Most of what a homestead needs built is small, simple, and within reach of someone willing to learn. This is how to think about building before you spend.
Before you build anything
- Check what your county requires a permit for. The threshold is often a square-footage limit, and going one foot over changes everything.
- Find your setbacks from property lines, wells, and septic fields.
- Call before you dig. Buried lines are not always where the previous owner remembers.
- Site for drainage first and for the view second. Water decides what lasts.
Order of work
Fencing and water usually come before buildings, because they determine where buildings make sense. A shed sited before you know where the animals, the garden, and the traffic go is a shed in the wrong place for twenty years.
Small structures
A shed, a lean-to, a woodshed, and a simple coop are the standard first projects. Skids or piers are usually adequate and let you move a building later; a slab does not. Roof pitch should match your snow load, and overhangs earn their cost by keeping water off walls.
Buy pressure-treated lumber for anything touching the ground, and use fasteners rated for it — ordinary screws corrode away in treated wood faster than people expect.
Fencing
Corners and gates carry the load; the line posts only hold the wire up. Overbuild corners and brace them properly, and the fence will outlast you. Gates go where you actually walk, not where the plan says.
Salvage and sourcing
Auctions, estate sales, sawmills, and demolition salvage will supply most of what you need at a fraction of retail. Buy the good used tool over the new cheap one. Check reclaimed lumber for nails and rot before it goes near a blade.
Working within your means
Build what you can pay for as you go. An unfinished building you own outright is a better position than a finished one you owe on, and country projects reliably take longer and cost more than the plan allows.
For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?
Luke 14:28, KJV