Stalland House Build

Hi, This blog will all be about the house that we are building, we being myself Kevin Meers, Elise Meers my better half, Maxwell & Tilly our kids.

After purchasing a 3 bed cottage in Norfolk last year and successfully obtaining planning permission for a large extension we soon discovered that  extending was not a cheap business. After consulting a number of builders and a quantity surveyor on pricing up extending the house it soon became clear that they all thought it would be better to start again.

So will after much deliberance, we took the decision to demolish and start again. We had always wanted to build a Potton barn style house and so contacted Potton homes www.potton.co.uk and selected a Belvior barn style house which, with the help of Potton's recommended architects, CHQ we streched and tweaked at bit. We submitted for planning and got permission in April 2010 to proceed. In hindsight it helped us quite a bit that we already had planning to extend the original house in obtaining permission for the new build. We are novice self builders but budget constraints restrict us from employing a main contractor or project manager so we will undertake this ourselves, so with the help of a Potton project management course and a Potton manual we are undertaking this project to end up (with luck) a family home of 2600 sq ft. I'm also sure it will be much more rewarding to have managed it ourselves when we eventually have a completed house (I may eat those word later but there we go!)

My wife, Elise, has given up her job as a forensic accountant to A, spend more time with the Kids and B, project manage the build. I will help out as much as possible whilst running our business Redrose Software Ltd (www.redrosesoftware.co.uk) which writes business system software for footwear and fashion businesses.

I'm writing this blog to provide more detail to out twitter posts http://twitter.com/stallandhouse  which we hope may be of use to other Self builders and to give us a record of our progress, stumbles, frustrations and elations.