Friday, May 8, 2009

Money

Every wonder how much this adventure is costing us? I have had a few queries about it. So, just for fun, I have embedded part of a Google Spreadsheet that I'm using to track expenses. As I update the spreadsheet, this will update automatically. But folks probably don't want to go back and look for this post, so I will also put it the side bar on the left near the bottom so you can see it anytime.


At this point, we've done all the big purchases associated with our project. We have the windows (under the Home Depot category), refrigerator (Sears), hot water heater, heater, trailer and a good part of the lumber (no roof framing, plywood or roofing) - certainly enough to finish framing the walls though. So the expense list will change, but not by a huge amount.

In terms of the allocation of expenses, the chart shows a proportional accounting by category.



Well, that's enough goofing off for me for now. Back to school work.

6 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for the Money post. That was a big question I had as I go forth in planning construction of my own tiny house. I'll be interested to see how you total out

    Question - did you attend one of the Tumbleweed workshops on how to build a tiny house before you guys got started?

    Natalie (Portland, OR)

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  2. Hiya Natalie,
    Nope. We didn't attend a workshop. We did a lot of research, bought the plans and started building.

    You could definitely do this cheaper than we are. If you don't have a time constraint, you can search around for used & recycled materials. It would save a lot.

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  3. Natalie,

    No, we didn't attend any workshops. We are both 'tool people' (have 'em and know how to use 'em) and have read a lot about how to build a house since we've never done this before. We've been interested in architecture for a long time so we also felt very comfortable changing things in the design until they better suited our needs and preferences.

    I agree with Jeff that a house this size could be build for less by choosing used materials.

    Although that's very appealing (more character!), we do have a deadline that we need to be finished by. We have built with materials that we have planned for in the budget (the compost toilet and hot water heater weren't inexpensive but we agreed that we really wanted them) as well as some items that we chose to save money on (like the shower stall and installing unfinished wood for the floor instead of the prefinished beauties that we saw in a showroom).

    Arlene

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  4. Looks a lot like what I was doing for my planning process to estimate what my costs would be. I came up with price, tax and where I was getting everything from. Looks like you're doing pretty good.

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  5. Hi, great post, I'm about to start putting a cost section on my build site. Would it be ok to link to you from my blog, I have a section of other people who are building similarly to me and I'd love to be able to link out to you and your project. You can see my, slow but steady, progress at jaystinyhouse.com

    J.

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  6. Hi Daniel,
    I can't help but feel like we spending a lot, but we are still under 20K.

    Hello Justin,
    Yes, it is terrific to link to us (I've already you to ours as Arlene follows your progress).

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