BUYING LAND TO BUILD ON? YOU NEED A CHECKLIST

By Tim Carter

DAo you want to build a new wall inside your home? Perhaps you're trying to create a new small space for a home office or hobby room, or maybe you have a bigger appetite and are transforming a dank basement into a finished living space. But you have no idea where to start. I've been there. I've experienced your anxiety.

re you one of many who are thinking of fleeing bigger cities to get away from crime, pollution, higher taxes, never-ending traffic jams and a laundry list of other pesky problems? You’re not alone.

You might be one of the millions like my son-in-law and my own son who now can work from anywhere there’s an internet connection. The paradigm of commuting to work has shifted farther than the ground does in an 8.0 earthquake. That dream you’ve nurtured for decades of living in the countryside is within your grasp.

Every now and then it's interesting to go back in time. I clearly remember having to build my first partition wall inside a house. I was a soaking wet-behind-theears carpenter working for a small remodeling company. One of my college professors, Dr. Larsen, had asked me to install a half bathroom in his home. I had no idea what to do, so I told him that my boss could do the job.

That said, you need to proceed slowly when buying raw land or a developed vacant building lot. I maintain there are no fewer than 20, and maybe as many as 30, important things you need to consider. In the limited space I have here, I’m going to share some of the major dealbreakers that would make me walk away from what appears to be a dream lot.

Once the simple plans were drawn and the contract signed, I was sent to my professor's house to start the job. I had painted the outside of

Just a few years ago I helped my daughter make a decision about buying a vacant lot in a small subdivision on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. My daughter unknowingly enlisted a realtor who had virtually no clue about the pros and cons of vacant land. Don’t ever do this. We looked at no fewer than 15 lots. At least five hours and gallons of gasoline were wasted looking at lots that should have never been considered.

The first thing you need to do when considering a building lot is to make your own personal list of deal-breakers. In my daughter’s case, she wanted privacy and quiet. This means you don’t want your lot to be on a main road where giant trucks with diesel engines pass by every three minutes. The same goes for tourist the home three years before, and Dr. Larsen and his wife trusted me. Little did they know, I had no clue how to build the three simple walls needed for the small new bathroom. I survived with the help of a few phone calls to my boss. It was a humbling experience as I discovered you don't know what

You can't always do this in an existing home, especially if the ceilings in the room are finished with drywall or plaster. As you tilt the wall up, it binds against the ceiling. If you're challenged by a finished ceiling, you'll most likely have to install your top and bottom plates, making sure the plates are locations like Mount Desert Island that are overrun in good weather with tourists riding loud motorcycles. The wet-behind-the-ears realtor should have never even considered five of the lots she took us to. you don't know. Keep in mind this was decades before the Internet and YouTube. You have no idea what an advantage you now have when you have to educate yourself about how to repair and build things around your home. Count your blessings!

The first thing you need to do when considering a building lot is to make your own personal list of deal-breakers.

Building a new interior wall in an existing house can be much different from doing it on a new home job site. When we carpenters build a wall for a new home, we typically build it flat on the floor. Once all the studs are nailed to the bottom and top plates, we tilt the wall up and secure it so it doesn't fall over.

The size of a lot is much more important than you might think. If you’ve never built before, you may not be aware of zoning laws that create an unbuildable border of land within your lot. This no-build zone is created by the front, rear and side-yard setback lines. They differ widely from town to town and neighborhood to neighborhood. For example, a vacant urban lot may have setback distances of just a few feet. A rural lot may have a front and rear-yard setback of 60 or more feet.

In my daughter’s case, the modest home she ended up building had to be shoehorned into the leftover buildable area within her lot. The house had to be built at an angle to the road – and even then two small wetland areas were dangerously close to the house.

Wetlands you say? Imagine looking at my daughter’s lot in the dead of winter when you can’t even see them because they’re frozen and under a foot or two of snow! You’d hope all the wetlands are clearly marked on the plat map; however, you should only hope for things you can’t control like good weather or international peace. plumb in the same plane. You'll then cut each wall stud to fit snugly between the plates and toenail them in place. Drill angled pilot holes in the ends of the wall studs for the nails. Use no less than 3-inch-long 16d sinker nails to connect the wall studs to the plates.

What about something as simple as compass direction? You might not think it matters much. Are you excited about the prospect of installing solar panels on your roof? Will the largest part of your roof that you can’t see from the road face south? That’s what you want to happen if you live in the northern hemisphere.

If there is no ceiling, you can tilt the wall up so long as you orient the wall in the same direction as the floor joists above. You simply make sure the top of the wall rises up in between two parallel floor joists. Once the wall is vertical, you can then slide it into position under just the factory Trust install

Consider my house for example. I happen to thoroughly enjoy sunrises. I wanted the rear of my home to face east so I could enjoy them sitting out on my deck. The other advantage of this orientation is when I’m on the deck on a hot summer’s day, my deck is in the shade.

What about city or town services? When I moved to rural New Hampshire 13 years ago I didn’t much think about trash pickup. After all, for five decades I just rolled my cans to the curb and the refuse magically disappeared. You can pay extra for that service in my town or you can drive your own stinking and leaking plastic trash bags to the town dump yourself. It’s a good thing I can hose out my pickup truck bed each time I get back home in the summer.