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Trent and Hailey Palmer built their ideal three-bedroom home from a $185,000 kit.

When Trent and Hailey Palmer decided to build their dream home from a kit, they wanted to downsize so that they would only be using the space that they needed, but with an indoor-outdoor style layout that would still feel spacious. "This one is just shy of 2,400 square feet, but it's a very open, usable floor plan, so it's almost like a smaller house that feels big," says Trent in a YouTube tour of the finished house.

"The difference between a prefab and a kit is just how much is prefabricated," he explains. "Ours just had pre-framed walls, but basically all of the finishes for the house came with the kit, so there was no stumbling over, forgetting things, or changing our minds, or having any unforeseen expenses." Those finishes include all of the frontages and surfaces for the kitchen, and the tiles in the bathroom.

"Aside from that, we ended up picking out all of the lighting, something that was super important to me," adds Hailey. "We were really excited, it took us about a year before we saw what we ended up picking, but we think we did really good."

One item which was not included in the kit was their main fireplace, which Trent describes as a "big ordeal" to acquire and install. "We were going to go with a propane one, but we decided propane is expensive, the price is always going up, we have tons of dead trees out here, and it's all perfectly fine, burnable wood... it's free. Free heat for the house is the way we wanted to go."

The kit itself cost just $185,000. However, Trent and Hailey did face considerable infrastructure costs as they were building out on 70+ acres, which required them to build wells and install power lines. Their total spend on the home ended up being around $550,000.

"Neither of us really had any true construction experience, but we built this thing and we ended up getting it done in four and a half months," says Trent. "There's things we would have changed, some stuff we would have done differently, but that said, with where we're at and how it turned out, we're both happy."