Benefits of building your own home

The picture above is our house. It's a paper model that Tyler built to scale (Please ignore the colors). From the time my sister Emily started building her house, this is what we've accomplished on ours. She's ready to move in to her house in just over a week, and we hope to have a loan by then. I'm trying to focus on the positive side to being the builder. It's difficult for me to do, I keep thinking about all the problems we had while we built our last house.
For example, the excavator we hired decided not to finish digging our hole. Tyler, his mom & dad, and I had to go out with shovels & finish digging the hole ourselves. Then there was the time when we rented a drill. The drill bit (if you can call it a bit) was slightly thicker than myself. Tyler tried to hold the powerful drill steady while I was supposed to jump on it in attempt to drill a very deep hole into our thick clay-like ground. That was really fun! Digging a 7 foot deep hole from our house to the street so we could connect to the sewer really wasn't my thing either. There was also the time when we spent over 24 hours to install ONE measly window in our basement. Seriously 24 hours for one window? I think we went through at least 5 framing crews until we finally found one who actually decided to frame our house rather than wasting all the wood we bought to build boxes & tables for themselves. Then there's all the swearing. Lots and lots of swearing and yelling. Sub-contractors don't like to be told what to do by "little teen aged kids". We weren't taken very seriously since we looked so young at the time & since we aren't licensed contractors. I could go on and on. I could probably write a book on all the things that went horribly wrong when we built our last house.
So why are we building a house ourselves again? That is an excellent question! You'll have to ask Tyler, because I have spent the last 3 years pleading with him to have a builder build our house for us.

I can however think of a major benefit to building the house ourselves. We can have all the upgrades we want for dirt cheap!

Check out this chandelier we purchased for $25. Tyler's dad who spent many years as an interior decorator thinks the retail price on this would be over $700. He's also the one who found this for us, Thanks D.J. We also found some fabulous flooring for $1.50 per square foot. When figuring out the price for lumber, we discovered that 10 foot ceilings are the same price as 8 foot ceilings. We can build our kitchen & bathroom cabinets for less than 1/2 the price of the cheapest cabinets at Loews. And the cabinets we are building are going to be very nice. Thanks to the internet we can get all the upgrades we want for fantastic prices. Basically we will be able to build our house with all the upgrades for the same prices as a much smaller home with no upgrades at all. So, If I start to get ornery as it comes time for me to haul big and heavy pieces of garbage to the dumpster each day... just remind me that it will be worth it in the end. Right? I think I still want a builder.

Oh... and we need your help on where we should put this Chandelier. Tyler thinks the Master Bath room above the tub would be cool, I agree, but maybe the dining room would be nice? Ella wants it in her room. What do you think? Vote to the Right.