Pulling the final trigger... to selfbuild
To do a self build you need to know yourself well, your strengths, weaknesses, talents ,resilience and be honest with yourself, because when you start there is no going back as the commitment is to big and you are very soon in deep, mentally and financially.
We were in our mid twenties when it all kicked off, young but ambitious, I had been laboring for plasters and brickies for a few years and was becoming a dab hand at both. Done an extension on the terraced house we owned but wanted a big house in the country.
We were close friends with another couple that were interested in a building project and he had a small amount of building experience as well.
So the search was on, a huge county pile we could split into two, farm with barns, an old school ? we looked at a few places and in the end found a detached cottage with lots of barns set in two acres. (£72000 how things have changed)
The rest is history, we both sold our current properties and put the money together and a deal was done.
We got the cottage habitable in a couple days as the local travelling community had been in the and removed all the pipe work and lead off the roof etc.
We were good friends so we all moved in together, after 9 months the relationship started to get tetchy so me and the wife brought a static and moved into that, by doing that it saved the friendship.
We had already decided on how the property would be split up in advance and I was well underway doing my barn conversion, some of which I had to demolish as I had too many joined together ( crime of the century now).
Our friends were converting some of the other barns but were getting low on money so they sold the cottage and used the funds from that to carry on.
After lots of ups and downs we got the whole place done , lived in it in its completed format for a year and then got divorced, and so did our friends, they got there side all completed and ending up divorced as well.
So there you go you may think it will strengthen your relationship going through all the work 7 days a week for an end goal, but it can destroy it.
Think before you leap and work out a budget and add 30%.
Buy toys straight away, diesel mixer, dumper and JCB, you need them from day one