When I moved out of my rental house last year, before I set the keys on the landlord’s doorstep, I promised myself that my next place would be different. No more builder beige. No more landlords’ reclifty couches or hanging-curtain blinds.
No more drywall seams wider than the shelf brackets that weren’t technically allowed. When I bought my first place, I was guaranteed to hate something. Moving into a house I designed myself?
I’d get to pick the things I hated. Building a house from scratch wasn’t part of the plan.
That’s just insane, right?
But after months of futile searching, scrolling past half the houses in Rochester and drilling miles of street-view pavement with the other quarter, I started designing. Nothing serious at first—a napkin sketch here, a miscellaneous doodle there. My mum found one tucked in the back of a cookbook and remarked, “Claire, this looks an awful lot like a floor plan.” She was right.
Unbeknownst to me, I’d been architecting the perfect little house for months. My lot was first. It’s skinny—maybe 50 feet at its widest—which is why no one else seemed to want it.
Sweeping curves of lawn gave way to a clover-filled expanse, maybe 600 square feet in total. Long story short, rejected lots sometimes end up being exactly what you need. The guy who dug the foundation footers parked in that lot sold it years ago when his family decided small-home living wasn’t for them.
It cost me less than most people’s kitchens but freed up budget in my actual build. Two bedrooms seemed like plenty. A master, and then another room for all of life’s sundries that don’t fit inside living rooms and bathrooms.
There’s a reason my childhood home’s “guest bedroom” was full of bottles and backpacks at the rotating-real-estate-agent Open Houses: guest room/home office/craft room/storage for clean laundry you’ll just leave here until you make dirty laundry? I could use all the flexibility I could swing. I agonized over my floor plan for six months and drew—at least—a hundred mock-ups.
My lightbulb moment came when I finally quit thinking of rooms as rectangles and started arranging them by routine. You make coffee in the kitchen, but you want to see the sunrise while that drip filter does its thing. Wind down in front of the fire before bed, but you don’t want to read murder mysteries surrounded by window panes.
My bedroom sits in the back corner with windows on two sides—which cost more to frame than I care to remember—but gets great cross- breeze. Splurge #1: Hiring an architect. Mine was Sarah Chen, who specializes in efficient designs for small homes and studios.
She transformed my cocktail napkin vision into lovely CAD drawings that won’t get me laughed out of town by city building inspectors. Yeah, her fee stung—something like 11.5% of total construction costs—but she literally stopped me from making at least three costly mistakes. I’m sure there are more mistakes she saved me from that I’ll never know about.
Kitchen deals came close to breaking me, budget-wise. I allocated $15k, which I now know is utterly unrealistic if you want anything better than appliance-ready dumpsters. The compromise: excellent bones with placeholder appliances I can upgrade down the road.
Solid wood cabinets instead of particle board, natural stone countertops rather than Formica, and enough outlets to support whatever technology the future sends our way. That scratched-up stainless fridge isn’t adorable, but it keeps my food cold until I save up for an upgrade that doesn’t wheeze like a locomotive. IKEA cabinets…but modified.
Kudos to Sarah for this lifesaving suggestion. We purchased IKEA closet frames then had one of our preferred contractors build custom doors out of quarter- sawn oak. The finished product could’ve been sold at Tiffany’s, complete with the high-low satisfaction of “Ohhh, you DIY-ed all this?” to which I reply, “How did you know?” The soft-close hinges alone make me inexplicably delighted every time I close a cabinet door.
Half-bath blackmail: When I originally drew the floor plan, there was one bathroom and it served the bedrooms. Just one. So when Keller Williams insisted my resale value would “plummet” if I didn’t add another bathroom, I Got.
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Shit. Done. Now I have a half bath that just might keep me enslaved to this house when it’s time to move on.
Double vanity because I’ll be rinsing cucumber water out of wine glasses one day and apparently I’m just supposed to shower next to my cat. Shallow cabinets behind the mirror. Cunning storage in the stairwell.
Oh, and did I mention the heated bathroom floor? Atkinson-Moores spent an extra $800 on that because FML ain’t cold tile on your toes in February. Don’t let my quartzite countertops fool you—I had half a nervous breakdown over flooring options.
Hardwood end-to-end was my plan until two words from my contractor murdered my dreams: price quote. Several hours—some caffeine and Reddits—later, I settled on luxury vinyl planks throughout. Same cozy feeling as hardwood for a fraction of the cash.
Sure, the LVP may mock me with its Insta-ready perfection every time I vacuum, but hey—it’s survived two kids, muddy outdoor shoes, red wine spills, and the Great Pan Drop of 2021. Don’t judge. If I had to choose one room to summarize my building experience, I’d hands-down pick windows.
I went a little nuts, upgrading to triple pane across the board. Looked into double-pane windows for everything except north-facing rooms, but my conscience got the better of me. Another harsh Rochester winter tucked away in those drafty rental closets was motivation enough to pay MSZ certified prices.
In all honesty, it was money well spent. That $3,800 price tag kept my January heating bill at $67. Had I known then what I know now…upgrade the electrical!
Don’t skimp. Sure, I thought, I’ll have outlets every four feet like the megastructures downtown. Forgot to account for optimal outlet placement.
Now there’s this fabulous expanse of wall perfect for a couch that—wait for it—is too close to the nearest electrical outlet by about six inches. Move it, and I’ll have to cut into the drywall. Lesson learned.
Oh, and do yourself a favor and run Ethernet wherever you can. I kept WiFi, then regretted it during every video conference call from my home office. Cell phone reception’s great because, hello central Michigan tourism slogan, but my desk sits in the basement’s weakest signal area.
Wouldn’t you know it—the final tally came in right around $127k…give or take. (And that does not include the price of the lot nor my own sweat equity.) Painting? Done by me. Installed all the lights fixtures myself.
Taught myself how to tile. (Learned, kind of.) Friends and family with contractor backgrounds laughed at the skeleton house I bought then shrugged when I presented my granular budget, broken out by every fixture you can imagine. One contractor quoted me $180k to build the same dang thing, so I’ll consider my knowledge and late-night plaster-painting hobbies worth about $30/hr. After years of ignoring DIY VSCO women on Instagram, I moved into a house I actually love.
Not in spite of its DIY nature, but because of it.
I designed every angle myself: where the outlets go, which direction the bedroom door swings, even how sunlight kisses my morning coffee mug. Slanted windows keep my bedroom blissfully cool during our humid summers, and I positioned the living room for the afternoon shade.
Houses don’t just happen, and my happens were chosen with intention. Would I do it again? Um… pending recovery from the millions of forms, hoop jumps, and weightlessness from anxiety stew—I’m gonna say yes!
Building doesn’t have to mean single-family dwellings. Sure, I spent months sweating.frameworks over permits and drywall so damp it caved in on itself before we finished framing—but I learned a lot about how I want to live. Little things.
I never knew how important acoustic glass sliders sound when you shut them until I specified it. Who knew ceilings 8’1” felt more spacious than anything taller in my 900-square-foot starter pad? Okay, ask me again when I’m not quite so exhausted from childbirth.
