Conscious I have not mentioned this at all really. The main reason is that it is all still very much work in progress with lots to research and learn before getting any further with it.
So where are we? We know we have to build this year. Living the static for another winter is simply not an option. It is damp, really, really damp. There is not enough space. Davies and Scarlett should not have to scale their Christmas and birthday wants to what will fit in their cupboard sized bedrooms, they need space. We want a bath. We need a proper kitchen with cupboards to keep things in rather than trekking to the horse box every time we need a new jar of jam or having to take all the sofa cushions off when we need more cereal. I want a washing machine – walking down to the village 1.5 miles away to use the castle laundry is not feasible long term.
We’ve marked out a plot on the croft – near the bottom of the land so we can have access from the nature trail rather than across the croft land, down near the river for those views and water access, away from the static so that we can’t see holiday makers or WWOOFers in our own time and they can’t see us.
We have found a bloke in Ireland who has designed a very lovely 3 bedroomed house for us – downstairs is one bedroom, one bathroom, open plan kitchen / dining / living area with staircase and single story back room snug / lounge with log burner. Upstairs is open plan study / landing with two bedrooms, large enough for en suite if we want (not likely, prob just have them as big bedrooms). It’ll be timber frame all visible inside, double glazed, probably rendered and tin roof.
Price for the wood and the putting up is under £30k. Interior and insulation and stuff can be done for about £20k so the price we are waiting on is the groundworks and what measures building control imposes on us.
Power is still to be researched – we can go for bank of batteries with solar / wind / water and genny back up but looking into that more. Water is also to be looked into – we could get a compost loo that sorts out the waste with power or we could look at septic tank and reed bed drainage. We’ll cook and heat using bottled gas and wood burners. Water can be either harvested rainwater or hooking up to the burn. Gav and Laura are up for sharing that side of everything so they are helping with research in those areas.
So what could go wrong? It all depends on price of groundworks really – it will either be feasible to do putting the house on stilts or pile driving rather than laying full foundations or it won’t. We have prices for everything else. Corin (the wood building guy) can do technical plans, Karl from Eigg who built his own house is up for doing the rest of the drawings to submit to planning to get planning permission and we have already had the nod that our design should be acceptable along with our planned location. Labour won’t be a problem with Sandy, us, various other Rum folk and of course WWOOFers and other friend and family who have made serious offers of help when needed (and I am not just talking those who said airly that we could rely on them for help if needed at various points ;))
We have a very finite budget. The crofting housing grant is £22.5k we could expect to realise £100k from our house sale once everything has been settled but I really don’t want to spend all of our everything. I think unless we can build for under £80k, so the housing grant paying a quarter of it then it is not feasible for us here as I know we could buy a house and land somewhere back on the mainland for that sort of sum.
Our next stage is researching just what ground works are required and what the cost will be which is the only uncertainty at the moment. I have emailed building control to ask what their minimum required standard is and we will speak to GGMcKenzies who are the main contractor here for SNH when they are back over later this month to get an idea of price once we know what is required and that will complete our budgeting research. Next stage then is to submit plans for planning permission and start putting together timescale plans. That will dictate whether we need to sell Osborne Drive straight away or whether Dad is able to fund us for now at various stages and if we can raise money to cover costs in some areas too. The school job starts for me and we could look at other revenue streams if the money needed to trickle in rather than come in one big hit.
What could go wrong is that it may end up just too expensive to do. If the required groundworks are just too expensive for us then it will mean we can’t build here and if we can’t build here then we can’t stay here. If that happens we do have a couple of other contingency plans. I would hope that we are now valuable enough people here for the trust to start helping things happen but we’ll see. Our house might not sell which could hold things up but before we can start anticipating things going wrong we need to know precisely what we’re dealing with in terms of things going right.
So, let battle commence!
fingers crossed it all goes to plan. It all sounds very daunting to me, but I’m sure you’ll all sort it.
Comment by Kirsty — 03 January 2013 @ 10:41 am