Budgets and building schedules

By the time the rain started again we had managed to clear up the field next to the house, which had been starting to look like the set of ‘Scrapheap Challenge’.

The normal detritus of a building site is baffling. Where do all those bits of plastic, rebar, insulation boards, broken concrete beams and pallets come from, to say nothing of the multiplying piles of subsoil? The builders are looking forward to everything freezing out there!

In the meantime I’ve banned any non-tracked vehicles from the field, where the ruts formed by tyres created impassable ponds and stopped surface water running away. The mud is worse than Glastonbury gloop.

I don’t doubt there’ll be further delays if the weather continues to be so capricious. Bad weather inevitably brings extra but essential cost: we realised we needed to concrete-in the manholes; dig a new land drain; put a raised frame around the aerobic digester to keep the water out; and so on.

However, we still hope to do the whole build for around £500,000. That’s including fees, landscaping, built-in units, planning – pretty much everything!

Perhaps that’s optimistic for a house of 340m2, but it’s what we can afford. I laugh at the self build TV shows where folk have gone £100,000 over budget – nice if you can!

We don’t feel we’ve significantly compromised the design so far, although I can see challenges ahead with the flooring and lighting budgets, and I’m sure there will be other elements we have to cut.

We’d much rather get the key features we really want, like the stoves for example, and if necessary add some things later. I would love to have a natural swimming pond in the back garden, but that’s looking like an obvious candidate to cut, as is new furniture for our home office.

Delays are expensive for us; we’re in the odd position of having most of our belongings in storage, although I think we’ll end up selling much of the furniture we’ve been paying to keep.

When we moved into the current cottage, we didn’t know exactly what style of new home we would be building – so we didn’t know what we needed to keep and what we should get rid of.

Looking on the bright side, it has taught us there’s not much we can’t do without. There’s also the cost of running the current cottage, which is full of machines that break down – and it seems to be regularly raided by an unseen heating oil thief.

Including the site, the total budget makes some sense financially; were we to have to sell the house on completion (perish the thought!) I’d like to think we would make a modest profit.

The build cost per m2 looks very sensible, which is partly due to being careful, good pragmatic design and a basic finish in the basement. It hasn’t been down to us sourcing everything on eBay; we’ve used local suppliers as much as we can, and we’ve found they can be very reasonable.

With interest rates so low, paying in advance (with insurance against the supplier going bust) has also worked well; we’ve negotiated good prices and avoided a few nasty little price rises over the summer.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think it has also been a huge boon to have the architects administer the main build contract for us. The fact they’re local has also meant they’ve been able to recommend additional suppliers, which gives us peace of mind.

Anyway, I’m keen to try to reduce the risk of things going wrong by pushing forward. The next big moment will be the roof going on, which – given the weather – has assumed an even bigger significance than it would have usually.

I’ve been looking forward to it with barely concealed excitement for other reasons too. For now, let’s just say that it will be one of the defining and unusual characteristics of the house.