How to build a private residential house or cottage and make a minimum of mistakes. Errors will be inevitable - it is important that their number is not critical. All people have different preferences and, perhaps, not all advice can be perceived as the ultimate truth, but it is still worth adhering to general best practices in the field of private housing construction.

● Is it worth buying a plot of land 50 kilometers or more from the city? It is quite possible that it would be better to purchase a smaller plot, but closer to the city limits.
● It is better to purchase a plot of land that has undergone the survey procedure.
● You should not buy a plot for construction on a slope with elevation changes. The layout of this area will be at least an order of magnitude more difficult than usual on a flat area. Material costs will also increase significantly - for retaining walls, reinforcing structures, and more.
● Before purchasing a plot, it would be useful to find out about the groundwater level.
● As for communications, you should not take the seller’s word that gas and electricity are only ten meters away.
● It is better to purchase a plot that already has communications. Otherwise, it can cost a decent amount and take a lot of time.
● You can’t take the seller’s word that there will be gasification next year. This could be either an ordinary lie or changed priorities of gas services.
● You should not purchase a plot of land to build a house right in the field. Water supply, gas, electricity and security will have to be provided additionally and at your own expense. Added to this are garbage removal, clearing snow from winter roads, and troubleshooting. Thus, purchasing a plot within the boundaries of a cottage community eliminates a lot of problems.

● When purchasing, you must check all documents, including power supply contracts. Permits can take months to process!
● If you have plans to drill your own artesian well, then you definitely need to find out the depth of the water. Installing an artesian well is not a cheap pleasure, and can result in even greater unforeseen expenses.
● Before purchasing a site for construction, you need to make sure that access roads for construction equipment are reliable.
● If you buy a house/plot in a village, you should definitely visit the local police officer to find out the level of crime in the locality.
● It would be useful to find out the mood of your neighbors. There are no ideal neighbors, but you need to find out at least the degree of adequacy, lifestyle and any plans of these neighbors.
● Whether it is worth purchasing a plot of land for construction (or a house) close to relatives or friends is a purely individual question, but it should also be considered without fail.
● Do not postpone the fixed breakdown of the boundaries of the land plot. We need to decide right away.
● A plot with an unfinished foundation should not be taken. Otherwise, there will definitely be additional costs for strengthening it, and in any case, this will limit the choice of design for the future home.
● Purchasing a plot to build a house in winter or early spring can be compared to buying a pig in a poke. In unfamiliar terrain, it is unknown what the snow cover hides.
● An unfamiliar area may have its own unexpected features: a lot of ants, moles, mice or even snakes. You can find out about these features from your neighbors.

Before construction starts

● You should not rebuild an old house built in the Soviet era. Perestroika costs more, and then it turns out that it was all for nothing. The best option is to demolish the old and build a new one. Another option is to sell the plot with the old house and buy a bare plot of land on which you can build what you want.
● You should not build multi-story mansions in a poor neighborhood. Watching the life of your neighbors from your upper floors will not bring aesthetic pleasure. It will also not be possible to sell such a palace for the money that was invested in it. And no one has yet canceled people’s envy.
● When planning and building a house, it is better to take into account your wishes and needs - children and, especially, grandchildren will definitely have their own preferences and their own lives.
● You should not buy a house that was originally built for sale. In such a house, due to the need to reduce construction costs, a lot will be missing. For example, there will be only one socket in the rooms - why complicate the construction - anyway, it’s not for yourself, but for sale.

Self-education in construction

● It is better to prepare in advance at least on the basic issues - in this case, both construction errors and situations where contractors will simply try to scam clients will be obvious.
● It’s worth studying the mat. part for each type of work.
● It’s better to work through other people’s mistakes than to discover your own later.

Financial issue of construction

● Don’t let things get to the point of long-term construction. If you don’t have enough funds, then it is better to build an economy version of a frame house with an area of ​​80 m² for a family of four people. For a brick house of 250 m² you will need a significant amount, but you need to live now.
● You should not start construction without having 200-250% of the original estimate.
● Even at the stage of foundation work, the cost of engineering and finishing work should be adequately assessed, the budget for which may be even greater than for the foundation, frame and roof.

● You should not start anything before leveling the terrain with a grader and thinking through the drainage system, retaining walls and other drainage systems.
● At the construction site, it is necessary to allocate several places for construction waste, and also to ensure that no one throws out waste anywhere. Otherwise, in the future, when processing the land plot, various pipe cuttings, stones, broken bricks, rags, etc. will constantly be discovered.
● For crushed stone, you need to prepare a couple of places, fenced off with sides - otherwise the crushed stone will definitely spread over a large area of ​​the site. Moreover, first this crushed stone will drown in the construction site, and then it will appear even in the most unexpected places.
● Before starting construction, it is better to fence off all valuable trees on the site.

Interaction with contractors

● You should not hire a team of workers without knowing anything about them, without recommendations from friends, without seeing their completed construction and installation work.
● Where you can find good builders: when you see a nice-looking house, don’t be shy to go to the owners and find out who built it. Bad builders will not be recommended.
● If a house is being built nearby, then it is worth observing the work process, the quality and speed of the work being performed. It is quite possible that these same people should be hired for construction. In addition, in the construction business, downtime is quite common and it may turn out that they will perform some work next door.
● There are teams that claim to be able to do everything. Don't trust people like that! No one can do absolutely everything! Construction skills in only one or two specialties are polished over the years. It is in his industry that a builder must be a professional.
● The moment of “cheating” and theft in the construction business is inevitable. The fact that you do not need to order the entire scope of work on a turnkey basis will help to minimize this negativity. It is necessary to order "turnkey" in separate portions - separately the box, roof, finishing work, electrics, and so on.
● To make it easier to replace careless builders, any construction work should be divided into unrelated stages.
● If roofers do not know how to install a drainage system, then you should not hire them for roofing work.

Organization of relations with contractors

● In the modern world, a contract for any work includes clauses on deadlines and penalties. Upon completion of the work, delivery certificates are signed indicating the warranty periods. If the construction organization (crew) does not have experience working on this principle, then you can provide them with your own sample contract.
● When concluding an agreement with a contractor, it would be useful to show persistence and scrupulousness (and even tediousness): amount, terms, penalties for late payments. Otherwise, you will have to make all the imperfections yourself.
● It is necessary to register all construction services in advance. Otherwise, some “unaccounted for column” or a whole lot of completed work will definitely come up later.
● Contractors must be forced to adhere to pre-fixed and agreed upon budgets.
● When meeting a specific person who is performing the work, check the photocopy of his passport with the original. You should take a photocopy of your passport for yourself - and this is not paranoia!
● The main thing in the contract is the terms of payment. Ideally, it should provide for 100% payment only after all complex construction work has been completed without defects and with a guarantee of quality.
● You shouldn’t trust anyone completely! Architects, craftsmen, engineers, foremen, and workers will leave their marks, which cannot always be corrected later.
● When interacting with the construction team, the feeling of pity and softness must be mercilessly squeezed out of yourself. It is precisely this feeling that careless workers will definitely put pressure on when they ask for forgiveness for those places where they messed up.
● It is better to part with contractors, teams, builders, and suppliers who are not in the habit of fulfilling their promises on time. Well, if their phone is constantly busy and there are no calls back, it means they have more important things to do, they are not interested in you and they don’t really want to provide their construction services.
● You should trust builders only based on facts.

1. The value of a site is determined by three main factors: location, location, location. Price and value are not identical concepts.
2. It is better to live in a bad place with good neighbors than in a good place with bad ones.
3. Build a small, reasonably sufficient house. In most cases, the construction of “palaces” leads to unfinished construction, holes in the budget and poor health.
4. Every ugly home is a missed chance to make the world a better place. It is more prestigious to live in a small house “with taste” than in a huge “transformer booth”.
5. If you really need a big house, but don’t have the money to build it, don’t waste time and money on “makeshift” buildings. Think about how to build your future home in stages. This can be the growth of the house both horizontally and vertically.
6. When choosing a project, try to avoid excessive originality. Remember that everything beautiful and reasonable has already been built before you. Your task is to choose the house design that is most suitable for the nature and type of occupation and fit it into the landscape and surroundings of your site.
7. Build your dream home! Choosing a house design solely for reasons of practicality and rationality will inevitably lead to disappointment in the future.
8. Do not engage the services of an architect who has never owned his own country house.
9. The house must have its own “personality” and belong to one of the well-known architectural styles. Remember that a bunch of geometric shapes, textures and colors most often does not belong to a new and original architectural style, but to a long-known and very widespread style called “bad taste”.
10. The layout of the house and the layout of the rooms determine its appearance, and not vice versa.
11. Avoid “latest, cutting-edge and experimental” designs and technologies. New technologies are often unproven and cutting-edge designs quickly go out of style.
12. When choosing materials and technologies, check whether they are certified for individual housing construction in countries where the state really cares about the health of fellow citizens.
13. Multiply the planned budget for building a house by 1.5-2 and get an idea of ​​the real construction costs.
14. Multiply the planned construction period of the house by 1.5 and get an idea of ​​the real construction period (if all the money for construction according to paragraph 9 is at your fingertips).
15. The only way to avoid defects and errors when building a house by a hired team of builders (company) is to constantly be personally present at the construction site or hire an independent expert to accompany the construction.
16. The most dangerous misconception is to think that your builders know everything about building houses and know how to build them.
17. The rush to build a house is beneficial only to the builders - this way they can earn more.
18. By entrusting the purchase of building materials to builders, in most cases you will overpay from 5 to 30%.
19. Avoid “old-fashioned” and invented on the fly technical solutions. The answer to any technical question on construction technologies and materials can be found in the instructions and albums of technical solutions from manufacturers, in building codes and regulations, codes of practice and other construction regulatory documents.
20. Remember that modern domestic building codes and regulations are often outdated Western standards. If you read in English, look for modern international building codes on the Internet.
21. It is not the foundation that “supports” the house, but the soil on which the foundation rests. First of all, examine the properties of the soil under future houses, then select the optimal type of foundation for the given soil conditions and the type of your house.

Construction tricks

Any business has its tricks, but most often you can learn about them only from your own experience. Here are collected tips and tricks from builders of different directions! So:

You can apply your own design to regular tiles. To do this, you need to cut out a stencil with the desired pattern from thick paper and firmly stick it onto the tile with rubber glue (after wiping the tile with acetone). Automotive nitro enamel is applied to open areas of the surface using a sprayer (you can use nitro paint in an aerosol package). After the paint has dried, the stencil is removed. The coating will be resistant to moisture, smooth and shiny.

To make the ceiling ideal, plasterboard is used - it is a fairly durable and heat-insulating material. When mounting plasterboard on the ceiling, use a ceiling profile, which is fastened with special screws, which, in turn, will allow you to install the frame of the structure you require with minimal loss of time.

To extend the service life of paper wallpaper, coat it with NTs-228 varnish, which creates a durable film. The varnish dries quickly, so it must be applied with a wide soft brush in parallel stripes. To avoid sagging and drips, the brush should be dipped in no more than one-third of the varnish.

In order for the natural lighting of your future country house to be uniform, the distance from the window to the nearest wall should not be more than one meter.

In places where wooden structures come into contact with metal or brick, roofing material must be laid. You can replace roofing felt with glassine, but roofing felt and glassine cannot be laid between wooden walls and brickwork. Condensation will form on them and the wooden wall will become damp, which will subsequently lead to its rotting.

If you want to make a water heating boiler yourself, then you need to know that the area of ​​the heat-receiving surface should be 1 square meter. for every 100 sq. m. heated room.

How to attach moisture-resistant panels to painted plaster? - Answer: it is advisable to sand the paint, but it can be attached using special liquid nails without solvents. Secure it from the bottom and top either with a profile or with simple self-tapping screws so that it does not move until the nails dry.

How to putty paint on walls. To begin with, if the paint has not peeled off, scrape the wall with some sharp object, like a nail, then dilute a solution of PVA glue, sand and water, the sand should be fine, river sand. You don't need a lot of sand. We treat the wall surface with the resulting solution, wait until it dries completely, the working surface is ready for putty.

If it is difficult to wrap a screw in hard wood, it is better to make a small indentation with an awl and rub the screw itself with soap. After this, the screw will go in very easily.

Drywall is incredibly fire resistant. It can withstand flame for about 30 minutes.

For threaded pipeline connections, ordinary chewing gum can serve as a chic, reliable sealant: chew, soften, stretch, wrap around the thread, twist the connection and forget about leaks.

Door hinges will not creak if they are not lubricated in time - this advice has long been known. But you can do without lubrication. To do this, you need to make a washer from a polyethylene cork and put it on the hinge pin.

To prevent oil paint from drying out during storage and to prevent a film from forming on it, use our advice: place a circle of thick paper on the surface of the paint and fill it with a thin layer of drying oil.

The smell of oil paint in the room will disappear faster if you place plates of salt in several places.

If you don’t have electrical tape on hand when repairing electrical wiring, wrap the wires with tape cut from a plastic bag, melt it with a lighter and insulate the connection with the melted mass.

If the nail does not hold well in the wall, remove it from its socket, wrap it in newspaper several times, moisten it and insert it back, the newspaper will dry and the nail will stick well to the wall.

Heavy shelves are suspended with bolts. Holes with a reserve are punched in the wall and bolts are cemented into them, leaving protrusions with threads. The shelves are secured with nuts, which, if necessary, are recessed and puttied.

Building a new home is always associated with large material costs. Not everyone is able to build a house, without regard to the estimate. In the vast majority of cases, you have to cut expenses to stay within budget. But you can’t save on everything, because, by and large, you save on yourself and your loved ones who are going to share their shelter with you. Your home should be durable, warm, dry, and, of course, beautiful. Is this possible, within the means available to you?

By choosing a material with a low specific gravity for building walls, you can slightly reduce the load-bearing capacity of the foundation, while saving money for other areas of the construction site. In particular, you can use various available means for formwork, but you should not skimp on the quality of the cement mortar, since relatively small savings on the scale of the entire construction can result in the complete collapse of your undertaking. All design parameters of the foundation must be strictly observed, since violations at this initial and most important stage of construction call into question the result of all subsequent work.

In this section you can find detailed information regarding all. We have made every effort to provide you with all the necessary information regarding the construction and renovation of a private home. In this section we will tell you how to lay the foundation of a house, how to build walls and perform roofing work. Installation of doors and windows, installation of pipelines and electrical wiring, recommendations for the selection of building materials, all this and much more is discussed in this section.

With our renovation and building tips, you can save significant money while maintaining the performance, durability, and charm of your home.

But if you want to order professional renovation of your house or apartment, you can find out all the details on this website.

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From the moderator:
Gentlemen and ladies participants in the topic.
There are many other topics on the forum for various types of discussions.
In particular, you can chat here -
Here it is proposed to collect advice and discuss/challenge if necessary.
Moreover, do not ask or discuss various private questions not related to these tips.
Thank you all for participating!
I also ask you not to write phrases like: “Stop littering the topic” in the topic. Instead, click “Complain” next to the post from which, from your point of view, the topic began to become clogged. And write about the reason in the complaint, not in an open forum.
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Perhaps there was such a topic (moderators will move it, if anything?).

Just having built a brick one, now we understand how much we didn’t take into account. Maybe our mistakes will help someone avoid them.
I’ll make a reservation right away, for those who like to pry from scratch. There is an approved project, purchased for yourself personally, with all communications. But since we are building our first one, of course we decided to change something during the construction process. And in the end...

2. When pouring the foundation from mixers, be sure to prepare a container or hole where you will pour the remains. You can use it for something (the same paths, sculptures...).

3. If there is an interfloor staircase, immediately subtract the height of the ceilings based on the height and number of steps you want.

4. Inside, when dividing floors into rooms, you also need to take a lot into account. If we had taken into account the dimensions of the tiles (by laying out the room according to their size) that will be laid in the bathrooms, we would also have avoided selecting patterns and pieces of tiles.

5. When laying out the interior walls, think about how you will decorate them. We let this issue go by itself. And as a result, we were left with a whole carload of facing bricks (we miscalculated when ordering), but they could have made some of the interior walls just brick (now fashionable). And plus, what a seam. The builders said, you will close it anyway. And when making the boiler room (we left it just brick, with painted walls), we had to put a lot of effort into bringing the walls into proper shape.

6. Do not install windows and doors in frosty weather. We got the installation in the fall - the very beginning of frost. Naturally, there was no heating yet. 18 windows - the installers simply froze, we felt sorry for them and now we are still reaping the fruits of our pity. Everything had to be foamed again, somewhere they found a distortion - the glass burst. One of the front doors was out of its hinges.

For now, I think I'll stop. If there is someone who is not shy about their mistakes, they can join my advice. Just guys, please do not discuss our construction, but simply write your advice from your own experience. I remember I was reading the Socha topic, precisely because he wrote a lot about his mistakes, but the topic was so flooded that these tips are difficult to find.