Tight Fit...

...and I' not referring to the British pop group of the 80's who had a smash hit with their cover version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" back in 1982 (click here to watch the video).   

Er back to reality - we encountered are first small challenge of the build so far.  The private drive to our new house is er, well ... a tight fit!  To be precise it's less than twelve inches wider than the muck-away truck that arrived on Thursday morning so after a remarkable attempt by the driver to avoid taking out over thirty foot of my neighbours wall we have decided not to take the risk of carting away another truck load.  Ever-resourceful and with some careful negotiation Andy has managed to convince the horse stables opposite my current house to allow us to use their field as a dumping ground so that the muck-away truck can be loaded from there instead.  

It does mean we now need a bigger dumper truck to cart the muck around the corner and pile it in the field so the job of removing the muck has now been delayed whilst the new dumper arrives and the stable owner arrives with the keys to the gate.  The knock on is that we've effectively excavated ourselves into a corner (see photo) until Monday morning :(


With the builder due to arrive on site first thing Monday morning - a frantic few phone calls later and it's all sorted and rescheduled - everyone knows what's happening and where they need to be, when!  I'm sure this is nothing compared to some of the challenges we will have to face so it's not worth getting upset about.

Muck, muck and away!!!

What a difference a day at work makes - NOT!  At times rapid progress is made but then on others not much happens at all.  Today was a case in point.  Even though we're only at the end of Day 3 - I must remember this project is nothing like building computer systems for the banks!  Looking at the pile of muck now completely blocking the site entrance (I'm sure Andy knows what he's doing) tomorrow will be a busy day with monster trucks blocking the drive and upsetting my neighbours - although they have been warned.  There is now a big hole where my lawn used to be and this will only get bigger throughout tomorrow which means more muck, more trucks and more upset.

It's now really starting to look and feel like we're building a house - something as a family we've dreamt and talked endlessly about every day for the past go knows how many weeks, months and years - I can't believe we're finally bloody doing it - OMFG!

Actually that reminds me I need to take out building warranty now BEFORE we start setting out ready for excavating the foundation trenches.

Brian

Ground works for me!

Groundworks is the term used to describe all the stuff builders do beneath ground level.  It's what my house will be built on so needs to be done properly.  It's a right mixed bag involving excavation, drainage, services, concreting and blockwork - a dirty job even when it's not lashing it down - but someone's got to do it.  With the advent of small machinery it's now possible to get into any site but apart from the narrow driveway the site entrance presented no problem for Andy McNair (he said make sure you get my mobile number in the photo - nuff said).

Before we can start the main groundwork activity the first job involved moving the existing private sewer that runs across the site right where the foundations should be...not only that but we also need to move the electric and water services that also run in the same trench - not a big issue - just more of a convenience right now because it means the guys can't use machinery near the services so have to excavate by hand.

First step involved preparing the new trench into which the replacement section of sewer will be placed in order to take the diversion (along with the other services that needed to be retained) around the foundations of the new house.

Until you start digging though you never know what you are going to find - I'm not talking Time Team artifacts - I'm talking pipes nobody knew existed nor which of your neighbours they serve.  Disconnect at your peril!  We found two main water pipes and through trial and error and door-to-door knocking finally solved the puzzle.  Time and money wasted but that's life.

Anyway with problem solved it was then a quick call to the Building Control Officer to ask him to inspect the excavation and proposed diversion for the sewer.  Fortunately we were very lucky and the officers were already out on a job in my area so within 20 minutes of calling hey-presto we had two officers pouring over the works.  I needn't have worried - within a short space of time they had passed the job so Andy could continue with the remaining work to divert the sewer. 

This was my first experience of the Building Control Officers and I must say they were both extremely friendly, very informative and very decisive. 

Here's hoping the rest of the scheduled inspections throughout the build go this smoothly!

So that's the end of Day 2 - the rest of the week should see the new sewer section coupled up to the existing sewer, trench filled in (bit of a hazzard right now) and the rest of the site stripped clean ready for setting out of the foundations.  We're really fortunate that our site is flat so clearance should be done by the end of the week.  There's a fair bit of top soil to get rid of - the term used is "muck away" and hopefully the good weather will hold out until we've cleared everything and got hardcore down to form a stable base on which the rest of the machinery can run on.  The unusual lack of rain is brilliant because this prevents the entire site from becoming a mud bath.

Tradesmans Entrance

Well after weeks of planning and preparation work has finally got under way today to create the entrance to the site so that the groundwork contractor (Andy McNair) can start the task of site clearance - getting rid of the vegetative layer - that's soil to you and I and levelling the ground ready for setting out - that's marking where the house will sit on the plot. I suppose I can now say my building plot has formally become a building site and the spacious garden is no more!

The site entrance will eventually become my driveway but for now provides access for all of the various contractors involved in completing the project.  Now that several trees and a brick wall have all been raised to the ground - thanks Kez and Paddy you made mincemeat of that job - I'm amazed how much space we will have for parking.  It's hard to visualise on drawings but it's a relief that we will easily have enough room to park four cars and still be able to "enter and leave the property in a forward gear" - planning speak to being able to turn your car around on your own land!

Kez doing what he does best...and Paddy doing what he does best!

Chainsaw frenzy! I now also have a pile of firewood for my wood burning stove - that's saved me at least £75 this winter - bargain - thanks Kez.  Search Amazon.com for wood burning stove

Anyway next job is to move the private sewer that runs across my land unfortunately directly underneath where the new house is to be built.  This will address one of the three conditions imposed on my planning approval notice that I needed to resolve before building could commence.  Still could have been worse...it could have been a main sewer!

It's all in the Design

With a building plot in my possession the next step was to produce a house design that would compliment and fit proportionally in the surrounding area and obtain the all important full plannin permission from the Local Planning Department.  As you will have seen from previous posts the local area is made up of mixed housing stock - bungalows, post-war semi-detached and detached right upto to newly built specifications so we had a good range of design options to choose from.

Despite what you may think you don't need to appoint an architect at this stage providing you have a keen eye for technical drawing and are familiar with the local UDP and Planning Regulations which govern compliance regulations concerning proximity to nearby buildings (more importantly windows) etc BUT IT HELPS AVOID WASTED TIME AND COSTLY MISTAKES if you do.  Again feeling out of my depth I appointed an architect to work with me on interpreting my design brief and specifically with budget and plot constraints in mind reign my enthusiasm back at this early stage in the design approval process.

I used a retired architect who had spent many years designing for the local council offices so whilst his regulatory knowledge was a little dated he was none-the-less more than able to refresh his knowledge.  For me though it was about trusting someone to guide me through the process.  I will post details of his works later for prosperity and so he can see his works on the t'intenet.

Whilst I managed to get his professional services for what accounted to pocket money, with hindsight this decision by his own admission cost me TIME!  He is a traditional old-school archtiect whose time was served well before computers - basically all drawings were pencil and paper so corrections were painful - there's a saying you can' teach an old dog new tricks - no more so was this the case here!

With any professional services you employ it always helps to have a clear idea of what you want BEFORE you engage them otherwise you will spend valuable time and money documenting your requirements so my advice is take some time out and get down to the library - there are plenty of books detailing hundreds of different house designs.  I referenced Narrow-Lot Home Designs which contained hundreds of house designs for houses between 17ft and 50ft wide - these would fit nicely within the building plot I had.  Look at as many different designs as you possibly can and take as long as you need at this stage - your time is relatively free in comparision to an architects who if I'm being honest will probably take the same approach.

I must have photocopied approximately 50 different designs that appealed to the whole family and met our criteria for what we wanted from the new house - namely four bedrooms, large kitchen-diner, large living room, study, garage, utility room with access to the garage (so we didn't get wet and believe me this is important when it's pissing down with rain and you need to get into the garage).  We also wanted a large rear garden with plenty of space for sunbathing and a front drive with enough room to park upto four cars - I don't expect my children to flee the nest that quickly in light of the current housing market.

We then started narrowing the list based on the "look and feel".  Our main criteria here was simply "is the curb appeal sufficient that we would buy this house ourselves if it came up for sale?".  My wife has a good eye for this sort of thing and has built up good understanding from search Right Move on what sells quickly and what doesn't.  Resale potential in any design as far as I am concerned is the number one critical success factor - which normal family could afford (let alone would want to buy) a Grand Designs foley?  We ended up with ten design layouts but none of them were particularly nice to look at so we included a number of other designs in the architects brief that we particularly liked the look of - features such as mullioned windows, natural stone facing, quoins (the cut stone up the outside corners of the building), shape and materials of roof.  We also specified a number of Eco options for consideration including solar panels, rainwater harvesting, underfloor heating etc.  Size was not a critical factor - after all the bigger the house, the more money it takes to heat and the more time it takes to keep clean.

Some of the draft designs can be seen below...

...after many months spent backwards and forwards to the architect we finalised on the design below...

We had the option of submitting an outline or full planning application.  Outline is much cheaper and involves less detailed drawings but is only worthwhile if you are unsure how far you can push the Planning Departments guidelines and want to test your design ideas out first.  It is also useful for those who don't intend going through with the build themselves (e.g. if you have a plot of land that you are thinking of selling off as a going concern) - after all land without planning permission is, well er, a field! 

We had no intention of letting someone else profiteer from all our hard work to date let alone the risk we took when buying the semi without planning approval to build - so we went straight for full planning application which meant full public consultation and a drawn out process - let alone the suspense of whether we would get everything approved.  I will cover more on the planning application process in my next post.

Thanks for bearing with me whilst I frantically post to the blog to give you a potted history of progress to date.  Once we get upto current day then the posts will get shorter and focus on week by week progress of the build itself.

Stay with me until next post...

Lost the plot?

I first started thinking about building my own home way back in 2005 after I attended an innovative and stimulating seminar on Unleashing Potential run by HBOS, my employer at the time.  The seminar was the brain child of Heather Jackson, Retail IT Director and was developed in collaboration with an external training provider.  Prior to attending this seminar I constantly challenged myself with "There must be more to life than...". 

Well I can tell you now the experience was incredibly insightful and powerful and it quiet simply changed my outlook on life.  For those HBOSers lucky enough to be part of this event I can tell you now that I still carry the mental Red Card, avoid drains like the plague, have a solid relationship with Auntie Vera, I never by-stand and love wasps.  I can still remember all of the Impressionist painters vividly and have colourful images of them drinking and discussing the virtues of life.  Magic.

For those of you left wondering what on earth I'm banging on about I won't bore you with the detail of the seminar - that's for another posting - but one of the key activities involved me writing positive descriptions about my ideal life as if I was living in that future tense.  The things I wrote that day remain private to me and my family BUT I will share the three key life-goals that have provided me with the focus, ambition and drive to make a difference in my life - after all if I didn't get up off my backside nobody else was going to help me realise my potential!

I was fortunate enough to already be working towards my first life goal which involved paying off my mortgage by the time I was thirty - all life goals had to be SMART - Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound - and I have always tried to stretch myself!  I'm incredibly proud to be able to sit here and tell you that I achieved this goal before my thirtieth birthday - and no I didn't get lucky with inheritance - it was down to hard work, personal sacrifice and commitment to win.

My second life-goal was to build my own house by the time I was forty and whilst I may not achieve the time-bound element on this one, I know I won't be far out - but hey there's no accounting for a global recession so I do have a reasonable excuse.  What is important to me though is I am now well and truly travelling along the road on that journey.

My third life-goal is to buy a retirement home abroad by the time I am fifty.  My fourth and most selfish and rewarding to me personally is to put something back into society before I retire at sixty but best to leave that for another blog ;¬)  And so the list goes on but the rest are far too personal to share here.

Talk about "binding myself to the mast"...anyway back to the main purpose of me posting...

I am deliberately not going to go into the financing needed to do a self build because there are too many custom finance packages available from high street banks through to specialist self-build companies.  Besides which I'm out of my depth and not experienced on this field - seek your own financial advice.

For the record I have funded my project by offsetting against the equity in my current home - nuff said.  One piece of advice I will give you - and it's common sense but you'd be amazed how many people don't follow it - work out how much you can borrow to finance your self-build first!  This is a critical constraint and will inform your design choices and decision making throughout your entire project starting with the initiation or ideas stage.

After all what's the point in creating your dream home design, in your dream location crammed pack with all those Eco-friendly technologies only to find yourself hugely disappointed, disillusioned and dismayed when you come to cost the project and find it's £500K over budget - KISS (see earlier post on my motto)...especially on your first house.

Once you know your budget constraint you can then start looking for a plot of land.  This will be the next constraint you will have to contend with.  Very few self-builders I spoke to at the recent Harrogate Home & Renovation show had struck lucky and picked up the perfect plot of land at a reasonable price.  Most plots tend to be brown-field or infill sites - those odd shaped strips of land stuck between or in someones garden - some sites are acquired by purchasing a property with the intent on levelling the existing dwelling in order to accommodate the new build house.  The only developers I know of that have bought a plot with wide-sweeping rural views across a lake, surrounded by trees and open farm land are the very eccentric self-builders I have come to despise and envy on C4 Grand Designs.

Having two children of school age, plot location was as key consideration for me.  After all we are going to be living in the house for several years until my youngest leaves further education at least.  Equally I didn't want to have to drive for hours just to visit the site as building works progressed so it had to be near my current home.  I had a budget limit of £150K to complete the build element of the project.  This forced my first decision - I couldn't afford to purchase a dedicated plot of land to develop because as a rough guide at the time (before the banking crisis) most plots were sold as going concerns with outline or full planning permission for £100K+ with the asking price incorporating a %age of the valuation of the newly build house!  This would have pushed my total build costs in excess of £250K+ all in.

I therefore had to find an existing property that we could live in but that had the potential for demolition or further development within the curtilage of the existing site.  I had used Google Earth to search the local area looking for potential brownfield or infill sites within the vicinity.  I had marked all of the candidate areas with a view to approaching the rightful owners (Land Registry is a good source to find this out).   At the same time my wife searched Right Move and all of the local estate agents for candidate properties that met our criteria of a) large garden b) low initial investment if demolition was only development opportunity c) easy access to garden from a main road if retaining existing property d) mixed-stock housing area to increase our design options - after all I'm too young to be considering a bungalow at this stage so didn't want to be forced into this design choice from the get-go.

We struck proverbial gold and came across a four bedroom semi-detached property just up the road from where I was living at the time.  It was slightly over budget at £250K but had one of the largest gardens I'd seen, completely disproportionate to the size of the property and completely out of context.  But it meant we could stick within our build budget. 

Speaking to the locals the original home owner had built a row of semi-detached houses on the old orchard, moved into this one and then continued to sell off slices of the rear garden until it's present day layout.  Access to the garden was by an existing drive at the rear but there were several other options available should we so choose.  The plot size was definitely large enough to accommodate a new build but this forced my next key decision - unfortunately it was a long and narrow plot so the eventual design would be constrained by these dimensions which meant we had to restrict our design choices somewhat when we eventually sat down with the architect - more on this in a later post.

See aerial photo below showing the plot of land (infill)...

...and a close-up view showing the development opportunity that enabled me to retain the existing property and move one step closer to fulfilling my second life-goal...

TIP : Google Earth is a fantastic free utility to help you find and check out plots of land.  It's also proved extremely valuable in the house purchasing process because you can use it to check out the area, find out whether the garden receives sun and at what time of day, where the nearest schools, church, library, shops and travel links are.  You can see at a glance the standard of the local area too.

With budget now in place and a development plot in the bag we then moved to the exciting stage of designing our very own home - well that's what we thought at the time, the reality was somewhat different as you will find out in my next post on "It's all in the Design".

What's in a design

I am an IT professional.  I am also pretty handy when it comes to DIY and I'm confident enough in my own ability to tackle most home projects.  I understand the building process sufficient well enough not to be intimidated by jargon and tradesmen.  However I am not an architect or a designer or a builder and never aspire to be.  Fortunately I am smart enough to know when I'm out of my depth and when it came to "designing" my own home I knew I would drown!

If you're remotely interested in property development then you've probably heard of the Channel 4 program Grand Designs hosted by Kevin McCloud in which English eccentrics design whimsical or extravagant structures built, in my opinion, to serve nothing except as a conversation piece.

My interpretation of a Grand Design derives from the Northern phrase "reet grand" meaning that something looks good, proper, in-keeping - something that you would describe as normal, regular, ordinary, customary, conventional and more importantly in-keeping with the surrounding area.  This perfectly sums up the "Not-So Grand Design" approach I have chosen for my first (but hopefully not last) foray into house building.  Life is complicated enough without our instinct to over-complicate so my motto throughout will be KISS - keep it simple stupid.

Over the coming weeks and months I will take you through the entire project life cycle from initiation (idea), planning (preparation), execution (build), wrap-up (move-in) and review (lessons learned).  I will do my utmost to keep this blog current but my primary focus will be the project itself so do keep dropping in - I may well post several weeks worth of content in one mega-blogging session so please add my blog to your favourites or better still why not become a follow instead!

Until next time...Brian