Learn me building a house

Oh, and OSB is different than chipboard, flakeboard, particleboard, etc.

I have had a pile of OSB in the weather for over 6 months- no swelling. I lost a stack of plywood alongside it which swelled and delaminated after 1 storm.

I'm another plywood advocate, but SVreX is right. None of the typical building sheathing materials are meant to get wet. You have to keep them dry. Failed plywood needs replaced just as much as failed OSB. I've pulled nasty wet moldy OSB that fell apart in my hands off the walls of a house, but I'm sure plywood put through the same terrible conditions would have needed replaced too.

Good water and moisture control is critical for any house no matter the construction style. Keep your gutters flowing and keep water outside the siding!

SVreX wrote: I'd like to offer a vote of confidence here for Duke. I am a builder, and I have worked with him. Excellent architect- one of the best experiences I have had working with architects! If you need an architect, I highly recommend him.

Shucks, thanks. And it wasn't even me who +1ed your post. At the risk of sounding like I'm logrolling, I had a great experience working with Paul too. He's a builder who gets it and he sent me a really interesting book, too.

SVreX wrote:

Woody wrote: Spend the money on real plywood. OSB is garbage. It swells like crazy when it gets wet and screws everything up.

I disagree with this comment. The correct answer is to properly cover and protect the material. neither is designed to get wet (and plywood will swell and delaminate worse than OSB). But the better answer is, it depends. If it is for subfloor decking, there is no better product than Advantech (which some people mistakingly call OSB). OSB is terrible, Advantech is awesome. Plywood is fair. There is a cheap tongue and groove 3/4" thick material offered by Lowes, etc, which is sometimes used for subfloors instead of Advantech. It's OSB- total crap. If it is for walls, OSB has different structural capabilities than plywood. It has strength in both directions, not just one, and lies flatter. It won't warp anywhere near as much. However, I would be careful using is on 24" oc (I don't build 24" oc). If it is for roof decking, 1/2" thick material (either ply or OSB) are spanned a bit far if installed 24" oc (which they frequently are). 5/8" or thicker is better.

My apologies for not keeping up with the times. I built my house in 2001.

It looks like Advantech came out the following year. I haven't thought much about this stuff since! And I may have been using the term OSB generically for flakeboard.

t25torx wrote: In reply to Woody/Java: * Did you guys work a regular job while you were building your houses? * How much did you save by doing your own work? * If you didn't keep a regular job during this process do you think you saved more than you would have made at a job and having someone do the work. Example: Drywall a room. 2 hours for a pro. 4 hours for me. They charge $50 an hour, I make $25 an hour. So with me doing the work there's no savings. * With the modular home, is it a pretty closed in layout due to needing a lot of load bearing walls in the middle, since it's technically an end piece butted up against another end piece? Or is there an extra thick joist where the two parts meet to make an open concept? Good info so far guys.

At the time, I was working a different schedule than I have now. I worked three days, then three off and then three nights and three off. There were nights when I would get my ass kicked at work and the next day I would be useless. On my days off, with the exception of about two hours per day, I was either working on the house or sleeping. I would usually pick up another overtime shift each week, either a night or a day. My schedule definitely helped.

At the time that I was building, the real estate market was approaching it's peak. My tax assessment came in at over twice what I had into the house. Values have come down since of course, and my costs would have been about the same but I still spent way, way less than the current value of the house and it's almost paid off. I had instant equity.

Talk to a few tapers about DIY drywall. They might do a room or two as a side job, but many don't like to do jobs that the homeowner rocked himself. Homeowners tend to be cheap and salvage every little scrap of sheetrock. They end up with a bazillion extra uneven joints to tape. I also found that the estimate that I got from a professional sheetrock guy to supply the material, hang it and tape it was only fractionally more expensive than what I could have bought the material for on my own. Then I would still have to hang it and find a taper who was willing to do it.

The same thing applied to insulation, but even more so. It was actually cheaper to have the pros supply and hang it, than it was to buy it myself.

We designed and built ours 11 years ago now. I drew up the plans, and our builder turned them into workable blueprints. We found the lot we wanted to put it on and went with a build-to-perm loan. They broke ground in MAy, we moved in that Thanksgiving.

Custome built homes are so much nicer than most of the cookie cutter throw it together on a slab in a few weeks homes we have around here.

Woody wrote:

t25torx wrote: In reply to Woody/Java: * Did you guys work a regular job while you were building your houses? * How much did you save by doing your own work? * If you didn't keep a regular job during this process do you think you saved more than you would have made at a job and having someone do the work. Example: Drywall a room. 2 hours for a pro. 4 hours for me. They charge $50 an hour, I make $25 an hour. So with me doing the work there's no savings. * With the modular home, is it a pretty closed in layout due to needing a lot of load bearing walls in the middle, since it's technically an end piece butted up against another end piece? Or is there an extra thick joist where the two parts meet to make an open concept? Good info so far guys.

At the time, I was working a different schedule than I have now. I worked three days, then three off and then three nights and three off. There were nights when I would get my ass kicked at work and the next day I would be useless. On my days off, with the exception of about two hours per day, I was either working on the house or sleeping. I would usually pick up another overtime shift each week, either a night or a day. My schedule definitely helped. At the time that I was building, the real estate market was approaching it's peak. My tax assessment came in at over twice what I had into the house. Values have come down since of course, and my costs would have been about the same but I still spent way, way less than the current value of the house and it's almost paid off. I had instant equity. Talk to a few tapers about DIY drywall. They might do a room or two as a side job, but many don't like to do jobs that the homeowner rocked himself. Homeowners tend to be cheap and salvage every little scrap of sheetrock. They end up with a bazillion extra uneven joints to tape. I also found that the estimate that I got from a professional sheetrock guy to supply the material, hang it and tape it was only fractionally more expensive than what I could have bought the material for on my own. Then I would still have to hang it and find a taper who was willing to do it. The same thing applied to insulation, but even more so. It was actually cheaper to have the pros supply and hang it, than it was to buy it myself.

Hear Hear!

When Tunaparents built their house, they were smart and did everything themselves allowed by law (which left plumbing, of all things, hurray unions!) except the foundation and the rock.

It was a big project. I had done enough sheetrock to know that Tunastepdad and I would be doing sheetrock for weeks.

Four dudes showed up, each with a big case of cheap beer, and their own set of stilts. They drank all of it and had the whole house done in like 5 hours. I was amazed. Totally worth it.

Still not sure how you drink that much and walk on stilts though.