Thedreamer

@colin7777We put CUPA heavies 3 slates on the roof. Just looked at the invoice £1.05 + VAT per slate. 40 x 25 cm and the slate itself is quite thick. A few close up photos on this blog entry. Where are you based?

Good progress. Have you considered keeping a blog here?

My self build mortgage transfers to a residential product upon completion, don't know if that is standard practise.

Welcome @Adam E Some photos would be great. Hopefully the weather is kind for the block work.

Not a big fan of strictly, but just googled it, yes see what you mean! ?

As we are building on a croft with an area of woodlands, the stove was a consideration at the initial design stage and we wanted it to be at the very heart of the house. As well as being the focal point of the living room, it was also considered from a practical point of view as to how the heat would be distributed throughout the house, as often I have heard that a stove can overheat well insulated rooms, resulting in a waste of money and just really something to look at. The work leading up to the stove installation began right back at the foundation stage, with excavation, concrete foundation, blockwork, back filled and compacted, insulated and then a concrete slab added on top. Dense concrete blockwork was put up during the summer with the aim of holding some of the heat when the stove is lit. The stove itself is a multi fuel Charnwood C4, built in England out of iron. We choose one with a log stand underneath to provide a bit more height as this is one of their smaller models. We decided that a lime render would suit the fireplace and this will lighten as it dries out. The mantle piece has some history attached to it. It was originally part of a massive beam in the local school, which was knocked down in the early 90’s. My wife’s uncle salvaged the beam and it was stored on our local township road next to our sheep pens. It was used as a spot to sit down when being out on the croft. A couple of years ago we cut the beam into manageable chunks and took it inside our wood shelter to dry out before it was cut and planed this week. The wood is at least 150 years old, was outside for around 30 years, but now it’s been tided up, it feels stronger than the timber we used to construct the house with. I love old timber! The hearth is also a highland product, not as local as the mantel piece but 40mm Caithness slab, very heavy (but I was at work when it went in). My wife carried out the measurements and this was spot on when fitted. Outside we have used anchor ties to hold the flue in place, some houses seem to fit flues without these but with our Hebridean weather this is a must. I went with the black soil pipe vent earlier on this year so it would match the flue when this went in. Sometimes flues can be ridiculously long and a bit of an eye sore as they need to be above the ridge, but having the stove close to the centre has allow this to be quite modest. Also, respect to our stove fitter, this seems to be a trade that covers not only the stove installation but masonry, carpentry and roof work. The stove has now been commissioned and certification provided. There is a bit of work to tidy up with plasterboard above the mantle piece and we have decided now that the flue is up, that boxing in with plasterboard is probably best to protect the kids and also to protect the flue from them! Next up, the kitchen and flooring is due to arrive next week. Thanks for reading.

@ykhan16 Nope, just tried to learn as much as possible before starting and then gained experience during the build. £165 seems cheap for a course, even if it just gives you a general overview of a number of areas. I did business management at uni and my day job is working as a chartered accountant so prehaps some skills have brushed off onto the build. @Mally, thanks I tried to spend as much as I could on the fabric of the house. We started outline planning process when we were 22, we saved and saved and then about 4-5 years ago we put in the services and made it into a plot. Until we dug our foundations it wasn't really a risk as we could have still sold the plot if our plans dramatically changed. Once we were at foundation stage I had a good idea of how long I wanted the build to go on for and finance was in place. It kind of been a phased build with lot of thinking time. I've never owned a property before so we will feel extra proud that our first home is our home. One of the benefits of a kit home, is that it all goes up in a week or so, that's good if you want to get wind and watertight as soon as possible. I planned for the house to go up during July/August and had glorious weather so the time in cutting and constructing wasn't as important if we were building in winter. Stick building allowed us to build bespoke house and it was much cheaper. I spend many an evening deconstructing the structural engineer plans to order every length of timber, nail etc my thinking being that I could save money before we started and this also gave me some satisfaction that I have been more involved in the building of the house.

The local agents here. https://www.iosea.co.uk/ https://www.remax-skye.net/ http://www.skyepropertycentre.uk/ These were not for me but these are quite popular here and provide a build that requires limited time on project managing. https://www.ruralhouse.co.uk/ My wife is from Skye and we moved here after we finished uni in 2008 and yes it's a family croft going back generations. We have around 40 ewes and an area of woodland. Our build is partly financed by a croft house grant. Skye is popular with tourists and the extra costs we faced were principally from putting the house plot on that part of the croft (partly because we wanted privacy, views, shelter and knowing nobody could develop around us). The site cost a nominal £100 but we had to spend about £20,000 to make it a serviced plot (210 meter access, a longish electricity and water connection and to level it off as it was on a slope). That's good on the books and the shows. There is so much to learn. On the project manager front, we have surveyor that does four or five inspections during the build and he produces certificates principally to report to our lender. Day to day project management is done by me, whilst working full time! I live about 200 meters away and go to the house in the morning, speak with contractors, first thing, usually spend my lunch hour researching, ordering or speaking with suppliers, I then do a further check in the evening on the day's progress. Sometime it can be busy and often a few weeks can go by with little activity.

We considered this for our lean to roof and I remember somebody mentioned a special blade. Top job and your be pleased with it going on at this time of year.

Looks good. Did you need a particular type of saw for cutting it?

I'm not the most practical and have done jobs like painting, labouring and fairly easy jobs. I realised at the start where I could add most value to the project was in the financing, shopping around, seizing opportunities and risk management.

We remove 100 trees or so to create an access. Chainsaw/axe work was done by my father law and me and I then burnt the foliage pretty much non stop for over two or three days. The stumps were pulled out with a hook attachment on our ground worker's excavator. Even large stumps were easily removed this way. The firewood was stored to season as of yesterday I now have a commissioned stove to burn it in. We have replaced the cut spruce with some oak trees which are developing well.

Welcome, @Mally Amazon - Homebuilders bible, read back to back, gives you a grounding in all areas. Check out the blogs here, all different. Pitfalls of a plot more suited to the Highlands, Local development plans, does the plot fall with in? Services, you need a plot in mind before you can even answer that. Electricity is the worse, don't assume any thing until you have quote from SSE Access roads can be expensive - if you obtain a large enough plot you might have access to 'rotten rock'. Avoid plots that have peaty ground or lots of bedrock. If you are buying a croft, this has loads of considerations in it's own right. Our build is a 1.5 timber frame on our croft on Skye.

I have found lenders to be incorrectly inflexible when trying to get finance. In Scotland you have very few choices, as example despite owning a serviced plot and working full time as a chartered accountant I was initially offered a laughable mortgage of £45k. As an example of how inflexible they can be, I have not been able to factor in money that I would save from not paying rent & minimal utilities etc into my cashflow. I also had to argue with my lender for about nine months about their fictional imaginary spending (for holidays, nights out and cinema etc) and stressed interest rates. Our night outs, have consisted of sweeping up, doing what work we can, research and obtaining best value! Those £5,790 in fees send a shiver down my spine, my lender was £995 arrangement fee, £300 for valuation inspection and £50 for each subsequent inspection. That would be £4,000 blown away in the wind for us! As mentioned above it was a battle to get the finance we wanted, but the prize between the Buildstore route and selected lender was £4k.

My approach was to plan to put in cheap finishes (kitchen, bathroom, flooring) at the start and argue this with my lender. I calculated the contingency on each stage and when I passed this, I allocated the resources to upgrading the next stage. Foundation ok (which is usually the big part of your contingency), allocate that bit to W&W stage (better slates, triple glazing, better larch, better insulation) and so on. You also mentioned 12 months, personally as a young self builder I would hate that. Everybody circumstances are different but for us, even before we stuck a shovel in the ground, we converted my wife's parents loft in to a flat and once this was done, I was no longer ever stressed about finance as I was now saving a lot of money each month and it was just a matter of time. We wiped out our savings to do this but we had to take a step back and learn lessons to achieve a bigger goal. You should also not get to caught in the m2, you could build 150m home for £1000 m2 and it could be worth less. If it's your forever home, value is however less important. For our build I'm not interested in the m2 or value, but more what is my all in property cost each month (mortgage, utilities/council tax and insurance etc). I currently calculate this to be around £550 a month which will mean I can always service the mortgage debt in what ever circumstances and always have a warm home. Also importantly, cash is king. Don't just consider I have build cost of X with %Y contingency and this has been funded by x,y,z are you going to be able to keep cash flowing during the build. Prime example being do your calculations for materials purchased by yourself included VAT? If you plan to buy a lot of materials you probably will have a lower final build cost but you might be looking at a creeping £15,000 VAT balance to finance till the HMRC repay you.

On a £200k budget I would ditch the architect. I used a house designer and structural engineer to draw up plans for a bespoke home and this has been much more cost effective than using a off peg kit home. Our build budget for the land and house is around £220k. You can check out my blog here.

Inheritance tax is difficult because you need to understand the whole of an individual's estate and the history of it. It's tricky to answer question on a forum, speak to a Chartered Accountant/tax adviser as it could be very straight forward to resolve. I started where you are now at 22 and about 70% done on our self build, eleven years later (and I qualified as a Chartered Accountant during that time!)

Hi @ykhan16 from reviewing your list you are heading in the right direction, the key is to become a sponge and soak up as much knowledge as possible. There are few here in your age bracket, I'm 33 and about 70% complete on our build on the Isle of Skye. Do you live or work close to the plot? Also look around at other lenders, other self build mortgage providers exist.

Good result.

@scottishjohn The house across the road, built around 1900's had a tin roof and this was replaced to slate more recently.

This table has come up before on BH/ https://www.wte-ltd.co.uk/choose_wastewater_treatment_plant.html

Is that classed as for 6?

I'm interested in this as well, as my tricel saga is continuing. Would a variable be how well you treat your tank? Not just the servicing but whether you look after the bacteria?

I'll have look at that one too. Thanks

Conder is looking like it might be the preferred option, where did you get yours from?