[drewfish]

I'm in the middle of building a 1000sf home with some friends. It'll probably be about 80k for the house (including various permits). We hired contactors for: plans (including engineering calcs), concrete slab finishing (our floor, did the forms & rebar ourselves), trusses (required by code), plumbing, and drywall. I just got back from putting tile in the bathrooms :) We had a retired electrician friend who guided us but did that ourselves, otherwise we probably would have hired one. We're in the countryside so also needed a well and septic system (not part of the 80k).

It's been a tremendous amount of work but is otherwise rather doable. The internet/youtube has been very helpful (like Neo downloading how to kungfu). Another surprise is how helpful the building inspectors have been. They're usually dealing with cranky contractors who want to do the minimum, and we've been very eager for their advice on how to make things last since we'll be living there.

It's been notably more expensive (maybe 15-20%) than we expected, mainly do to the modern building practices and materials which are either required by code or just a good idea.