A coworker of mine decided to build his own house a while back. I was skeptical. He works a desk job like me. He had never mentioned his carpentry skills before, and didn't have a large amount of savings. To my surprise, he had a plan, and it was a good one.
1. The first important piece of his plan was move to back in with his family for ten months while he built it.. Without rent to pay, he was able to spend about a thousand dollars a month on building his house. Ten thousand dollars later, he had a house. Living with his family also gave him a place to build it.
2. That's right. He built his house in their back yard. I should tell you at this point that this is a "tiny house". That's a house built to normal building standards, but on a small scale. It is small enough to be built on a large trailer.
3. That's the next piece of his plan. By building it on a trailer, he didn't have to worry about building permits. He did build it to code, but that was for his own piece of mind.
4. The next piece of his plan was to lean on others. He was able to find tiny home blueprints online. He did tweak them to his preference, but he knew the construction would be sound. He also got friends and well wishers to help when he needed more than one person. Some of his friends have a construction background, so they would have been able to point out any glaring mistakes.
5. The last part of his plan was to get a job managing a camp ground. Part of the beauty of that was to have a bathroom while he's still working on the interior.
He chronicled some of the process on his blog, but hasn't updated it for a while. I think you can get a good idea of how it's put together. As I said, it's not done, but it's done enough to live in. His toilet is a rougher stile than I'd be comfortable with, but other than that I'd be happy to call it home.
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