What are home building kits and should you use them
If you are looking to build a new home, you might be considering using a home building kit. This article is designed to explain what a home kit is and what the advantages and disadvantages are of using kits to build your home.
What is a home building kit?
A home building kit is exactly what it sounds like; it is a kit that includes all of the pieces for a new home and instructions for how to put it together. If you have ever built a model you can think of a home building kit as a life-sized, model home.
Kits come with everything you will need to construct the home; this includes all the lumber and preconstructed panels, blue prints, hardware, and often interior features like tiling and countertops.
There are different types of kit homes. The "typical" kit home used to be the log cabin. In fact, many log cabins are built from kits. In recent years, more and more "regular" homes are available in kits. Your can find kits to build bungalows, cottages, ramblers, and even some monster homes.
What are the advantages of using a kit to build your home?
The main advantage, at least for non-log homes, is probably the price. Because the kits are mass-produced, you get the advantage of buying in bulk even though you are only buying one home. Think of the difference in price between buying items at Costco or at the corner market. This same advantage is passed on to you when you buy a kit home.
Other factors that influence the price that you pay for your home include the assembly line style under which the parts are made. Each piece is cut at the factory, to the exact right size. This saves you time and money. When pieces are cut on the building site, you have to pay someone to do it and if there are mistakes made, you will take the loss on the material. There are no mistake costs passed onto you when the cuts are made in the factory.
The other big advantage of using a kit home is that it saves time. The materials all arrive at once so there will never be any hold up while you wait for back ordered materials. The wall frames and trusses can be quickly assembled according to the instructions and the house can be framed in days.
What are the disadvantages of using a kit to build your home?
One of the main disadvantages is that you will most likely be an owner builder on this project. That means you will have to hire the subcontractors and handle the paperwork that general contractors usually handle.
Another disadvantage of using a kit is that you will have very few opportunities to customize your home. Rather than drawing up your dream home with an architect, you will be selecting your dream home from currently available options. For some people, the notion of "dream home" includes making the decisions about every little thing in the home. You also won't have much (if any) say about what materials are used. If you opt to use a kit, "you get what you get".
As you embark on your home building journey, you will need to think very carefully about the advantages and disadvantages of your different options. The best thing you can do is educate yourself as best you can about every aspect of building. When deciding about using a kit or not, you should definitely talk to someone who has used the kit that you are considering. This will give you an inside perspective and help you make the right decision for you and your family.
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Tags: kit_homes kit_houses prefabricated_houses log_home_kits house_construction advantages disadvantages
