How to Self-Build Your next Home
In spite of the recession, “self-build” homes are still popular. Why? Because they’ve invariably provided better value for money than simply purchasing a home. Wait up a minute, what precisely is “self-build”? It’s a property you build yourself. Not necessarily only by yourself, but you place yourself in the position as architect, planner, foreman of your home and allow professional workers do the job you order them to do. “Self-build” is pretty much recession-proof due to the relatively low costs involved (compared to buying a house) – in fact, the army of “self-builders” in the UK outnumbers the amount of properties being developed by any professional developer. The intention of self-build is to produce a home to your precise specifications, not a boiler-plate design that commercial developers use.
I know what you’re thinking: “I can’t plan, and manage a house build”. The pleasant news is that self-build doesn’t have to involve you with the physical aspects of the house development (in point of fact, only around 5% of self-builders actually get involved with the actual building work). Even the design aspects are often finalised by a professional designer. Self-build, generally, is about you articulating (in laymen’s terms), what you need to the house designer – who then develops a plan dependent on your demands. This plan then becomes the blueprint the builders follow. Easy, eh? It’s not required to have any hands-on engagement in self-build. Having said all that, the Do It Yourself enthusiast can use self-build as an opportunity to save some cash by contributing toward the tasks of self-build they have experience in – it’s your call as to how much participation you want during the construction.
Since you get full control over the specifications of the development, you can choose the latest in technology, while commercial developers fall behind since they’re working to rigid template designs. You can install things like cost-saving lighting, automated climate, underfloor heating, and entertainment facilities throughout your home.
You must ensure the squad of workers you choose are 100% competent and that they work well together. Without doubt, you will need workers with lots of experience, particularly with specific types of building machinery, such as concrete cutting chainsaws, Masonry saws, power / disc cutters, floor saws, and wood saws. Skills bring safety to the project too.
This article is only an introduction to self-build, and I trust it will encourage those of you who are intimidated by the thought of planning a task of this kind of scale. It needn’t be time-intensive, and you won’t need any specific skills, but hire carefully, and you will need to carefully work out the budget of the project.
