The Design Worksheet is easy to understand and easy to complete. To preview the worksheet click the link on the Demo page.

Visit the Order page to see pricing and order your copy of Design, Build & Save and the associated Design Worksheet. Your order will be processed safely and securely through Paypal.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please enter your request or comments in the email template on the Contact page. We will make every effort to issue a response within 48 hours of receipt of the email.