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When you build your own house the time to make changes in plans is while they are in the formative stage.

Study carefully your every need.

Let your friends see your plans and welcome their criticisms. After getting all the suggestions you can, you will have to sort them over, discarding many and deciding between those that are contradictory.

You will get some good ones that you can use.

Be sure to get into the plans everything you will require in the building, as the contractor will charge you a much higher rate for the "extras" than he will for the things shown in the plans before the contract is let.

If you are doing the building yourself, you will find that changes often complicate your work, as one change often makes a change somewhere else necessary, and that still another until you do not know where to stop changing.

While the plan is being drawn, it is well to remember that a five-cent eraser can erase a thousand dollars worth of building and show but little wear.

Most of the problems can be foreseen without the aid of a prophet. If you study your needs carefully and consider the entire plan objectively, you should be able to find the plan that is exactly suited to your tastes and to your needs and is still within your limited budget.

A poor time to think about changing a part of the structure is after that part is built. It costs to build in the first place, it costs to tear down, and it costs to build again. The most costly item, and the one that gives the least return for the money spent is a change in the plan after the work is started. It costs money, time, and effort to use sledge hammers and wrecking bars.

Changes are sometimes necessary, usually because the planners did not study their problem enough, or failed to see it with sufficient clarity, or failed to consider the details. A multitude of changes is a sure sign of poor planning, or a vacillating nature. Make your changes during the planning stage as erasers are easier to use than wrecking bars, and cheaper.

Of course, if you find a serious error in the plan, or something that will make you definitely unhappy in your new home, go ahead with the change, pay for it, and charge it up to experience.

If money is scarce, why not try planning an entire house just the way you want it, and then building only part of it at present, reserving the rest until you are in a financial position to build it.

You could plan the house so that you could build the kitchen, the bath, and one or two bedrooms, and take a rest before you start on the remainder. You could use one of the bedrooms for a living room temporarily and have a complete three-room house. Or you could build the kitchen, the bath, the family room, and one of the bedrooms.

That would give you a very comfortable house. Then later, you could add the other bedrooms and bath, and the living room. It might be better to build on the installment plan than to pay for it that way.

Unless you plan the whole house, however, before you start to build any of it, you are sure to get some part where eventually you want some other part. It is hard to add on to a small house satisfactorily, whereas it is easy to build only part of a larger house and finish it later.

Always use a mortgage calculator to save yourself money when you use a mortgage to buy land or a home.