Traditional Mortgage
Osh Roberts and girlfriend Sarah Campbell were attracted to self build because they could create a home to suit their own taste and lifestyle for less money - a perfect home for themselves and their future family. Osh admits the challenge and satisfaction gained from building a house was also highly appealing. "I'd watched Grand Designs and read all of the homebuilding magazines and it seemed to me that the people building their own homes were, for the most part, just ordinary people like me. I realised that if I put the effort in and did things properly, there was no reason why I couldn't build my own house too."
The couple designed the house themselves, with just a few tweaks from an architect. Hours and hours were spent, if not weeks and month, planning the layout - master bedroom to get the morning sunshine, living room at the back of he house to get privacy and evening sunshine, how each room would be used daily and so on.
The house is a high quality and energy efficient, prefabricated timber frame build. The panels were built in a factory in Poland and shipped across on 4 lorries.
They employed a builder who had worked with their prefab company before, to prepare the site, lay foundations and organise all utility connections, driveway etc. The kit company managed all other aspects of the house build aside from the kitchen and bathroom which they decided to source themselves. Osh says "I opted to spend my time working to earn money to pay people doing what they're good at, rather than doing the build by myself. I've never built a house before so thought it was much better to utilise people's expertise and contacts, rather than try to do it myself and possibly fail (or incur great expense!). There are so many aspects to building that only experience can overcome. I think I chose the right option for us in the end.'"
When it came to financing their self build, Osh had some inheritance money to start things off and had also sold his flat. "Finding a mortgage took much longer than anticipated but this was due to the construction method more than it being a self build. I originally chose a high street lender, but by the time we were ready to arrange a mortgage, their lending policy had changed and they would no longer issue self build mortgages. BuildStore sorted us out in the end".
Summing up the couple's self build experience, Osh describes it as "Stressful, enjoyable, educational, time-consuming, rewarding and definitely something that has given them both a huge sense of achievement" His tip to others embarking on this journey is research, research and more research. The more you know about the building trade the better, the less likely you are to go wrong.
Asked whether they would they self build again, Osh says "I'm not sure my girlfriend would but I might, if I could dedicate my whole time to it. Trying to do a full time job, whilst keeping on top of everything was difficult - I'm very lucky to have such an understanding boss!"
BuildStore helped these people create their dream homes – contact us now to find out how we can help you.
