We’ve taken some inspiration from building the dream and put together some costs….I always love when they do that on the show and especially the estimated value! Also the houses nearly always come in at much higher value at the end…here’s hoping that happens with our house
The Land
The land consists of a cottage right at the back of the property..there isn’t a back garden. This allows for the new house to be built in front of the old, which will then be knocked down and will be our back garden. Because of this we are luckily able to live on site, saving us on rent, the cottage wasn’t in great condition but we have done a low cost decoration to make it comfortable, painting, flooring and cleaning. Despite only being 2 bedrooms we have managed to get all our possessions in so no storage costs either. Trawling Facebook and ebay we managed to get a dishwasher (essential) fridge freezer and washing machine for £30 each which will keep us going until we get new in the finished house.
The Build
We had some equity from the sale of our last house, which we renovated, but the majority of the finance is from a self build loan. We arranged this through the Buildstore who we found to be very helpful through the application process.
They initially took all our details and searched through all the available self build mortgages and made a recommendation with Furness Building society, this is interest only through the build but we can change to repayment once building is completed. We opted for the stage release of funds, where they release funds after each of the 4 stages are complete, which should work for us and our builder.
As part of the process they also did a build cost breakdown to check feasibility, as our builder is Andy’s uncle he is doing it for a very good price for us, Buildstore estimated a cost around £40k higher for the build therefore this took a while to resolve, eventually it was accepted but we had to prove we could afford the market price to build if required.
The cost to build quoted was assuming we don’t do anything ourselves however as amateur DIYers we are going to do as much as we can on evenings and weekends, such as fitting insulation, decorating, landscaping etc… which could save us almost £20k!
We have already made a start on clearing the site ourselves including the demolition of an old brick outbuilding and shed, so far this has only cost us £200 for a skip as we luckily managed to find someone local who wanted the bricks and took them away for free.
As Andy works for a building products manufacturer we are able to buy all the plastics at a very good price, including Underfloor heating, which we are very excited about 🤗
As we think more about internal finishings the budget may go up however we will finish one room at a time and see how far the money goes and see if credit cards are needed.
Hopefully we don’t go ‘building the dream’ style over budget and have to sell the Aston Martin 😂 watch this space!!
Selfbuilddreamers
Caz and Andy x
Self_Build_Dreamers 