Prelude to the Mother of All Pivots

I've got several posts planned over the next few weeks, and wanted to start the series by sharing a few numbers from our excavator and builder.

I've posted some of this before, but no matter what you end up building on a rural lot, you're going to have fixed sitework costs, and these can add up fast. Here are ours, in round figures:

• Septic: ~$40,000 (3-bedroom)
• Well: ~$20,000 (continuous pressure)
• Stump Removal: ~$5,000
• Fill: ~$25,000
• Driveway: ~$10,000

So before there's a foundation, we've got $100K into sitework. Not included in this total is the *hundreds* of hours I've spent clearing the lot — once heavily-wooded — and roughly $10K into brush and tree removal, and hauling logs to the sawmill. Also not included is the ~$3K to get power from a nearby pole.

At this point in the post I was planning on line-iteming the rest of the build estimate. But it's just too much effort and there's too much noise in the spreadsheet, so I will simply post the remaining total: $540K.

So the grand total was $640K for 864 square feet (not counting the loft), with no garage. And here's the kicker: it doesn't include a 💩-ton of materials and labor I was going to have to provide/do myself:

• Foundation stonework
• Siding and trim
• Interior and exterior painting
• Interior ceiling and wall cladding
• Flooring
• Final plumbing (setting toilets, hooking up sinks, etc.)
• Final electrical (light fixtures and outlets)
• Patio
• Landscaping
• And I am probably forgetting a few things.

And here's Kicker #2: it appraised! We were 1 signature away from starting the project when life changes forced us to pull the plug.

Stay tuned for what happened next.