Building on a Budget: Free and Low Cost Material Resources

Planning a remodel or an addition but budget constraints holding you back? The truth is the longer you wait at this point can only mean that you will pay more for your materials when you are ready to build. This is how you can minimize the wait and the cost of building that new addition. First thing you need is a place to store your materials until your ready to use them, you can build a lean to or cover them with tarps, whatever you do keep it off the ground and allow air to circulate between the stacks to prevent dry rot. Keep longer materials supported all along their length to prevent warping.

Get to know as many of the managers at your local building supply companies. Ask them to notify you when they have damaged or warped materials that they will sell at a discount. Some of these guys will already have someone who is buying all of this, keep in contact, no one can buy all the damaged products out there. I once bought a bundle of drywall sheets (45 pieces I believe) for the great price of fifty cents per board. That is a savings of almost four hundred dollars and all I had to do was cut off three or four inches off of each board where it was damaged. If you happen to purchase warped or twisted materials you can always cut them partially and scab them back together or use it for blocking, do not waste material just because it isn't perfect.

Talk to local builders especially those building large projects. Some large construction projects will throw enough material away to build several homes. They are into production not recycling. Make sure to get permission for scrap material and do not take anything that isn't in the dumpster. I once had a laborer take up my batter boards because they looked like trash. Yes, dumpster diving can save you money and job site dumpsters are not like the ones outside an apartment building. If your experiencing resistance, offer to clean up the job site once a week, this will get their attention and save you thousands. So what if you have to nail three boards together to get a stud, you save four dollars and it will never be seen.

Offer to tear down a barn for the materials. There are thousands upon thousands of oak and popular barns all over America that need to come down. Their owners will gladly give you the materials if you take the building down. You would be surprised at the large timbers and beams in the older barns along with metal sheeting, lathing and if your lucky you could acquire valuable antiques along the way. Investing in a planer for three or four hundred dollars or using weathered lumber could finish the interior or lathe the exterior of your project for nothing. I guarantee you that if you lathe the outside of your project with weathered barn lumber it will be built better than any project with OSB on it.

Abandoned properties are everywhere these days, you could purchase a home and tear it down for the materials then flip the property after the fact. This is a bit on the high end and for the experienced rehabber, but it is viable. There is a log home behind my house that was once five smaller log homes around the Nashville, TN area. The family that built the home had next to nothing in it and sold it for over a hundred thousand, it is on the market again with a price tag of $330,000. Talk about worth tearing down an older property.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of resources out there, you just have to look for them. I know a guy who bought a metal building that was bought by a church for their building and never put it up. He has a forty thousand square foot shop for less than one fifth of it's original cost. Beware of buildings or kits that are offered as overstock, they are not, they are built to order. The only time you can get these types of deals is when you buy them from someone who bought them from the manufacture. There are also thousands of recycling centers and non for profit sales out there.

Windows can often be had for free or almost free from window companies that specialize in vinyl replacement windows. The resources out there are numerous, but be careful because if your only saving ten dollars on a door, buy a new one. For every item you need there is a source, if you cannot find it you can always build it. Remember it wasn't that long ago when our forefathers built homes without a building supply warehouse within a thousand miles. Keep your eyes open and always, do your homework.