My husband and I are currently OB our home on our houseless and barnless farm. We live in PA. Not sure where you are but there is NO WAY we could have gotten past the zoning officer, building inspectors, or even obtained a permit to do what you are concidering. We even thought about doing a barn first with 'amenities' and this was nixed by the local yokels. Friends of ours did this in Texas several -5- years ago and pulled a camper into their barn for the 2 year duration of their build. But they had well septic and electric from the old tear down to work with. As for the $-- We have acreage and getting the driveway, electric access, water plumb to basement, excavation, well and septic, plus all of the permits and plot plan by engineers was around 60K that does not include Basement pour or framing. In my township permits are only good for one year then you have to have good reason for not bringing it to completion. Not saying it cant be done but you have to discuss with your locals for the feasibility and try to be realistic about how much you want to do yourselves. And there is the point that RE costs are down and if you dont already have the land and enough cash to complete the build you may want to really study the numbers for your situation. Finding an acreage with an existing house to extensively remodel cuts all those upfront "utilities" issues plus you have more leaway with the permiting process. At least in my neck of the woods. We've done it both ways and its much easier to remodel Extensivley than deal with the new regs for new construction. Good luck and dont be fearful - you can do anything you put your mind to and long as the CEO lets you.

I guess I qualify as an OB now although I didn't start out that way. We wound up firing our contractor halfway through the job due to his massive incompetence and dishonesty. It then took us several months to convince our bank to let us finish the job ourselves rather than risking getting involved with another crooked builder. Being a general contractor is far more about project management than it is about construction. The GC lines up sub-contractors, makes sure they show up and do the work they're supposed to, handles paperwork, and makes sure everybody gets paid when they're suppoesed to be paid. Many GCs probably couldn't hammer a nail in straight if they had to. To be a GC you need business skills and project management skills, and you need to know (or be willing to find out) what a construction job should look like when it is finished. It helps in dealing with subs to learn the lingo but you don't have to be able to hammer, saw, hang sheetrock, run electrical lines, or anything else. If you OB, plan to spend at least 20 hours per week and possibly more than that on the job. I just WISH we had just gone the owner-builder route right from the start. Neither DH nor I have any construction experience whatsoever but we had looked into being our own general contractors before we hired our builder. We even took a class on building your own home but then decided that we just didn't have the necessary time to devote to the task. Was that a mistake! I had done my homework and had spent a huge amount of time on this board before we ever broke ground - so I had a good idea of what to look for in quality work. It quickly became evident that my builder didn't have a clue and apparently he couldn't have cared less. His subs were obviously the cheapest he could find and often, I suspect, were undocumented day laborers. They didn't follow installation specifications for installed materials like Tyvek sheathing, my Jeld-wen windows, or the roofing shingles. I know because when things didn't look right to me, I got the specs from the manufacturers and checked their work myself. They also often didn't follow building codes - which I found out because I had put it in my contract that I would separately hire a third-party inspector to inspect all stages and that any work not meeting code would have to be redone at the builder's expense. The framer hired by my builder used I-beam trusses between the first and second floors instead of the open-web trusses I had specified. The framing was completed while I was out of town for two weeks and by the time I got back, the house was already sheathed and the roofer had started work. So it was too late (eg., economically unfeasible) to make the builder have the entire roof and second floor taken down so that the right trusses could be put in. My plans called for the HVAC units and all ductwork to be within the heated/cooled envelope of the house. When I demanded that my builder check with his engineer to ensure that holes could be cut through the i-beams large enough to accomodate the HVAC ducts, he assured me that would be "no problem." That was a lie. Even the holes that had to be cut through the i-beam trusses for plumbing drain lines weakened them enough that my third-party inspector insisted that extra trusses be installed to bear part of the load. No doubt putting those in was a major expense that the builder had to eat. There was no way HVAC ductwork could be run between the floors as designed. Instead, the HVAC units were put in the unairconditioned attic along with massive amounts of flexible ductwork. Instead of an attic that could someday be finished out to add a couple more bedrooms, I have two big HVAC units and what looks like a massive silver spiderweb totally filling the attic space. I also lost closet space in all my bedroom closets because ductwork chases down to the first floor had to be put somewhere. When I exploded about the lost usable square footage and the additional on-going costs associated with having the HVAC and ductwork up in the attic (we live in central Texas!) my builder tried to tell me that EVEN IF the framer had used open-web trusses, the ductwork still would not have been able to be run through the trusses and that "everybody puts HVAC units in the attic." DUH? Open web trusses are designed to allow ductwork and plumbing to be run them!! Had the man NEVER read anything about energy efficient building practices? Nope. He just trusted that his framer - who hardly spoke English - knew what he was doing. Despite all this, my builder kept telling me that he was a "professional" and that I should just relax and let him do his job. HAH! I can't think of a single task that ever he actually handled completely correctly from start to finish. Then, shortly after the HVAC units were installed, I got hit with a $54,000 lien because builder had not paid for my windows and patio doors even though he had been given draw money specifically for that purpose! That lien was immediately followed up by threats of two smaller liens from two other subcontractors (the portapotty provider and the exterior paint contractor)! And the builder admitted he didn't have the money to pay any of the three. At that point I was more than ready to fire him but my bank insisted that I could NOT do so. We paid off the liens and the unpaid subcontractors and I took over handling ALL monies and paying the subcontractors and suppliers directly instead of having draws go to the builder to pay them. No more money was going to flow into the builder's hands until my house was completed, at which point anything that was still left of the original contract price would be his "profit." By that point, the only thing the builder was doing was hiring subs and ordering materials. I was paying a third party inspector separately to check all work that I didn't feel competant to inspect myself. I was handling all the paperwork and making sure everybody got paid. But then the kicker... I discovered that builder was having materials delivered to my build - which I was paying for - and then having his subs (whom I was also paying!) move them to a spec house that he was building and install them there. I had had enough. I fired him. After taking over as GC, I had to spend as much time/effort on UNDOING some of the mistakes he made as on moving forward to finish the build. And the money he wasted/stole from us has forced us to cut back on the level of finishes that we had originally planned to have. My advice: Go take a course on building your own home. Spend time reading and learning everything you can about the building process. Learn the language. If you are reasonably intelligent and willing to devote the time, you CAN build your own home. Plus, there are businesses (Owner-Builder Network and UBuildIt.com are two that I know about although I've not used either one) that will help you by providing you with pre-vetted lists of sub-contractors and guiding you step by step through the process. If your state or your bank requires you to have a licensed builder, these organizations will be the builder-of-record for you. Of course they charge a fee for their services. I don't know how much but it is significantly less than a builder's profit margin. You can also hire a third-party inspector to make sure that you're getting everything built to code. Just make sure that all your subcontractors know that they don't get paid until your third party inspector signs off that the work is up to code. I designed my plan myself and I would love to see the house built as designed. The house we are in the process of finishing will eventually be "okay" but it will never be the house I dreamed of. So there is some chance that when we get this house built we will sell it and rebuild the same design in a new location. But next time I will definitely OB from the get go.

Hope all is well Kim, haven't seen you post. I don't want to hijack your post but to respond to mike and mzen. Yes Mike the market is well off, over 26k houses are on the MLS now. You picked a good time to visit, great weather! Mzen, I have electrical with GFI within 8 feet of pool edge. pool is 14 years old. Building codes were revised in 2006 and all jurisdictions in the valley are updating to meet them. Henderson is the easiest to deal with, they were right on top of all changes we needed for permits for patio covers and concrete, we don't do electic. I would double check with Henderson as they are the ones that sign off on permits. Be glad you aren't in the city of LV, they are a nighmare to deal with right now. Kim is in Boulder City. I'm going to start another post to Vegas members regarding theft so I don't take over Kims build. Barb

Wow, this forum is great! Scott  I had placed the accent boulders by the shallow end to be a transition from deck to coping, but great point about the jumping risk  those rocks would be smaller and hopefully not as tempting to jump from as the 3 intended jump rock areas. I didnÂt anticipate the pool sweep climbing up 2 feet onto the baja shelf, but will have to think about that. Already made the changes per your skimmer and light location suggestions. Bobinbaltimore  Will seriously consider the obstacle course feel, but we too like the look of various accent boulders throughout. Your note about the thin decking on the far side is a great one  the plan should state that it is 1 wide coping around the entire back of the pool. I intended that section to only be walked on when climbing out of the pool from the bench and onto the rock waterfall . Gonna have to think about how weÂll use it and how wide it should be. BTW, your pool looks great so far! Just-a-pb  IÂve known several friends/neighbors do OB with the general comment being that it is a headache, but you will get more pool for your $. I hadnÂt heard that the OB market has plummeted. Not sure how the downturn in the past 18 months in the pool biz has altered the OB market. WeÂll only use licensed, bonded, insured subs who are clean with the ROC and have been recommended by other OBs  and we are hiring an inspector to check after each sub. So not totally on our own. Barb ÂThanks for the warning - IÂll make sure I check codes before I get permits. Thank you all for your feedback! More of this good, honest feedback would be awesome!