Hi From South Somerset

[MPx]

Just joined - have already found lots to interest me.   We are about to start building our final home to see us out.  If you don't want a flat or small house with tiny rooms when you get old, the UK housing market has nothing for you so clearly self build is the (only) way.  It will be our first as well as last, but we're not entirely new to the game.  I've done major refurbs of houses in my spare time for all of my adult life.  The last one had a false start in 2012 when we found more issues than we'd planned for and were in a caravan on site from Feb 2013 to May 2014.  The unexpected issues story repeated throughout the refurb and we realised too late we would have been significantly better off bulldozing the original and starting again.  We even had to dig up and replace the slab when otherwise half way through!  Anyway, although others did "the build" to a water tight shell, and others did the plastering, laid the slabs and installed the GSHP...  I did the rest.  Heating, plumbing, electrics, tiling, bathrooms, kitchen, hung the doors, etc etc.  When we moved back in in 2014 we had 4 rooms and I didn't finish the rest until 2016.  Worked on the landscaping thereafter and still had little projects I wanted to do right up until we left a month ago.  So I'm incredibly slow....but I do it how I like it. 

 

Hoping to follow a similar plan this time with others doing a timber frame Passivehaus for us and then to clad it, etc. before I can take over for fit out and services.  We'll see.  Not expecting it to be even remotely as easy as that sounds - energy levels approaching 70 are nowhere near the as good as they were in my 50s.  We've already been on it for over 2 years just getting through the planning stages - how hopelessly depressing that process is!  Anyway, hoping to learn much from the experience and expertise here...

[Susie]

Welcome to the forum. 
There are quite a few of us building our home for later years.

you sound like you have a lot of building experience to pass on.