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My First Blog Post

Steph

I am Steph from Hayle in Cornwall. I’ve been looking for my perfect home for years but never found it. After several house purchases and house moves, my husband and I decided to build our own home so that we can have input into the design & layout.

Building plots in Cornwall are rare & can be expensive. The opportunity to buy our neighbours property became available when they told us of their plans to retire to Spain. We decided to go for it and bought a Mundic block bungalow for £120,000. We plan to demolish it and build a 4 bedroom house. We purchased the bungalow in November 2019.

Join us on our self-build journey from start to finish.

Dropping the kerb

Steph

We were told that we didn’t need planning permission & just had to apply for a licence to drop the kerb. This advice was incorrect in our case. You may need planning permission to drop the kerb. You definitely do if you live on a “classified road“. We had to pay £55 to be told that we do need planning permission. So here we go again, having to apply for planning permission during lockdown. More expense & time.

If you need to drop the kerb, even if you are not sure you will need planning permission, include it in your planning application right from the start, it will save you a lot of hassle later on.

The foundations

Steph

There was a significant delay getting the foundations done. When building the boundary walls, it became apparent that the ground was too soft. We had to appoint a structural engineer to design raft foundations. We then had to wait for the steel so this delayed everything for about 6 weeks. It also added £9000 to the costs, excluding the structural engineer’s fees. 9 lorry loads of concrete later & the slab is done. Total cost of the foundations was £15156 & structural engineer £850