TV programmes like Grand Designs have seen people around the country taking on the challenge of building their dream homes. As a result, more and more people are custom designing their houses, and there’s no reason why you couldn’t do the same. If it sounds like something you fancy getting your teeth into, here are a few things you need to consider, whether this is your first time building – young dot-commers addressing their quarter life crisis, for example – or even if you’ve gone through the process before.

Learn from Other People’s Mistakes

The first step is to talk to other people who have been through the process of designing and building their own homes. Getting to know the problems they faced and whether their budget was accurate will help you with your own project. You might even decide that a self-build isn’t for you, but either way, having the advice of someone who has experienced it will be invaluable.

Utilise Your Skills and Contacts

Are you proficient in a certain trade or do you have a family member who could help out with some of the work? Any practical tradesmen you can rope in to save cash will be a huge help, so start thinking about your options. If you’re a builder or know somebody who is, you’ll probably be able to do a lot of the work yourself and will already have the equipment.

If you work for a construction company, ask if there’s any old or broken excavating machinery you can take off their hands to repair with Scot JCB parts & spares. Utilising your existing contacts can be one of the best advantages you can have when it comes to building your own home, so think about who you can rope in to help before you start budgeting for builders and architects.

Budget, Budget, Budget

If you’re a Grand Designs fanatic, you’ll already know that most self-build projects cost far more than expected. Your budgeting needs to be tight and you need to have enough spare cash to rescue anything that goes wrong or pay for extra materials. To get some idea on how much individual aspects of the build will cost, check out this guide to creating a budget for your project.

Building your own home will be stressful, it will be difficult, but ultimately, it will be worth it. Not many people get the chance to build their dream home from scratch, so if you’re in the lucky position of being able to do so, you’ll end up with the perfect house that you and your family will spend many happy years in.

partnered post • CC-licensed image by Jeremy Levine