I’ve had INTENTIONS to write a post about this for a while now, and then life happened and it let fall to the wayside. But, I’m finally getting around to it, and I’m sorry it took me this long to do!
We live in a modular house that we designed and ‘built’ a little over 4 years ago. I always get lots of questions about it, probably because most people aren’t super familiar with modular homes and, as they are becoming more popular, more people are considering this option for building.
I posted a little about our home on my IG stories, and got several questions about it and the building process that I’m going to do my best to answer based on OUR experience. I say that because I know everyone has a different building experience.
Here we go!
Did you design your own plans or pick something out of a book? How does that work?
Good question! We did a little of both. I found a plan on Pinterest (of all places) of a regular ‘site-built- home. Using that as a guide, I drew up a different version of the plan on a piece of notebook paper. When we found our modular builder, I took my little piece of paper to him, and he ‘modular-ized’ my plan. Because modular homes must travel by trailer to the home site, there are certain requirements in terms of width and length for each box. Therefore a traditional home plan usually needs to be tweaked in order for it to fit modular home specs.
Who built your home?
We used Turn Key Homes out of Wytheville, Virginia. They helped draw our plans and then submitted them to their ‘builders’, Icon Legacy Homes (based out of Pennsylvania), who actually built the home.
How much work did you have to do yourself?
I know that is a different answer for everyone, but we did about 20-30% of our downstairs ourselves, and then a contractor (contracted by Turn Key) finished our upstairs for us. Downstairs, we laid our floors, tiled our showers, and had a local handyman install our vanities, plumb out our kitchen sink, and hang our light fixtures. We also chose to do our own countertops.
Does bank financing work the same for modular homes as it does for site-built.
Yep! As far as I’m concerned it did. For us, we took out a loan for our house just as you would take out a loan for building or buying a home.
What are the biggest cons of modular homes in your opinion?
That’s a tough one too. For me, I think the fact that there are certain limitations due to modular specifications. For instance, I wanted my whole downstairs area as one big open space, but due to weight requirements and ‘marriage walls’, I had to tweak that. Another thing that I wasn’t a fan of is the fact that modulars can look very ‘cookie-cutter’ on the inside. I wanted to customize ours as much as we could to avoid that. Because of this, I chose to do our own vanities, light fixtures, flooring, and kitchen counters. I didn’t want to be limited to choosing what was in the ‘order book’. So I think there are definitely ways around it.
How long did it take you to build it?
Our house was actually built in a factory in about three weeks. Once it was moved and set on our basement, it took about 4 months to finish. It could have moved much quicker, but Ben and I tried to do some of the work ourselves (which slowed us down; hello 6 months pregnant trying to lay flooring 🙂 We also dealt with a really messy winter which slowed progress.
Your house doesn’t look very modular from the outside!
True! And I hope not! Again, I wanted to customize it as much as we could, so we added a wrap around porch that was built by local handymen and completed a couple years after we moved in.
How do you pick or order everything for your house?
This part was a little overwhelming for me. Imagine sitting down in a meeting and picking everything for your house out of a magazine! I’m talking everything from door handles to flooring to windows. We did it all in one day. Of course we changed a few things, and we did some of them on our own. For instance, we did the downstairs flooring ourselves, so when it came time to order the floor, we left it blank and said we would do it on our own.
Price wise, how does this compare to a site-built?
Another good question I’m not sure I completely know the answer to. I can tell you we did A LOT of research before we chose which route to go. We also toured several modular and site-built homes. Most every builder we talked to told us to plan for an average of $100/square foot for site built, and $60-80/square foot for modular. I would say that was fairly close for us. Of course, there are a lot of factors to consider. When we were quoted a price for our house, we were quoted a base price with basic options. While we did include some basic options on the house, we did several upgrades, too. We upgraded our kitchen cabinets, windows, and crown molding to name a few. We also did 10 foot ceilings downstairs and added additional windows and dormers which cost extra.
If you could go back and build again, would you do another modular?
I will NOT build again! Hahahaha! I’m done with building. BUT if I had to do it again, I would do modular again because it works for us. We are not handy, nor did we have a lot of time to do work ourselves. I was pregnant with Rhyan while we were building and Ben and I both work, so this was the easiest, most efficient way for us. Our house is built well (it had to travel down the interstate), and we’ve not had any more complaints than you would normally have with a home. It does ‘settle’ within the first year or two after being set on your foundation, upon which you might see cracks in the foundation. Most builders will come back and fix those things within a year though.
Are you finished with your house now?
I don’t think we will ever be ‘finished’. We spent more money in the building stages on things we couldn’t go back and change (like 10 foot ceilings, additional windows, strong basement), with intentions to do more to our home as time went on and we saved more money. On my short list, I want to add a fireplace, kitchen backsplash, farmhouse sink, and double front door. A girl can dream, right?
We love our home because it’s a reflection of us. It’s mostly messy (hello 3 kids!) and always a work in progress, but we’ve had fun making slow changes through the years to adapt to our needs.
If you’ve got any more questions about our modular, shoot them my way! We’re always happy to answer 🙂 I will share more about the upstairs portion and how they finish that when I can get it clean enough to take a picture #momlife 😉
xxxxx,
Brittany
