Mother's Low-cost Home-building Contest: Winner Three

Enlarge Image Image Gallery It takes ingenuity and persistence for a young family with three small children to build their own home. Right: One way that the Masons economized was by cutting most of their lumber with a portable saw mill. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY BROWNIE HARRIS)

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Using local materials, these owner-builders were able to build their own timber frame home for only $3.55 per square foot.

After taking a break for our special 100th issue, we're now ready to pick up again with reports on the five Low-Cost Home-Building Contest winners we announced in issue 98. Thus far, you've seen the Kennedys' ambitious, $11.85-per-square-foot, passive solar saltbox and the Marquardts' cozy, $5.60-per-square-foot log cabin — a pretty broad range of approaches and costs. This time, though, we're going to show you the lowest-cost code-certified entry we received: Richard and Susan Mason's $3.55-per-square-foot post and beam home, located in the central Massachusetts countryside.

The largest factor in the Masons' extraordinarily low per-square-foot cost is their source of construction lumber. They cut and milled much of the framing lumber, most of the timbers, and all of the flooring, paneling, and siding from pines and oaks on their own property. Other timbers were salvaged from an old barn they purchased for $300. To form the necessary posts; beams, and planks, they purchased a portable sawmill for $2,600. Including its cost in the materials raises the per-square-foot cost to only $5.36.

Working with one's own timber requires a considerable amount of planning. Richard and Susan cut the boards for all the flooring (save the kitchen and bathroom, which are Italian ceramic tile on a plywood subfloor) two years before it was to be used, so that it would be thoroughly seasoned. Many are the horror stories told by owner-builders who've put down flooring before it was fully dried, only to have it warp, split, and draw away from its neighbors. Equally important is a place for proper storage during seasoning: For the Masons, it was a barn on their property. Boards were sawed there and properly "stickered" (stacked).

Starting Off on the Right Footer

Rick set their home on a 1' footing on bedrock granite, following up to sill level with a standard block-and-mortar foundation. To hug the contour of the sloping lot, Rick dropped the bottom third of the house 3 feet, in order to form a split level.

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