Building Your Own Home Part XXV. 26 weeks – 2,260 square feet three bedroom home with awesome valley views.

The only job remaining to finish up our vacation home in the mountains of Costa Rica is to install the doors and drawers in the kitchen cabinets which should be done by the end of the week and then my girlfriend will paint them…

My girlfriend and I spent our first full weekend up there on July 4th and we did NOT want to return to the hustle and bustle of San Jose.

The weather is gorgeous during the morning as we sit on the terrace watching the clouds wafting over the valley below. At this time of the year it normally rains for a few hours in the afternoon and then it’s cool and crisp in the evening.

Even though the measurements of our fireplace ‘somehow’ changed dramatically during construction, the fireplace works perfectly. After the fire dies down and before we climb into bed, we sit for a few minutes on the terrace and marvel at how the stars light up the sky.

And, with the clean mountain air and deafeningly silent nights, we both sleep better than we have slept anywhere else, ever.

Our colourful flowers were visited by 10-15 different humming birds during our first day so we are thrilled that the hanging baskets on the terrace are doing their job and plan on putting up a lot more and planting a lot more… Damned hard trying to get photographs of the little buggers though.

So this week will end up an expensive week as I pay the final payment to the architect, a small payment to the window guy – since we forgot about the two windows in the pila – as well as the balance to the construction company (after they finish the kitchen doors) so we can now add everything up to get the final tab in building this vacation home in Costa Rica.

What Exactly Have We Built?

• The main home has two bedrooms, one large bathroom and the 25M2 (270 square foot) office upstairs (which could also be a lovely bedroom) measures a total of 167M2 or 1,797 square feet.
• The bodega (storage room), pila (outside washing area) and the cochera (garage area) measures 43M2 or 462.68
• So we have a total construction footprint of 210M2 which is 2,260 square feet situated on…
• 5,000M2 of very private land.

What Are The Total Construction Costs Per Square Foot:?

Construction began during the first week of January 2009 and was finished in early July 2009. The total cost in building this home in the country has been US$82,385.06 or less than US$36.46 per square foot or or, less than US$392.50 per square foot. Plus the cost of the 5,000 square meters of land for a grand total of less than US$150,000

What Additional Expenses Do We Have?

We do have to buy more grass – the green kind – but even with delivery we’re not looking at any more than US$500. The stove and refrigerator cost a total of US$1,456.00 and you would pay around US$8,000 if you wanted to include all of the curtains, beds, carpets, the furniture for the terrace and the house so, let’s just round that off to a cool US$10,000.

Can You Build Your Own Vacation Home For This Kind Of A Price?

Of course you can build a similar styled home for this kind of a price if you could find the land available at the $8M2 price we paid but since the land is now $15M2 – and there are certainly no view lots like this available – that would now be impossible on this mountain! And, I would certainly not recommend that you build a home anywhere in Costa Rica from a distance.

We visited the construction site every single week – sometimes twice per week – and still things are not 100% as we wanted them but we consider ourselves very fortunate that things went as well as they did…

Written by Scott Oliver, author of How To Buy Costa Rica Real Estate Without Losing Your Camisa and Costa Rica’s Guide To Making Money Offshore.

If you have a serious interest in buying this vacation home and would like to speak to Tony Warren, the highly recommended and trustworthy Costa Rica Realtor representing properties in the Los Santos areay, please help us to help you by contacting us using the simple form below:

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.