The majority of people come here at some point for a fantasy DIY thing they have but never go through with it. But it's nice to talk about it and find out how plausible it would be if you actually follow through with it.In my case, i have a friend who's interested in the same dumb idea as i amIdea is to get a castle built basically, plain and simple. To avoid sounding or looking autistic we just say manor and dont have the idea to add in fake battlements and towers, just a set of buildings that naturally wall itself off from the outside world with a courtyard in the center, to house a few families worth of people (my family, his, and possibly some other friends)it'd have a reasonable square footage per person, and if my career and inheritence goals become fulfilled i should be able to afford as much as 700k for building the home, he might be able to afford 250k-500k depending on if he ever manages to create a successful business, and additional rent could be collected from any other roommates living with uslets say a construction crew builds the walls and foundation out of limestone or granite bricks, and professionals do the electrical, plumbing, and heating work, as well as the roof frame, could I feasibly construct the floors (going up to 4 stories tall at the highest), install the roof tiles, and rennovate the rooms using mostly lumber and plaster? I'd have help of course, but I'd be concerned that a full time job would take away the time i need to properly construct it.
forgot to mention doorways/windows would also be done by professionalsinterior would mostly be in this theme, stone walls are just plastered over and painted with nothing more, with the interior walls being made out of wood to connect electrical sockets, plumbing, and any heating systems, which would also go through the floors or maybe even wood pillars
this is my quick sketch of my idea, i know proportions off so dont give me shit for it
>>2797515It's certainly possible. My grandfather and father did the same thing with our family farm - rebuilt the main house on the old walls while removing the old clay / straw floors, replaced the framing and repaired the roof, then put two more stories o the former stable and baking house and connected the buildings.They messed up in a few places, such as using lumber that was too thin and is now swinging and creaking with every step or using a too small a siphon so that one bathroom stinks up unless you regularly pour some water in there, but all in all, the house is useable, and I'm slowly fixing the problems now that I'm the one living there.
>>2797534that sounds quite nicebut i am worried that i'll get assraped by permitting unless i find some niche county nobody lives in, which wouldnt work out since i'd have to do it near where me and the friend's i'd encourage to move in with arei dont know how terrible dealing with regulations are and i have the strong feeling that any inspector is just going to look for a way to find something wrong with one small thing and try to shut it downof course i'd hire someone to make sure that doesnt happen, but if i work with those people then they'll likely refuse to let me do much of anything myself in order to make me spend as much money as possible on the construction company rather than the house itself
>>2797515>unrealisticI just want to build a house semi-innawoods and be left alone.
>>2797547practice by building dugouts or small shacks on your land and maintaining them, try to make one as nice as possiblecamp out in them to get used to it, and if you like it, build a house
>>2797538If you can get planning permission for row-housing you are basically there, the row just happens to bend into a circle.You are probably gonna want to figure out how a COOP or HOA thing is gonna work since you will share a common courtyard space, roof maintenance. All that shit still has to work smoothly if one of your pals gets divorced and has to sell their share.
>>2797515Ruby ridge, Waco, many such cases
>>2797538Read the laws first, then. Here in germany, for example, you can dodge most of the permit requirements if you know how. Won't bore you with the details, but it's really simple stuff like declaring a house a shed for the first seven years, or feeding your grass cuttings to your children's pets to legally be considered a farmer.And if like my family, you start from an old house thata. isn't part of residential zone developmentb. isn't under special protection because some historical person lived there or something similaryou can basically do whatever you want as long as the roof height and the length along your plot's borders remain the same, and legal requirements for firefighting and sewage are complied with.Can't tell you what your local laws are like, of course, but starting from an existing farm would probably be easiest, legally speaking. Maintain the main building, place some "sheds" around it, then rebuild those sheds into living spaces.
>>2797515i think if you aren't rich, the only way to do it would to be work construction jobs and get away with stealing building materials for a decade or 2.
>>2797839>All that shit still has to work smoothly if one of your pals gets divorced and has to sell their sharethis is the biggest issue in plans with living, but we're all friends that go to the same orthodox church and have connections through godparentswe see eachother almost like familyand since we're orthodox the likelyhood of divorce seems very low, not simply because theres rules against it but also because it teaches people to be as good of a person as you can be to your spousenever seen an unhappy marriage in my church, and those who get married usually have several childrenalso only two of my friends are actually married, one being the guy who's interested in this thing like i amfor the row housing, i dont know if that could fit the legal definition or regulations, because the living spaces would likely be sharedand if by HOA you mean home owners association or something, the structure will be built on wooded or farm land>>2797855i dont think farmers are legally treated different from normal people, the only difference is that they arent subjected to the laws of a town or city, but still are to state and county lawsand while i'd love to build off an existing structure, the majority of farmhouses in america are massive mcmansions nobody can afford or shitty mobile homes, which i dont really want attached to a structure like a castleand since a home on a property makes any land retardedly more expensive even if they're really dogshit and old its completely unviable to buy land with a house on itfor example heres this farmhouse near me, the house itself would only be worth like 250k on its own but because whatever boomer asshole owns this thinks his property is worth much more than that he's selling it for 2.5 millionhttps://www.landsearch.com/properties/dorrance-ks-67634/3305551its also important to note that the average price per acre is only $3000, so the land should really only be worth $35,000 at best
>>2797862some quotes i've heard for housebuilding online come at like $100 per square footits not from what i've asked any construction company or architect, but if i can keep it at or below that value its attainableit should especially help that they'd essentially only be doing the exterior wallsalso i said i'd have them do the roof framing, but truthfully i dont know if i trust construction companies to even do that well anymoremy biggest fear is that they'll just want to charge millions for simply stacking some fucking bricks instead of making a shitty cardboard house™
looking at this sort of roof design it seems like i could viably construct it myself, especially given the fact that you're apparently supposed to use green wood for roof framingi could probably construct the bulk of the frame on ground level then pully it up to attach it to the walls to avoid the danger of constructing it ontop of the building
yes you can make the shell for like 500 thousandthat is if you can and have the land already, you can also get land super cheap if you go ruralbut 2 waysyou build it by hand using cement mixer bricks and rebar2 easier would be to hire a company that does icfor they pour all the walls into a solid piece of concrete, like with all the window holes already designed, this could prob do it for 500k, other than that why the fuck would yo uwant somthing that big today. unless you have a village or a cultalso its so much cheaper to buy a castle aready madeyou do know that you can buy castles for like 50 100k they just suck and need repairing and are in like rural scotland or italy
https://www.messynessychic.com/2015/02/05/big-empty-italian-castles-for-sale/
>>2798605the way i've thought it out is 500k (that i'd contribute) for the building of the structure, 200k to buy the land, then my friend contributing what he can for building the structure>2 easier would be to hire a company that does icfthats what i plan, with a job that can afford a 500k house i wont have time to lay solid limestone bricks for months (thats a six figure job, it'd likely be as much as 50 hours a week at the worst times)>unless you have a village or a cultnot too far off the markin a previous post i said i go to an orthodox church and some of my close friends from there are connected as a god familywe call ourselves a brotherhood but its just a fancy name for a church youth group for college age peoplenice thing about building a castle would be having a chapel for daily prayers, and atleast one of the people who would move in would be likely to be a minor clergy member (theres a deacon, sub deacon, one who's planning to go to seminary, and one other who might be planning to do it in the future)>you do know that you can buy castles for like 50 100k i do, and they are pretty attractive lookingfrance is absolutely filled with themthing is that while they're cheap for a historic castle, good chances are that i might be able to keep construction prices lower per square footalso i dont want to learn french and move out to another country
>>2798621not with the concrete thing*what i want to do personally is to have it constructed is like pic relits the same way castle and cathedral walls were constructed back then, only instead of filling the gaps between the bricks with rubble and mortar, you use steel reinforced concrete (cheaper, more resistant to shock from earthquakes, and likely more erosion resistant due to not being made of lime)
>>2798621if you have people its not hard to get a piece of property or even lease a a mansion in a nice city10 people paying 400 dollars is easily a 4k for a mansion payment or large houseyou can easily get buy abandoned properties with space and buildings old mines shit like thatin fact i live near a town thats being sold for 1.5 millionthats 50k a month if you have a church
>>2798628>is easily a 4k for a mansion payment or large housei have other options already available if i want to just live in a large modern home with my friendsfor example i was offered to move in as a roommate for $200/month rent in a house that would easily be worth 500k on the outskirts of my city, and it has about an acre of land with a massive garage i could use as a workshop and one of my friend has a small chicken farm that brings him plenty of incomeso far 3 of my friends live therei was gonna take up the offer but my parents are stubborn and dont want me to move out until i need to for an out of state university in a couple of years (i'm 20)so i wouldn't be able to build a castle for several years from now anyways, i dont know how badly inflation will affect things and i can only hope that salaries for my field i'm studying go up enough by that point or the housing market crashes again
>>2797522Lmao it’s literally the castle from Kingdom Come Deliverance
>>2798662kind of looks like it but missing some parts of iti was actually influenced by this game from slovakiamy initial drawing was just the building at the back with the tower and a small building connected to it as a single family homethen my friend said "well fuck it i want a castle too" so i expanded it with the idea of accommodating more families, and it turned into that sketchi'm ditching that draw up for now though and am coming up with a different one thats probably more reasonable in size, since i went a bit overboard with the idea of having several families in one structure
>>2798668something of a size like pic rel is more like what i'd do
>>2797515YOU ARE NOT GOING TO DO IT.unless you are insanely rich you ARE NOT BUILDING A CASTLE.
>>2798767It's just gonna take forever or have to be made with a lot of penny pinching.Image is a set of concrete blocks on auction near me, current bid is 40 usd. Buy a bunch of discount shit or second hand pieces.Also make sure you make a thread once you've bough land OP
>>2798767like i said its a fantasy, and unrealistic, of course its not gonna happenit could happen if where i see myself in a decade was where i am right now, but right now i'm a poor college student studying to get to that pointand i'm not gonna get my castle because by the time i get to that point the world will have changed too much to allow for me to do a project like this, unless it changes in a positive way which just wont happen>>2798774concrete blocks are cringe and gay, i'd rather have a mcmansion than a castle made out of fake brickstheres a limestone quarry near me and the quotes i've heard for prices dont seem unreasonable for nowbut like i said that'll probably change and i'll loose my chance
>>2797515>But it's nice to talk about it and find out how plausible it would be if you actually follow through with it.No, it isn't and indulging stupidity one knows is stupid is a waste of thought and time better spend doing or studying seriously both of which are much more fun wanting to improve their lives.
>>2798789not trueknowing what you can and cant do sets you up for understanding what you can and cant do in daily life, and once you get over unrealistic goals you'll have a better idea of how high you can set goals in the future
>>2797515i didnt even really read your post because i know it's just weird autistic shit but you would probably need 10 million dollars to build a castle. do you have any idea how expensive stone masonry is? your fucking foundation alone would probably cost a million. i'm not joking. god you weekend warrior faggots are so insufferable. in 2024 a million dollars gets you a newly constructed 3 bedroom 2 bath wood framed house built in a flyover state.
>>2798824>do you have any idea how expensive stone masonry is?yes i do, and its not as bad is i previously thought it'd bematerials are something of the order of 10-30$ per square foot of full bed stone (3-5 inches or more)then you double that number to account for the interior and exterior layer and add in the square footage of the missing cornersand you either leave it double thick or you fill in the gaps with stone rubble and mortar or with reinforced concretewhat would get me here is labor costs, not material costs
>>2799028and how many sq ft do you think a mason is going to lay a day? with full thickness it's probably around 15 sq ft but that number changes dramatically if they have to dress every stone because you bought rubble for material.let's assume there is a conservative estimate of 20,000 sq ft of stone to lay on your 'castle', that's 1333 days of labor just to do walls at $400 a day for an experienced mason. that's conservatively over half a million dollars just for labor of the walls and that's not including time spent doing lintels, arches and other details which consume a hell of a lot of time, or the business overhead, or scaffolding, etc. stonework alone would easily be a million dollars and all you've got is 4 exterior walls.
>>2799030>20,000 sq ft of stonei feel like your calculations are considerably off, 20k square feet is no tiny amount like you're acting it islets say for example you have a 20x50 (1000 square foot) room thats 8 feet tallthe square footage of the interior walls would be approximately 1100kdouble that and add some to account for the corners and you're at somewhere around 2600k-3000k square feet of walli know for certain that i myself wouldn't be able to afford more than 4000 a square feet (of floor area) share of the building, which is only 4 times the figure i mentioned, anyone else who's interested in living in it would have to pitch in to make it larger, such as my friend
OP, you reminded me of this weirdo memory.One time I bought a vehicle off a guy in Lubbock, and the directions he gave sounded ridiculous. But yeah, it's some kind of castle, down a dirt road.If I recall correctly, he said his daughter wanted to live in a castle, so that's the kind of place he had built. She'd grown up/moved out, he still lived there.I went into his office to get the title, and he had a carburetor in his hand, with gas still in it. Set it down on a stack of porno magazines (this was <10 years ago, not the 1970s or something), spilled gas everywhere.Such a strange experience.6417 166th St, Lubbock, TX
>>2799046jej this is the stupidest looking shit
>>2797551>practice by building dugouts or small shacks on your land>on your land>your landYou already lost me.
>>2799036well do you want a 1000 square foot room with 8 foot tall walls or do you want a castle? you said castle not a stone shack
I would love to buy an old farm like pic rel and rebuil it historically correct>its so old it does not even have electricity or running water
>>2799423a single building of a castle can be pretty large at just 4000 square feet is my point, and since i'd be roofing it myself i'd be getting a fair amount more space in a rennovated atticalso i realize i accidentally kept putting k after numbers that didnt need themwith my new plans i'm working on, it would be a set of towerslets say arbitrarily that the part of the castle i could construct was a single tower out of 4 or 5 overall, and that each floor in this tower was 20x50 feetthat means i'd be able to have 4 floors, and an additional floor built into the atticheres a picture to visualize a 20x50 space
>>2799487thats a nice dream anonis this in europe?
>>2797515>>2797522In Europe this is nothing special, just an ordinary courtyard.
When i bought my little wooden shitshack house a few years ago basically the day it closed a seaside wooden victorian manor (turrets, wrap around porch, you name it) in the same neighborhood went on the market for the same price, and i was despondent with fomo and buyers remorseNow a few years in im so fucking glad i didnt buy that house I was blind to the realities of owning a home, even though everyone warns you its difficult to understand until you do itIts a gorgeous house, dont get me wrong, but it always looks like its getting major work done like theres always scaffold and work trucks, meanwhile im crying when i have to go on the roof and put a shingle back onI also learned it was been lifted up off its foundation and moved away from the sea twice in the last 50 years because the land it sits on is eroding, and now its as clise to the road as it can beUnless i come into insane 'never have to think about money again' money, i will always live in a simple wooden rectangle
>>2799542this is the number one reason castle fantasies dont play out well often, atleast if you ever want a castle that's actually like the originals, because at the end of the day all the original castles are structurally the same as the tens of thousands of abandoned old stone farmhouses on the european countryside, just bigger and harder to repairthat said theres still something nice about the idea of raising a house through your own work and money, plastering and painting the walls, and renovating thingsbut its one thing to do that as a hobby, and another thing to have to do it in order to have a livable home
>>2797522
>>2800429there was a specific reason for not connecting those walls, and the gate being in an odd place was just aesthetic choice i liked, and the reason for steep roofs is for attic space that can be used as additional large rooms without the cost of building more stone wallsheres a newer drawing that focuses on being tall rather than wide, and ignore the shitty outer wallin the back right corner there'd be a short two story tower for connecting the buildings there
>>2800452here, a better imagethe walkway to the gate would depend on whatever the land is likelike if i can get it on a slope i'd have an elevated walkway with retaining walls going around the side to level ground, if theres a natural dip i'd use a bridge, and if its just flat then it'd be a normal walkway
>>2800457also i could possibly put the gate on the second level to give the appearance that the structure is taller than it is, and put the structure itself in a depression or next to an upward slope, with the walkway being a sort of bridge over the depressionmaking it even better is that there'd be a ground floor level door, so you'd be able to walk around the structure and see the bridge from under it
>>2800460ah here, i've illustrated what i mean and it makes it overall look much nicerof course it probably looks weird with the courtyard being as low as it is, but if the 'gate' is just the main entrance to the building, it worksan elevated walkway in the courtyard could also workof course, i would put off building the bridge until i get done with building the main structures and rennovations, since its not really necessary
>>280046720 million dollars
>>2800467looks great anon buteven if you were to build it somewhere where it's somewhat cheap to build anything (like southeast europe) it would still cost millions of dollars and take decades of hard workto reduce the costs you would need your own quarry preferably nearby, some heavy machinery, your own forest for lumber etc.if a project is massive more setbacks are to be expectedmaybe consider building something like picrel and your children and grandchildren can evolve it into original ideabuilding it with bricks would be several times easier, faster, cheaper you can even learn to manufacture handmade bricks to make it even cheaperthey are durable and can last for centuries
>>2800667
I'd love to convert an underground military base to a living area with off grid power and water. I just love being underground and can only really get a good sleep if the door is barricaded. I think I could finally fully relax in a building designed to withstand the end of the world.
>>2800667>>2800672you're right about most of the things you say, and i agree with the idea of just starting with a few buildings that generations in the future would expand off of, but overall the biggest setback to castle building is the defensive walls and towers that have 1-2 meter thick layers of bricks, while something i'd build would be a foot at most, maybe thicker at the base or just thinner toward the topi do like the look of clay bricks, but where i live limestone is pretty plentiful, i dont know that i'd be able to quarry it myself but it means i can get it relatively cheaply without dealing with shipping costsalso for things like archways, windows, etc. I'd use cast stone or clay brick instead of carved stone, which would drastically reduce the costanother possibility to reduce costs is making the upper floors out of timber rather than stone like in german buildings, and it would reduce the complexity of the scaffolding
people tend to underestimate time and effort needed to build a castle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajqort8ldXA
>>2800734>Without electricity nor modern tools like mechanical cranes, the team relies on cart horses for all on-site transport of materials andAs long as you're comparing apples to apples...
>>2800734most of the labor there comes from quarrying the stone, not buildingin modern circumstances, a machine does all that, and stone bricks are far, far cheaper than they ever have been historicallythey're also effectively building an entire village, not just a castleeven if the surrounding buildings are quickly put together its no easy task to construct all of them
