Our New House | Self builders Nick and Joyce and their new home

Croft Moraig
Front elevation from the lane
Front elevation from the gate
Getting out of the ground 17th March 2013
Walls up 21st March
Part way through the roof 31st March
Room in the roof 12th April 2013
Progress on the roof photographed from nearby Mount Topsoil 23rd April 2013

This website

... tells the story of our new house, a self build in the Scottish Borders. We started the process during the autumn of 2011, and we're now building our new home. So for a warts and all story, read on...

Latest news | All our news | From the start

And they all lived happily ever after

So, a year on and how did we do? Around the time of my last post everything was hotting up with Stan’s building team putting the effort to get us in for the end of July, and with us moving house from Manchester for the…

Finishes – a sneak preview

Blockwork? Garages? Concrete? But what about nice things? Read on!

Underfloor heating

Now we're getting to the really interesting part, the point of no return with the floor! Putting in the underfloor heating is a job involving three different teams from Stan's building firm, and slowly (quite quickly really!) the inside of the house takes on another guise.

Planning applications

You can read through our planning applications at the Scottish Borders Council planning portal.

Planning application for the house Status: Approved
Planning application for the garage Status: Approved subject to conditions
Scottish Building Warrant Application for the house and garage Status: Building warrant issued

We will be ... here

Here we are

	Tuesday 01/27 60% Rain Windy with late night rain. Low 5C.
	Tomorrow 01/28 90% Chance of Rain Rain showers early, then remaining overcast and windy later in the day. High 7C. Winds W at 30 to 50 km/h. Chance of rain 90%. Winds could occasionally gust over 65 km/h.
	Thursday 01/29 10% Partly Cloudy Partly cloudy. Continued cold. High 3C. Winds W at 25 to 40 km/h.

Things we're finding useful

Useful magazines for self builders

Yes, really, we were featured in David Snell's Plotfinder column in this magazine.

More magazines

Useful books for self builders

Mark Brinkley's "Housebuilders Bible" is by far the most useful book we found while researching for our new house. Highly recommended.

More books

Useful websites for self builders

http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/forum114/

The Green Building Forum has been both useful and entertaining. There are some extremely knowledgeable people frequenting the forum and conversations are always detailed and cordial. They even entertained some of my more naive questions without complaining too much!

The what and the how

The Design

In the beginning was the dormer. There seemed to be no escaping them in rural Scotland. At one point we got the strong impression that "Scottish vernacular" was being defined as "anything with dormers". Flicking through the standard designs of some of the timber frame house builders it looked like "traditional" meant lots of fiddly, heat-stealing, leaky roof detailing. Not for us, thank you! Read more

Keeping warm

We've been in the Scottish Borders at times in the winter when the temperature during the day never got over -5C for days on end. We don't like spending money on fuel so we wanted to take advantage of the various renewable energy heating systems out there which will insulate us not only from the cold but from rising energy costs into the bargain. Read More...