It all began with a hole in the ground...

I am Neil, and this is the story of my self build - warts and all.

First, some background. My wife and 2 girls and I live in Lancashire, in a 5 bed detached modern build house on a smallish estate. For a few years, we have looked around for somewhere a bit bigger, but in the same village. We had no luck for ages - everything was either too expensive, or too small, or too near a busy main road (and frequently all 3).

Then in December 2016, a house with a large garden came on the market only 4 streets away. Perfect location, and it needed a load of work doing to it, so it was going cheap. We went to have a look.

House was perfect for what we needed. Ok, so it needed extending - it was 100m2 of floor and we were thinking of making it more like 250m2... but the garden was easily big enough to make that viable, and we had the budget to do it. Better yet, there was a plot of land for sale (with outline planning permission) which used to be the side garden for the house. We put in offers for both of them at the asking prices...

So did several dozen other people. It went to sealed bids, so we offered 17k over asking for the house and 15k over asking for the plot.

We got the plot but NOT the house. Hmmm, what to do?

Here's the plot and the side door of the house - it doesn't look much, but both sides go back another 25m behind those trees... total of approx 600m2, and a snip at £100k plus fees for the plot...