We have an old, old house. There is nothing really special about it; no fancy wood moldings or anything. Just old cooked walls, dipped floors and lead paint. Everything about the house needs to be re-done. Windows, siding, roof, flooring, needs drywall, all the old woodwork needs to be replaced b/c of the lead paint. We did remodel the kitchen, but everything else still needs to be done. Plus the house is enormous, so hard to heat and so, so much unused space. I'm not at all in love with the place.
We have a dream of building a log cabin in the woods. it would be probably half the size (like 1500 sq feet vs. the roughly 3000 we have now). We already own land we could build on, but would have to drill a well and get some type of power in.
We will not be building it ourselves; dh doesn't have enough time to change the oil in the car, I certainly couldn't count on him building a house. Plus, it's not his thing.
We want to figure out the difference in cost, but I'm not really sure where to start and how to go about doing it. Has anyone done this, and what resources did you use? What did you decide in the end?

We're gearing up to buy land and build our own place in a few years.

One place to start is www.countryplans.com. He talks about cost savings of not only owner-built, but owner-contractor, and just plain hiring a contractor and breaks it down on a sq ft basis. He doesn't have info on renovating an old place though.

BTW -- LMWL just arrived! Thank you!!! I can't wait to dig in.

My dh and I made this very decision over the last few months, and the factors that helped push us over the edge towards building a new house were not necessarily the hard dollar costs.

We are in an old old farmhouse that is right next to the road, so the current location on our lot is less than ideal. We want to be further back on our land, away from the road. Second, my dd tested positive for lead at 12 mos old - it's low enough to be "safe," but it still freaked me out completely and was the proverbial straw for us. We are going to break ground this year.

As for construction costs vs. remodeling - when I started researching the lead issue, I realized that the remodeling my dh did before we moved in was probably what led to our dd's lead levels in the first place. From what I've read, one has to be almost surgical in their approach to removing the contaminated surfaces. To me, this spelled high $$$.
We will also have to punch a new well, but for us, it should be under $5K, which is a fairly small part of the new home budget.

I also have no emotional attachment to this old house; somedays I like it, but I struggle with borderline resentment for giving my baby lead. So it's not hard for me to get really excited about having a new, safer home that isn't 20 feet from a road.

We built our own house in 1998. This was after purchasing a "cottage" in 1988. We re-built it into a house. It was a LOT of work. A true labour of love as we lived on water-front for only $48,500.00. We sure learned a lot about house building. Finally we knew we wouldn't get anymore out of doing anything else. We couldn't make it bigger without a really weird addition design as we were limited by our property line & the cliff the cottage was built into. No room for a garage either as the lake was in our front yard. So..........after a mortgage of around $80,000.00 by then for re-doing the septic, drilling a well & all the renovations we sold the house for $115,00.00 in May 1998.

I don't regret what we put into the old house as it gave us the equity to put into affording to build our new home.

However, we did look at older homes and we just didn't have it in us to re-do another house!!

It was actually easier to build from scratch...honest. There was not pulling out a window to replace it only to find no insulation & a rotted sill so the project cost ended up doubling in cost & time.

We also had control over what we ended up with!!

Now we did build our own house. We lived in a trailer on the lot with our 4 kids for six months. DH only took off 6 weeks but we managed to get moved into the house in November of that year. BRRR, we live in Ontario. Only sub-contracted out doing the mason basement but helped doing the "grunt work" to save $$. We hauled all the concrete for the basement floor & only hired someone to come smooth it. We had the stairs pre-built, but installed them ourselves. A carpenter neighbour & I installed the banister. We did the floor joists, floors, walls, window installation, hardwood floors, had the kitchen cupboards pre-built & the linoleum (the real stuff) installed. We did the roof trusses installation, the roof, shingling, water-proofing of the basement exterior walls, I did most of the interior insulation & vapour barrier, we did the plumbing & electrical, but hired out the oil tank & oil fired water tank & woodstove installation. We did most of the dry-wall but hired someone to help DH do the dry wall on the cathedral ceilings up stairs. My dad & I did a couple of the bedrooms, the bathroom & hallway drywalling & installed the toilets as dad said he could not use the outside privy one more day!! We did hire out the dry-wall taping & mudding-that is an "art". I painted most of the 513 boards of pine siding that we put on the house. DH did the wrap around porch & we both painted it. We painted all the inside of the house & are presently in the process of painting it colours other than beige & making our own custom trim work for the windows & baseboards. It is getting there!! DH said if we were to do it again he would have taken off more time & gotten it finished instead of us still doing it years later!!

We also liked being able to control what was in the house regarding insulation, flooring, etc. Oh we built 200 feet back from the road in the middle of a forest. It took 1.5 years to clear the drive-way & location for the house & yard.

Kerri mom to Amanda(13), Emmaly(12), Maddison(9), Jonah(7), Saige & Claire(3, ID Twins), Teagan (Sept 2003)