Building a home from a BudgetHomeKit

I wanted to provide this blog to others that may buy a home from budgethomekits.com. There were many mistakes that I made, some improvements to how they did a few things and a lot of things that they do not even cover in the instructions. In no way is this a complaint to the company as they were very helpful and for the most part the instructions were spot on. So here is my story.   In July 2020 I decided to semi-retire from my job in Kansas and buy some property and move to either Arkansas or Missouri. I was originally planning to build a log cabin kit but stumbled onto the BudgetHomeKits website and liked the selection and pricing of what they had to offer. My wife and I settled on the Magnolia kit and put the deposit on the kit that was in clearance at a greatly reduced price - boy was that a good move as the price of metal started going up and up and our price was locked in.  In late August we found 50 acres in Southeastern Missouri about 120 miles south of St Louis. ...

 After we closed on the property the first week of October 2020, we finalized the order for the house kit. This required us to request any modifications to the plans. We opted remove the small wall in the foyer and change the master bathroom to remove the tub and replace the small shower with a 60 inch shower and add a small closet, we also added the 9 foot porch on the back of the house. This process was very easy, we just indicated on the original plans what changes and scan them to email them back. They made the modifications to the plans and mailed them back to us. This included the changes to all the plumbing and electrical (which we didn't follow most of the electrical blueprints). They had also sent the instruction book for all of the steps. The ship date was almost 2 months out which gave us time to get the pad prepped which is Phase 1 of the book. As part of our purchase we also elected to purchase the Liftoff package which does the pad orientation, setting of the corner p...

 Our house kit was delivered on 14 December 2020. We really needed to have a forklift to help offload. Once again my neighbor had the forklift attachment for the skidsteer. They offloaded from down by the creek and used the forklift to move it up to the pad area. They laid everything out where we could access it as needed after they were done. They said they would need 4 days to get the posts set, the foundation forms installed, and the roof trusses and porches put in.  As part of the uplift we purchased they did the last step of Phase 1 which is getting the orientation done. We had set the orientation for the house, but they said there would be an issue with the porches on the edge of the pad. They remeasured and set the orientation correctly and set the batter boards which is the start of Phase 2 - Setting Column Anchors. Once again they were very professional and took care of everything and answered all our questions we had about the build process after they would leave. Th...

Phase 2 was getting the house square and drilling the holes for the posts. We had to provide 35 bags of cement for this process. That is not included in the purchase or the uplift or the kit. It needed to be onsite when they arrived. They needed to find a rental for the hole digger. The first hole took a long time as they hit a piece of metal that was in the ground. I guess there was an area that they used to dump things before we bought the property.  They did the assembly of the corner column anchors and then dug the 14 inch wide and 30 inch deep holes for each anchor - I am glad I did not have to perform this step. After setting the corner anchors they did the wall anchors and both the front and rear porch anchors for the posts. The wood to get us 1/2 way through winter with the wood burning stove in the log cabin. . They finally got it drilled and the posts set. 

Phase 3 of the build was getting the galvanized steel foundation forms set. The first step for them was to set the height of the galvanized steel forms. They used a transient level to ensure it would be level. The instructions in the book were very detailed on this step but I was glad I didn't have to perform it. The galvanized forms are attached to the anchors there were installed in Phase 2. At this stage you could set your plumbing in the ground and have the concrete poured. Talking with the contractors they said it could be done at any stage prior to putting up the walls in phase 6. They finished out Phase 4 as well with the installation of  of the wall column posts onto the anchors. This appears to be a fairly easy step and once again the instructions were very detailed on how to complete this task.  This day was finished out by them starting Phase 5 of the plans - Framing the roof. They did the assembly of the roof trusses. They had to find a 4 wheel drive skylift for th...

They spent the next day of the build putting the trusses in place. They had to drive 1 1/2 hour to get a sky lift that was 4x4. They got the trusses all in place in short order. They were almost done with Phase 5 except finishing up with putting on the purlins on both the roof and the porches. The last picture was from my game camera at the back of my property. One big buck!