If you are presently working 12 hours a day, six days a week and you can’t hope to change that any time soon, you are probably going to find that trying to plan and complete one of these projects to be very difficult, and probably almost impossible. - If you ARE working those sorts of hours, and you don’t have someone to help you who HAS got the free time, but you still think that you are going to be capable of giving the project all the attention it needs, I am afraid you are kidding yourself! – My advice, if those are your circumstances would be: Don’t even think about it!

These projects can be very stressful, time consuming and complicated. They have been known to split families up, cause bankruptcies, nervous breakdowns and the like. - If you Are working more than about 30 hours a week, – unless you go round with a large “S” on your chest, your underpants outside your trousers and are capable of moving at about the speed of sound, you’ll just have to accept that to take on one of these projects, you may have to make some changes in the way you presently “do things”!

On the other hand, - if you can be fairly confident that you can organise your life to free up a good proportion of your time (at least 20 or so hours per week, during the working day) over a period of up to 12 months for a Self Build project, possibly around 9 months for a substantial renovation or conversion project, or possibly 3 - 6 months for a smaller renovation or refurbishment project, you are possibly on the “right track” to being able to start planning your dream home!

However, if you simply can’t commit yourself to those numbers of hours per week, during the working day, and over those periods, there is still hope!

If you can free up at least a reasonable “part” of that time, and you know someone who is capable and available to be “on site” for most, or all of the time during the working day, or is at least reasonably capable and available to call to the site a couple of times a day, - who you can also trust to make phone calls, keep records, pass on messages, possibly solve problems, and report back to you, - then you may possibly still be in a position where you can sensibly consider taking on a project without having to change your own lifestyle too much.

If you decide to go down the route of using someone else you know to help out, e.g. a friend, or a family member: Be warned that these projects can “test saints”! – Your trust in the person you use, and your faith in their abilities need to both be of a high order! – Because “if” and “when” things start to go wrong, and you start to lose a bit of money, progress or momentum, you will be looking for someone to blame. – That’s where the problems can start. – If the problems that you will almost inevitably come across were to blow up to a point where your “site assistant” walks “off site”, then not only may you be left in a complete mess, but you might also find that you lose a good friend in the process! ( as I write this, I wonder how many people that read this will have already had that experience, and be saying to themselves “Well he’s right enough there”!)

If you can’t change your present routine to encompass all the time consuming “constituent parts” which come together to form one of these projects,  and if you don’t know people who can help you out, then you may need to plan your project for the longer term: For a time when you WILL have the “free time” available.

Having said all that: - These projects can take up to a couple of years to plan and get started, so even if you can’t dedicate enough time to it now to make it all come together, there is no reason to not start the planning process. as long as you realise that you will need to have the time available and to be committed to the project once it starts properly.

 

The biggest mistake you could make on one of these projects is to think that you can “do it” simply because you have built a garden wall, watched some programmes on TV, or helped your friends out with some of the heavy work on their extension. Even if you work in the building trade and actually have a trade yourself, you can still be found wanting.

Think about it. How many different sections are there to a Self Build Project? – How many different areas do you need to have some sort of knowledge of, to be able to deal with the problems that can appear “out of the blue” at any time? – I am guessing that there are probably getting on for around 1000!

Obviously there are very few people who will have knowledge in all the areas. The trick is to find out “What you need to know” and “What you don’t really need to know” for YOUR particular project.- Most people who fail at these sorts of projects do so because they don’t know enough about what they were doing in all of the relevant areas of the project, to be able to make the right decisions at the right time in order to “pull it off” successfully. 

In other words projects often fail because the people who are carrying them out didn’t take the necessary time, or make enough effort to find out how the “whole things works”, or to equip themselves, before they started work, with the abilities and the knowledge that they needed to be able to complete the project successfully.

A bit of planning, a bit of investigation, a bit of learning, and a bit of preparation can help your project to succeed. It can help you to make the right decisions at the right time, - it could save you many thousands of pounds on the cost of the project, and it could also save you a lot of wasted time and heartache.

Well firstly it’s actually better if you find out “What you don’t need to know”! – That may sound a bit of a strange thing to say, but it’s actually very true and very important.

If you can “shortlist” the areas where you will need to gain knowledge, then you can forget about all the other areas, and not waste your time on them.

For example, if you make an early decision for build in Timber Frame, you can then forget about having to learn about anything to do with the blockwork inner skin of your cavity wall. - If decide at the outset that you are going to use Ground source heating, you can forget about all the other types of heating, and instead, concentrate on learning about that one subject.

If you take no notice of what I have just said, and instead, just “blunder” your way into the project, - thinking that you can do it because you’ve watched loads of relevant TV shows, or because you’ve spent time helping or watching someone else doing it, you will stand a very good chance of making a mess of the whole thing.

Not knowing the “basics” about what you are doing could cause you to build things with the wrong materials, in the wrong order, or in the wrong place. - You may order “far too much” and waste your money, or too little and incur costs of waiting time whilst you order more. You may have to “knock things down” and start them again, and then pay extra to remove the mess the demolition has created! You may miss something important early on which has major consequences further down the line (for example, if you forget to install the DPC (damp proof course) at ground floor level when you build the external wall, you may think “Oh, - it’s only a bit of plastic, it’s nothing structural, it’ll be ok”, when in fact that one omission could almost make the project fail! – If you miss the dpc, and the “Building” or “Warranty” Inspector finds out, he won’t pass the house as being “satisfactorily complete” and you probably won’t get all of the funds you need from your lender to be able to pay for everything. - Also, officially, you won’t be able to live in the house until the DPC has been installed, possibly at a cost of many thousands of pounds, and the final certificate obtained).

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of places where, by not knowing what you are doing, you can “slip up” on one of these projects, and many small omissions or mistakes early on can come back to haunt you “big time” later in the project.

It may only take a small number of these “errors” to occur before your budget starts to become strained, and you risk not being able to complete the project within budget, or in the “worst case scenario”, not being able to complete the project at all! – Am I making my point?

There are actually quite a lot of thing you can do on one of these projects, without having high skill levels. However it is important these days that you don’t bite off more than you can chew.

In the “old days” pretty much anyone could have a go at anything. - That’s all changed. – Lenders have caught TOO MANY colds lending to people who “messed up”

You will find that your lenders are now a bit more stringent in their requirements for lending than they used to be. - They want to know that the project stands a very good chance of succeeding before they will consider lending money to you.

They want to know that if you budget “£0” for a particular item on the project, on the basis that “We are doing that ourselves”, that you are not going to reduce the final value of the property by producing a poor quality job that will make the property as a whole, less sellable.

If you have never laid bricks, or even if you’ve “built a garden wall a few years ago”. - DON’T even think about “having a go” at building the property yourself. – YOU WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY FAIL – spectacularly! - The project could take literally YEARS to complete, be of poor quality, and be worth far less than it should be when it’s all finished (in the worst cases, where something like the brickwork is a complete mess, it maybe even be pretty much worthless (– Would you buy a house that looks like the dog built it?).

If you fancy physically building the walls of your new home yourself, get yourself booked onto a brickwork course which will give you the skill level a decent bricklayer would need to be allowed to build a new house. That could take at least a year, so is probably not a good idea for most people. - Even after completing that training, you will probably be fairly slow, and make the odd mistake. – If you are trying to build the house on your own, you will also need to keep stopping and starting when you need to mix mortar, refuel the mixer, stack bricks, unload deliveries, tend to problems around the site etc, organise deliveries etc.

This general rule applies to most of the major activities on a Self Build project:

If you follow this example as a “general rule”, and set your goals to a reasonable and achievable level, you will stand far more chance of succeeding with your project.

 

Most of us will have some abilities which we can bring to the project. Most of us can handle a paintbrush, we can clean, bang nails in, dig holes, rake, fetch, carry, make tea.

BUT, more importantly, we can: Organise, choose materials, make phone calls, meet Planners and Sub Contractors, plan a programme, chase suppliers, measure and order concrete, drainage and bricks, get kitchens and bathrooms designed, decide where we want plugs, lights, and radiators. We can decide which way we want the doors to hang, what sort of finishes we want, choose colour schemes, plan the furniture in each room, buy the furniture etc. The list goes on and on. – This list is the stuff we CAN normally do, and we don’t have to train to do it!

Normally people undertaking one of these projects will have jobs and a family, and will be trying to fit the project around those important things.

If you try to take on too much you will be more likely to fail.  On the other hand, if, as I mentioned earlier, you work out “What you know” and “What you need to know” before you start, and use that knowledge as a basis to plan your strategy for the whole project, you will be far more likely to succeed.

You can design the house yourself. – See the section on “House design”. – If you can “knock up” the initial sketches, you will be more likely to get what you want from the final design, AND you will save time and money by your designer not having to take time to prepare various “choices” at the for you to consider at the start of the project.

If you can find a Groundworker who will let you “labour” for him, you may get him to reduce his price accordingly (if you do this, make sure yours or his insurance policy covers you, and remember that if you are an amateur labouring on a building site can be dangerous).

There may be simple tasks that you can do like fetching materials, tidying up, “fencing off” areas to protect trees and shrubs etc, which would not put you or anyone else in any danger, but again, even here, be careful what you do: – If you pull your back and are “out of it” for 6 months think about what effect that would have on the project.

You may find a bricklayer who will let you help him by doing his “labouring” (check insurance again).

You could possibly do the exterior decoration if it is needed. - Painting the fascia boards, barge boards etc. – But yet again, make sure you are insured to cover anything that goes wrong (e.g. falling off the scaffold), and make sure the quality of your work is “up to scratch”. – Tatty exterior painting will be noticeable when the scaffold comes down, and then it’s hard to get back to safely. – If you are not going to be able to give the job a “reasonably professional” finish, - DON’T DO IT!

You can carry or barrow the deliveries from where they are “dropped on delivery to where they are needed (watch that back!).

You can keep the site tidy. – This is a bigger job than you may think!

You can keep an eye on the safety of the site. Making sure first that each sub contractor is aware of their obligations with regards to safety.

You can make tea and get the butties!! – This may sound a bit menial, but believe it or not, is actually a worthwhile task (especially if you are paying anyone an “hourly rate” for their work)! – Many sub contractors will get to site at around 8.00am, but by the time they have had a “cuppa” in the winter to “get them going”, they will often start work about 8.15am. They will then stop work about 9.50am for their 10.00am “15 minute” break. – Nip off to the shop for a sandwich or breakfast, and get back well after 10.30. This process is repeated about 12.50 with them getting back after 1.30, and they are then often to be found packing up at 4.15 to go at 4.30. Out of the 8 hours working day, you can sometimes have lost around 1.5 hours per man, per day! - Which on a gang of “brickies” can add up to 9 hours per shift! – At around £15 - £20 per hour, if you are paying for them by the hour, this can lose you £180 per shift! – If you make the tea and get the butties, you can reduce this loss considerably and save literally thousands of pounds over the duration of the contract! (Note: Another way of cutting down on this sort of loss is to make sure that you only take on subcontractors “On the measure” – where they get only paid for what they do – see later pages in this guide ).

You can often look after the landscaping of the garden yourselves, even the fencing. This can be a major project, and can take up most of your free time by itself. Once the scaffold is down and the drainage is finished, you may be able to start work on the landscaping, even if you need to keep out of the way of work going on close to the building itself.

You may be able to lay the laminate flooring. Some of the “click” systems today are very simple to lay. If you have large open areas of floor to cover, this could be a good project for you to do. Once you learn the basic methods of laying whichever product you use, you should, with a bit of practice, be able to get a very satisfactory result from your work, and save a lot of money (although you should try to get the best finished job you can, a floor finish which is “not perfect” won’t have the same negative effect on the value of the finished job as “face brickwork” that is not up to scratch.

Tiling:  If you have the confidence, you may well decide to have ago at this. However, if you are a beginner at tiling, make sure you get all the right adhesives and grouts for the type of work you are doing, and when you have finished a smallish area, stand back and look at it. – Does it look professional? – If not, THIS IS one area that could detract from the quality of the finished job, however, tiling is quite expensive, especially when you start to “fully tile” bath and shower rooms. If you do it well, you could save substantial sum of money.

Painting and decorating: On the same basis as the tiling, if you want to try it, have a go. BUT, use good quality paint and brushes, and after completing a room, stand back and look at the job. If it’s not what you would expect if you were buying a new house, it may be worth re thinking!