The House

     We built our house over the summer of 2008.  Since my wife and I are both teachers we had all summer off to work on the house.  This was one of the reasons that we attempted to build our own house was because we knew we could be there everyday and put in a lot of sweat equity.

     Our house is located on 9 acres in the beautiful Bitterroot Valley of Montana.  We are located at about 4500 ft elevation and can get some pretty nasty weather.

     The house is two stories tall with a 26 ft x 36 ft foundation.  This makes the square footage about 1850 sq. ft.  (depending on how you calculate square footage.  Which is still a mystery to me.  Do you count stairs?  Do you count the outside wall measurements or the inside wall measurements.  When is the ceiling height too low to count as square footage.)  It is 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bath.  

     It cost us about 88 dollars a square foot to build.  ( which factors in what calculation do you use to calculate square footage and not including the cost for a well and septic which we were told does not go into the square footage cost) 

     The walls are 6' SIP panels and the roof is 10" SIP panels.  The roof is corrugated steel.  The siding is Hardi panels.  We have a radiant heat floor in the concrete slab on the first floor and electric wall heaters upstairs.  After the first winter in the house we decided to install a wood stove downstairs also.  

     That is the basic description of the house.  In upcoming posts I will go into more detail about many of these things.

     We love our house and would change very little if we could do it again.  But there are some things that I would change and some we just got lucky on.  Check back often as I discuss each of steps and products in building our house.