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About this blog
Hello everyone.
I've decided to start a blog for purely selfish reasons. This is going to be a long long process and I want this blog to help me remember along the way why we made certain decisions. It's going to be more a diary of my thoughts leading up to decisions with hopefully some succesful outcomes at the end. I discovered first time round that I have a habit of forgetting why I have decided upon a course of action which leads to me thinking through the whole process again - hopefully this blog will allow me to read my thoughts rather than think it through again saving me a bit of time! A lot of the stuff below is already on my introduction but I've added it here to keep everything in one place.
Our plot is 1.5 acres in green belt within 400m of an SSSI. We are less than 3 miles to beautiful beaches which the dogs love. The New Forest is a 20 minute drive away. All in all it is a wonderful place to live and very different from West London where we moved from in 2015.
The plot has a chequered history and was taken into the ownership of the family we bought it from basically by sqautting. They rocked up in the 50's, planted a caravan and never left. The plot is divided into two parcels of land. One parcel came with absolute title and this is where our current house sits. The other parcel (the much larger parcel of land) was bought with possesory title and an indemnity insurance to protect us should the original deed holder turn up. Our new house will be built on this land so we will need to increase our indemnity insurance to cover the cost of the build. We can convert this title into an absolute title in 2023.
The house that we are currently living in is classified as a temporary structure and following the tightening of the mortgage rules after the 2008 crash, is no longer mortgageable. It previously lived about 5 plots up and was brought here with a tractor, trailer and a crane by the previous owners. It is lovely to know that we can stay in this house for the whole time of the build - life will be so much easier here than in a caravan. The current planning permission has a condition that this house is removed from site within 28 days of a completion certificate being issued. It's a shame that it is too wide to get down the lane - it is a perfect self-build dwelling but just that bit to large to move on.
I have read quite a few of the blogs on here and found them so helpful and informative - a little insight into another person's life. I am thinking about running my blog a little differently. It may not work at all - time will tell. As there are so many different desisions that a self-build needs and they all run in parellel, I am thinking about starting several different threads, each one belonging to an individual area of the build which I will continue to add thoughts (and hopefully comments from the collective mind added in) until that area is done. It may end up a huge confusing mess but as I've never done a blog, the only way to find out is to try it!
Welcome along to the ride.