How to build a house from A to Z: All the steps

This guide details all the different stages of the construction of a house, and wants to be as clear and practical as possible.

It concerns individuals who wish to build a house by managing their own project from A to Z. The guide does not concern individuals who use a builder of houses, or who build self-build.

Like our series on seismic construction , this guide will be written one article per week, the link will be updated in the summary below. You can click on ‘Notifications’ to be alerted during these updates.

How to build a house – Phase 1: Fit the project

  • Evaluate your borrowing capacity
  • Define your expectations: Draw approximately the plans of your house
  • Roughly calculate the cost of building your house
  • Search and purchase of land

How to build a house – Phase 2: Design

  • Choose an architect or an architect
  • Choose your building material: Comparative visual guide (blocks, wood, bricks, straw, earth)
  • Realize the building permit file and submit it
  • To call on a geotechnician to carry out the G12 soil study
  • Appoint a Technical Studies Office to carry out the construction plans for your house
  • Choose a building control office and have your plans validated
  • Evaluate in detail the cost of building your house
  • Write and validate your specifications
  • Request quotes and choose your construction company
  • Memo: checklist to avoid problems before starting the construction of your house

How to build a house – Phase 3: The Works

  • The meeting of start of construction
  • The role of the Client in the construction of a house
  • The foundations of individual houses
  • The low slab
  • The walls
  • Tiling, parquet and other floor coverings
  • insulation
  • Wood Framing: 9 Errors to Avoid
  • The cover
  • The exterior joinery
  • The Exterior cladding timber façade hard
  • Paint and other siding
  • Talus, VRD, and  retaining walls
  • How to build an ecological house (see these 12 tips already )
  • Payment of construction companies to the progress of construction
  • Handing over the keys: The role of the reserves and the reception of the works
  • The year called perfect completion

 

Before starting this series, a video that summarizes the ‘typical project’:

Why not tell us which topic would interest you the most, leaving a comment below?

How to build a house: The Works

Foundations: Foundations are made by masons who install reinforcing reinforcement and concrete clean in the trenches.

The basement : these are the first bricks or blocks that are laid and will be under the ground. this basement can be a basement, a crawl space or a hedgehog (the ground floor then rests directly on the foundations).

The floor is then manufactured starting with the laying of concrete beams on the bricks. The slabs are then placed on the edges of the beams. The metal mesh is then laid and a concrete slab is poured.

The walls: it depends on the type of materials (cinder block, brick, monomur, cellular concrete, …). Everything is fixed with mortar glue. The lintels are placed above the openings.

In case of floor, other beams can be laid (concrete slab) or it can be elements of wood (wood floor)

Work begins approximately 6 months after the signing of the construction contract if you go through a builder. Such a delay is due in particular to the time required to file the building permit and the period of possible third-party appeal against this permit. This period lasts 2 months.

The construction phase of your home will vary from 5 to 15 months depending on the size of your home, its complexity and its environment

A rectangle house of 80m2 in the countryside will be built in a short time whereas a contemporary house of 150m2 floor with adaptations to the ground in dense urban environment will probably take more than 12 months. The construction phase passes through the following steps:

Big work

  • The Meeting starts worksite with the work supervisor. This also involves the development with your builder, phase that validates certain points, equipment and options.
  • The earthwork that consists of leveling the soil so that the house can rest on a solid foundation.
  • Then it is the excavation which consists in digging the site of the future house as well as the trenches used for the connections to the local networks (water, electricity, etc.). The depth of the excavation depends on the type of foundation (crawl space, single storey, ..) and the nature of the soil.
    • Roofing: the laying depends on the nature of the roof (2 OR 4 PANS, flat roof). The most classic roof, in 2 sections, goes through the creation of the gables.
    • The frame: the first beams are the sandpit faults which are fixed against the horizontal walls. Then the blackout is placed at the top of the frame, parallel to the sand pit faults. The gables are then trimmed with wooden boxes. We then fix the rafters (thin vertical beams) then install battens. The roofing screen can be fixed at this time.
    • Laying tiles (concrete, terracotta, slate, shingles …)
    • Laying roofs (top of the roof), hips (along the projecting angles), valleys (re-entrant angles), bays for ventilation and banks (roof edges). The house is then out of water
    • Laying joinery (doors and windows) so that the house evening out of the air.

    Once this structural part is finished, we go to the second work

Second work

The second work corresponds to the installation phase of all the equipment of the house and the finishes. It can sometimes be longer than the carcass phase depending on the finishes desired.

  • Installation of water and electricity circuits, more and more by the installation of hydraulic and electric octopus.
  • Installation of the inner or outer insulation
  • Laying interior partitions
  • Laying flooring
  • Laying of sanitary
  • Paint, plaster and other siding
  • Talus, VRD, and retaining walls
  • Airtightness test and compliance with thermal standards.

Then comes the handing over of the keys.

Note that you will have meetings of building sites at several stages. If you signed with a builder, you can have a meeting before each invoice, as these are defined by law

  • 15% at the opening of the site,
  • 25% upon completion of foundations
  • 40% at the completion of the walls
  • 60% out of water
  • 75% at the completion of the bulkheads and the shutdown
  • 95% upon completion of equipment, plumbing, carpentry and heating.
  • 5% at the reception,