How to build a house with $700

John Chisholm
Mar 30
6 min read

We’ve recently been celebrating the 30 families in our new Shikoti zone as they finish building new houses. With that in mind, we’ve decided to show you exactly what the process entails.

In this post, we will share the story of how a $700 family house is constructed over the course of a few weeks. We hope you’ll find it as fascinating as we do.

These are semi-permanent mud homes, which are traditionally built after marriage and last through retirement. The reason most families we start working with live in dilapidated structures is that their houses are very old, often built by a late grandparent. Because of the extreme challenges all UKR families faced before joining Family Care, traditional construction of a new semi-permanent home wasn’t possible for most them. When it suddenly becomes possible, other big dreams soon take shape as well.

Our goal is for every family to live in a home that is secure, sufficient, and leak-free. Safety and comfort at home are essential for physical and mental health, and facilitate people’s ability to focus on bigger dreams like education or business. A good home brings struggling families dignity in their community, and a stronger platform from which they can aspire to greater heights.

Planning and agreeing on Cost-sharing

Before a house is renovated or built anew, United Kenya Rising staff work with families to assess their needs and resources. Then, they make a plan together.

Will a home be renovated, expanded, or fully rebuilt? How much space is needed? What can the family contribute?

Can the old home be converted into something else, like a kitchen or cowshed? Does the old home need to be demolished first, to make space for a new one? Does it contain materials that can be recycled and sold or repurposed?

Every family’s situation is different.

Whatever the outcome of these questions, the next step of planning is to agree on specifics in terms of design, materials the family will provide, and materials that UKR will provide.

*With an old house like this, the strength of structural timbers will determine if the best solution is expansion and re-roofing, or demolition.*

*An old house that’s only one room, with a worn-out grass thatch roof. This house would be demolished fully, or spruced up so it can be converted to become a kitchen shed.*

Sourcing materials

After plans are made and cost-sharing agreed, families are tasked with finding their own contribution.

Typically, the families in our program provide their own labor and all locally-available materials like timbers, sand, mud, and gravel. These would cost several hundred dollars if purchased on the market. UKR then facilitates the costs of buying hardware supplies. The big-ticket items are usually iron sheets (up to $350), various types of nails (nearly $100), and doors & windows ($70).

After most families in a zone have their materials ready for use, UKR purchases the items it agreed to offer and families come to collect them.

There is always great joy on this day, as dreams of new homes move so much closer to reality.

Above, a father points to the trees he cut and stones he has hammered into gravel. These are some of the locally-available materials his family has provided for their new home.

*A happy mother collects two windows and a door from the local village shop where they were made. Wooden windows are more affordable and secure than glass; they’re open all day and closed all night.*

When most or all families in a zone are ready, UKR makes a wholesale purchase of factory-produced materials like iron roofing sheets, nails, cement. They’re delivered to a central location such as a church or chief’s office, and then collected by UKR families.

Demolition and Recycling

When a home cannot be repurposed, it must come down. In some cases, rusted iron sheets or termite-infested wood can not be salvaged at all. But in most cases, a lot of an old home can be recycled.

The decision whether to demolish an old home comes down to culture, space, and materials.

Many old homes take up valuable space or contain valuable materials. If building new makes sense, old houses may be demolished and their recoverable materials re-used.

In some cases, a family’s land is so small that the old house must come down to make space for the new one. It can take a few weeks to build the new home, so families who demolish their old houses first must stay with friends or relatives during the process of building a new one.

An old house is demolished to make space for the new one.

Half a house, up close. Manual deconstruction allows for recovery of still-strong structural timber, doors, and not-so-rusted nails that can be pounded straight. These are re-used.

A goat structure (above) and a cowshed (below) built largely from the materials recovered through the careful demolition of an old house.

Framing & roofing

With all materials ready, construction begins (and moves very quickly). From the ground up, a house can be framed and roofed in a week.

Save for the rare cases where a family member is also a carpenter, a local contractor from the area is hired for a labor fee of $50 to $100. This builder leads the project, organizing the framing and roofing of the house.

Any able adults in the family will be called upon to help as they can, from hauling supplies to holding up timbers while they’re fastened. But it’s specialized work, and requires an expert who knows very well how to measure twice before cutting.

Tree trunks are used for structure, with machine-sawed lumber used for the roof, and smaller tree branches called fitos nailed horizontally to support a mud wall. Galvanized steel roofing sheets are nailed on the frame, and the house is ready for packing.

A proud couple in front of their framed-and-roofed, half-built new home. Below, a gallery of the framing and roofing process, showing houses as they take shape from the ground up.

Building walls with packed mud

After a house is framed and roofed, it’s ready to become a home through the construction of walls and a floor.

This process is extremely labour-intensive, but the traditional methods are widely known. People must fetch water, dig soil, and mix huge batches of mud to then pack tightly into adobe-like walls. Floors are graded, packed, and treated with a different mud mixture.

At this stage, families in our program are usually assisted by fellow members of their UKR “cluster group.” When neighborhood clusters work to support each other in home construction, each person benefits in exchange for time and energy helping others.

The old tradition of neighbors helping neighbors - for free - is long gone, because folks need to work harder these days to get by. Without mutual support from their cluster groups, many UKR families would not be able to afford this crucial step in the homebuilding process. And going it alone would take many weeks, not one week, which is time no breadwinner can spare.

UKR cluster groups working together to mix mud and pack walls. Each group rotates construction from family to family, working together in the Kenyan national spirit of “harambee”.

Each UKR cluster group rotates construction from family to family, working together in the Kenyan national spirit of “harambee”.

A family’s joy, as they stand in front of rapidly-progressing construction, and imagine living in their new house soon.

The final touch: plastering walls

When a house is built, people sometimes move in while the mud walls are still settling and drying. Then, after a few weeks, the walls are plastered over to protect from weathering by rain.

The process of plastering a house, known locally as smearing, involves a slurry mixture of cow dung and mud. It is a group effort, just like packing mud to build walls. And, it should be done every few years to maintain the life of a house. Interior walls don’t need as much maintenance, and are smeared partly for aesthetics.

Families and their UKR cluster members often team up again to make it happen. The special mixture is smeared over all walls, and repeated a few days later after drying.