Self-Build Project

In 2002 myself and my partner (now my loving husband) purchased a run-down country cottage situated in a lovely rural setting in Ireland. Views of the Wicklow mountains to the front and Arklow Bay to the rear. A beautiful sandy cove was just minutes away. The cottage stood on a 3/4 acre plot with a large paddock and a small orchard. On our first viewing we realised this property had great potential for building our own home. We put an offer in for the asking price and in no time at all the quaint little cottage was ours.

Planning Permission to convert the cottage into a dormer bungalow took much longer than we had anticipated. While waiting for P.P. we had to live in the rather primitive conditions of the cottage. My husband made it as habitable as possible without investing too much money. At the end of the day it was all going to be pulled down.
Eventually P.P. was granted and it was full steam ahead. It was the start of our dream. The old cottage was to be knocked to the ground (with the exception of one wall which had to be retained to comply with planning laws).

This was where the fun began. I am not going to go through the whole re-build brick by brick. I just want to highlight some of the difficultes from a woman's point of view.

1. Living in a caravan (or mobile home as my husband insisted on calling it).

When your husband or partner tells you it will only be for a couple of months, take this with a grain of salt. My couple of months turned into a year and a half. If you are slightly claustrophobic, like me, then caravan living is not advisable. Sharing your tiny living space with a man and a big hairy dog is not ideal. Trying to get our dog to sleep in the shed, while our new home was being built, well that was another story which I won't go into now.

2. Living on a building site.

You must get used to plant machinery, noise, muck and dust everywhere and sharing your tiny caravan with big builders for breakfast and lunch everyday. There were no sandwiches eaten on site for our builders.

3. Watching your bank account drain and drain and drain.

This from a woman's point of view is by far the most stressful thing during a self-build project.
We were very foolish not to have worked out a budget that we should have kept within. We genuinely thought the money we had was plenty for us to complete. How very wrong we were. This misconception meant that we had to get several top-ups from the bank in an effort to finish what we had started.

4. Crash in the property market.

We had decided from the outset , if we got into any kind of financial difficulties, we would put the property up for sale at whatever completion stage it was at. We had no worries about this because the market was so buoyant.
Who would ever have believed that a recession and a crash in the market lay ahead.

The outcome of our self-build project is:

We have been left with a very large mortgage.
We have a very large dormer bungalow which is still not finished. There are a few finishing touches needed.
The property is up for sale because we are under pressure from our mortgage company. I can't come to terms with the word " re-possession"

I am very proud of my husband for all the hard work he has invested in our home. I can honestly say the term "blood , sweat and tears" is very relevant to us. I am saddened, because of the economic situation in our country of Ireland, our dream has turned into a very big nightmare. The saddest thing of all is that we were so near the finishing line.

Our home is advertised for sale worldwide. If there is anyone out there who knows how we can save our home from becoming another re-possession statistic, please let me know.