Money

Well, this is our floor or sub-floor I should say. We are using 3/4" T&G plywood. Once again the little local lumber yard has beat the socks off of Lowe's etc. The difference was $6.26 a sheet! And its just as good quality as you'd get anywhere. The #2 pine we used for joists (we got up here too) was some of the prettiest lumber I've seen. I've done a little figuring on cost to date also. Part of the purpose of this blog is to show how much you can save by doing some stuff yourself, if you're able, and to using salvaged materials etc. Our foundation and complete floor system has cost us approx. $4.32/ sq.ft. I was real suprised we got away this cheap. Now, we got our rebar for free and this does not include the cost of renting a backhoe to dig the footings and piers and of course, no labor costs. This figure is concrete, form material (which can be used later in the house so you get 2 uses) and framing lumber. Use of the form hardware was also free. Lots of misc. steel can be gotten from construction sites in some cases because of change orders or mistakes. It's usually not enough that they care about scraping it because scrap steel doesn't pay anything so its thrown away or somebody just takes it to get rid of it. You just got to ask around. I have no fear of asking for about anything because you never know. Maybe it doesn't hurt to be blond and female but I've gotten some really good treasures. And they're only going to say "no" if you can't have it.
I'm glad we finished the foundation when we did because concrete prices are soaring now and probably won't be coming down anytime soon. We'll be putting this plywood down this weekend and then next weekend we should be framing walls!!! YES!