You are going to build your home.
Once. With no training, alongside contractors who do it every day. This holds the whole of it with you, from the first plot you look at to the keys in your hand.
Look round a real build
Real homes, each recorded from the plot to the keys. Pick the one nearest yours.
Masonry · 5 bedrooms · about £960k
Saredon Road, twenty weeks in
The walls are up and the orders are going out. See what running a build looks like while it is still running.
Masonry · 4 bedrooms · about £575k
Coombe Lane, just finished
Piled foundations on an old orchard, now handed over. The whole record, from the plot to the keys.
Timber frame · 4 bedrooms · about £580k
Ings Lane, the frame is up
A timber frame on piles in North Yorkshire. Ordered months ahead, standing in a fortnight, and the roof goes on next.
Building your own home is a journey.
It runs about two years and nobody does it twice. We are alongside it the whole way, and the tools turn up at the point you would reach for them, not all at once on day one.
Stage 1 of 7
Before you look
What you can actually afford once the ground, the fees and the connections are in the number.
The high level budget
One figure for everything you can responsibly put in, land and buying costs included, written down with the reason you set it there.
Stage 2 of 7
The plots you are looking at
What you found on each one, what to ask about it, and what did not add up.
The plot pre-screen
Every plot you look at judged against the same list, with what you found on each one recorded beside it.
Stage 3 of 7
Buying it, and getting permission
What you promised in order to get consent, and who you appointed to do what.
The appraisal and the consents register
What the land costs you once everything the consent obliges you to do is priced in.
Stage 4 of 7
Pricing the work
What you are asking builders to price, sent out the same way to each of them, and their prices compared line by line.
Enquiries, and quotes side by side
Every quote for a trade in one sheet, with what each one left out. The cheapest price is usually the one missing something.
Stage 5 of 7
Setting the order of work
The sequence the build has to follow, and what moves when one thing slips.
The programme
The order the work has to happen in, with dates against it. When the roof slips two weeks, it shows you what else moves and who needs telling.
Stage 6 of 7
Building it
What happened on site and when, who was there, what was delivered, and the safety paperwork that goes with it.
The site diary and the safety record
Not whether you have the document, but which version was in force that week and who had been briefed on it.
Stage 7 of 7
Finishing, and the keys
The snags, the connections, and every certificate handed to you on the way out.
The completion pack
One PDF holding the certificates, warranties, drawings and photographs from the whole build.
Start at whichever stage you are actually at.
Most people find this somewhere in the middle, with a plot they are not sure about or a set of quotes that do not compare. You can pick it up there.
How to try it
Have a proper look before you pay for anything.
- 1
Check a plot
Free, no account, and it stays that way. Check a plot
- 2
Look round a real build
A real build to look round, without signing up for anything. Look round
- 3
Seven days with your own project
The whole thing, with your own project in it. Start seven days
After that it is £40 a month, one build at a time, and it includes the book kept up to date as it changes. What that includes. Or read what the project record holds, and what you leave with.
Start with a plot you are looking at
Put in a postcode and we will show you the same ground on the old Ordnance Survey sheet: what used to be there, before anyone levelled it. Free, no account, about two minutes.
The book on its own
The whole method, in one book you can keep.
Buy it and never come back. Paperback £29.99, ebook £9.99, or a PDF straight from us at £9.99.
The copy you buy is the copy you keep. The subscription carries the same chapters, with every tool, supplier and scheme they name re-checked each month: the same words in different states, not the same thing sold twice.
Or just hear from us occasionally
Once a month: what has changed in the tools and rules worth knowing about, whether you are building this year or thinking about it.