electric

We have our own electric as of yesterday, so we have a freezer, tumble drier, heaters and electric kettle :-)
It's really good having electric, the freezer is on, we bought ice cream at the shop today, a priority for Iain :-)
Mum, David and I are going to Inverness shopping tomorrow and hopefully we won't have to do a major shop for a couple of weeks, just locally for fresh produce.

The building warrant could have been this week but when the architect had answered the questions the officer had he sent them to the wrong council office. Iain arranged with the architect to produce a copy and sent me to pick them up from them, which meant an hour from here to Dingwall then up to Golspie to the council offices, luckily with Mum and Dad visiting this week I had company for the 2 and a half hour round trip.
We should find out Monday if we have a building warrant or not, our building warrant officer isn't based here, he's filling in for someone and is only in Golspie from Monday pm to Wednesday midday!
Fingers crossed.

building warrant

Still no building warrant. We had to wait for the foundation guy to answer a question, which he did on Friday. Iain phoned the council and the Building Warrant person won't be in until Monday afternoon.
Apparently there is another time zone in Scotland, 'Highland time'

Electric

After waiting 4 months to get our wayleave from the Lairg Estate Manager, Scottish and Southern Electric can't connect us until the 28th September!!!!!!!

Progress

David has dug out the driveway, laid taram matting and then spread the hardcore, so we now have a driveway that delivery people can use.
Iain has finished wiring the barn, installed water to the barn and connected the water tank.
We have a signed wayleave........So now we wait for the electric board to come and dig a trench and get us all connected. Then Iain can turn the barn on, and we can have freezer, tumble drier, an extra fridge and possibly a washing machine.
The nice building warrant man is on holiday for 2 weeks, so there will be no progress on that for at least a fortnight, but we can start sourcing all the building supplies we need for the foundations.
So progress has been made but no building warrant yet!

Driveway

This was the start of the driveway.

This is the taram matting going down.

The almost finished driveway!!

Building Warrant

We put the building warrant in at the beginning of July, the architect received a letter with queries which he duly answered.
This morning another letter has arrived with a list of queries as the first answers didn't quite answer the building officers questions.
So it'll be another couple of weeks while the information is gathered and sent to him and he reads through it, etc.
In the meantime it is moving towards winter, and we haven't even started the foundations. Also we can't start the digging to install a septic tank, so still no indoor toilet :-(
Still even though we are still on a 200mtr extension cable to the neighbours for electric, we do have our very own water supply.

The turf is removed.

Visitors.

We've had family to stay for the last 2 weeks. Our son and fiancee with bump for the first week, they stayed in the caravan and of course had a go with the digger. Then my sister and partner with 3 poodles the second week in their tent.
The major event for the build is that the water is now fully connected, so we have mains water to our caravan. The electric will take a little longer, we've changed the route of the electric as the manager of the estate still hasn't signed the wayleave for Scottish & Southern Electric, so we're going through a neighbours garden and along the road to the gate. We (Iain) will have to run a cable up to the gate to connect to the meter. Iain has the barn all wired ready for when our electric is connected.
We still haven't got our building warrant but we can level the ground ready to dig the foundations. So hopefully won't be long now.
We've been on a couple of nice walks with 4 dogs and visited John O'Groats (twice). So had a nice couple of weeks playing tourist.

massey ferguson 50H

We bought a Massey Ferguson 50H digger second hand in April ready for the build. It ran out of diesel and being old, Iain had to bleed it, then the battery went flat, thanks to a neighbour's jump leads we got it started again.
Then it had a flat tyre.
Then the ring gear had so many teeth missing it wouldn't start, so it's had a new ring main(apparently this is a ring gear not main:-)) and starter motor.
Now a linkage plate has bent, so the blacksmith is coming tomorrow hopefully.
Only trouble is, Iain has dug a trench across the only way in for the man to clean the portaloo so if we don't get the digger started, it looks like we'll be filling it in by hand.
But it does the job :-)

pictures of the water trench

This is the trench for the water pipe, hopefully Iain will get the pipe laid when the otherside has drained.

pictures of the caravan

This is the caravan insitu. With path and gate. We had it sited so the doors face the croft and barn, and Iain has put a skirt round so it should be warmer in winter!

Our Caravan arriving on site.

life in a caravan

We've been living on site since the end of May, and life in a static caravan takes some getting used to, especially the portaloo.
We are waiting for our building warrant and until we receive that we can't put the septic tank in, so we have a portaloo. Which seems fine for the summer, but today in North Scotland it's blowing a gale and raining.......
The water is connected, but we're having trouble with the electric. We have a wayleave to put services in across the estate, but the electric board doesn't have a wayleave so that's what we're waiting for. Thanks to our brilliant neighbour we are not without electric totally, just never had a 200 metre extension before.
My feet are cold, it's July and I have cold feet. This does not bode well for winter.
The caravan also steams up, doesn't seem to have enough storage, and with the microwave in the kitchen there's no worktop space.
On the plus side, there's room for our server, suitcases, we can swing a cat in our bedroom. The lounge has plenty of space even with the dog crate.
The campsite in the village has a laundry that I can use, so washing is sorted, even if the rotary clothes line pole bent in the wind!!
So life in a caravan is okay :-)

Its all happening now!

Things go really slow and then all of a sudden......
We were sitting back, letting things take their course, the Survey was completed (and paid for), the kit supplier was chosen and a deposit paid, we now have house drawings and plans, the architect has completed the layout drawings and we have finally make our Planning approval submission last week.

We deicded that we would ideally like to be living a little nearer the site so we could be on hand to set things up and start clearing the site etc.  We had finally managed to arrange to rent a house for 2-3 months when a few days before we were due to move they sold the house.  We had a rethink and as we had already handed our notice in on our current rented home we decided to pull out the stops and try and get the caravan onto site and connected as quickly as possible.

We have now bought a digger (and paid for it). This gets delivered next week and then I will have to start getting the access road built so we can get to the site across the muddy field.

We have asked the water board for a supply, having already been through the technical bit for them to say they had capacity for us.  But still waiting for them to give us a cost and an eta.

We have a quote for the electric connection and we have ordered that (all paid for in full up front of course). But we still don't have an ETA.

We have asked BT to fit a telepohne line to the caravan.  They will charge for our new line of course and when we move that line from the caravan to the house it will be charged as another new line.  We are waiting for them to survey now to decide how the cable is going to be run.

So a lot of money has passed through our hands this last week or so and I am sure that is only the start wth a lot more to come.

So the plan now, from 1st April to 1st May is:
Clean out and secure the barn
Construct the road
Buy the 2 caravans we need (one to live in and one to store our house contents until we need them again)
Site the caravans and connect them to water, electric and telephone (if they are available)
Probably hire a portaloo as we cannot install our septic tank until after we get building warrant approval.

Then we get to move in!
What could go wrong:)

Meanwhile we are also trying to get someone to quote for doingthe connection from our raod onto the public highway.  There is quite an onerous specification issued with the planning permission that we need to meet. Unfortunately I think we will be unable to mee tthe maximum gradient specificed because we are building onna hillside and the ground naturally slopes more thna the specified maximum gradient.  Not sure how we will get around that one (or I can hope I have misinterpreted it), but lets get a contractor sorted who can then suggest what can be done for us to suggest to the authorities.

So, next job is to arrange the site insurance (and pay for it!!)

A couple of pictures

The site from the road.

 The view from the front window (hopefully)

A late update.

So, long time and no blogging.

Things have been a little hectic but we have been diligently working behind the scenes trying to get things sorted out ready to start building.

First we selected our kit supplier and initially worked on a standard design from them.

Eventually we changed a few things, and then we changed the whole internal layout.

The kit supplier was happy to make these changes with only a little cost impact but it set us thinking we were trying to work within their envelope and it just wasn’t quite what we wanted.

So we have now drawn out our own design and sent that to two more kit suppliers to see what sort of prices they come up with.

We have also been interviewing and selecting an Architect.

We feel that is someone we need onboard to help with the planning application, the building warrant and to hold everything together.

We have selected one of the 3 people we met and he seems amiable and flexible and is going to work on a fixed price for the work we have asked him to do.

He has also given us an hourly rate for anything extra we ask for – fair enough, at least we know where we stand.

We have arranged a Topographical survey of the site and received the drawing today.

That is the one that shows all the site levels so the architect can layout the plot and agree the depth of the septic tank and drains etc.

We also have the details for the road connection which is quite involved.  This will help us get quotes from civil contractors for the road bit.

Of course this is also our first real cost (after the plot) and the first invoice.  Just over £500 if anyone is interested.

Purchase of the plot is progressing and we have more or less agreed everything that needs doing.

We have also applied for water and electric connections but are still waiting the quotes for these.

We were probably being a little presumptive in hoping we would be on site and ready to start in April.

It looks like it will be a little later than that

As we still haven’t decided on the house design so the architect can’t do the drawings for the planning permission.

Planning could take another 2 months, followed by building warrant which could be another 2 months!!

Time marches on as we are already part way into February.

We will do our best to give more frequent updates in the future, promiseJ

Just to whet the appetite are a couple of photos of the bare site and the view we hope to have from the front room window

Iain

A little history

We moved “North” from Yorkshire just a year ago with the aim of a more relaxed life.

We both work from home so provided we can get internet, mobile phone reception and an airport not too distant then our location doesn’t really matter.

We were supposed to “try it out” for 6 months in a rented property and then buy our own house but... the financial system decided to crash, mortgages became difficult, people stopped putting houses up for sale.

As we are both self employed the mortgage companies moved the goalposts overnight and we were left without any mortgage and the earliest we could reapply was September 2009, and there was just one lender who would consider us.  This is despite us being self employed for over 15 years but our recent change in address and change in business name resulted in causing them problems.

So we waited and then started looking again.

 

We eventually found the right house, got the mortgage agreed and approved, got the valuation agreed, so we made the offer.  Only to find the seller had accepted another offer just the day before!!

Aarrgghh.

 

After that everything we saw got compared with this house and nothing measured up.

 

We then looked at a renovation project and after some discussion decided it would be a worthwhile project. So we called the agent to discover someone else had already paid for their own survey and they were preparing their offer.  No point spending money to compete with someone else who was a lot further down the road than us.

 

In the meantime there was a noticeable increase in properties being sold in the areas we were looking at and as we moved towards December the right property at our price just wasn’t appearing on the market.  Prices also seemed to stabilise and actually seem to creep up slightly.

 

So we started to look at building our own house. Something we had discussed before but wasn’t high on the agenda.  Now we started looking for a building plot and after a few false starts we found Torroble.  A one acre site with outline planning permission overlooking the hills around Loch Shin and with a view of Loch Shin.  There are some existing farm buildings that could be demolished, converted to garage/workshop or possibly in the future a self catering cottage.

 

So we jumped in and made an offer over the phone.  The agent called us back later that week and we “negotiated” a  deal based on the current owner not wanting to actually sell the land until April 2010.   That’s fine with us because it will take that long to get Planning permission sorted etc.

 

So that’s how we came to be here, going to build our own house, on our own plot of land, and not just buying an existing house.

 

Exciting ..Yes – Scary... most definitely!!!

 

 

The First Entry

So this is it. After 12 months searching for the "right" house to buy we have bought a plot of land and are going to build our own home.