We built this house for less than £152k.

It has six double bedrooms (two in the loft), four bathrooms (three are en-suites) and four reception rooms. Each room has TV, telephone and computer data points. The plot is just over 1/4 of an acre. It’s taken us just over 2 years to build and cost £151,797.43, to the penny (excluding the cost of the land).

Like most Self Builders, we had hassle’s. We had to throw two brickies off site for whining – ‘the blocks are too heavy’ – ‘it’s too hot’ – ‘the gaffa’s not paying us enough, so you will have to pay him more’.

Amy would make them a cuppa, give them some chocolate biscuits and then have to listen to them moan for the next half hour. It was a real treat to bin them. Strangely, the brickies that replaced them couldn’t be nicer. 

We also had issues with the plumber (Johns' old man) hating the sparky, who couldn’t work near the chippy (when he actually turned up). But, that’s self building for you. They’re all gone now, and good riddance to most of them.

However, going from our 'Des Res' in Basingstoke ... to an empty plot of land in Cambridgeshire ... to a point where we thought the house would never be built ... and then finally to a finished home ... was worth every second of the hassle and heartache.

Anyway, this is how our build worked out ...

Costs

The Stage costs came to the following.

      • Foundations ------------------- £19856
      • Groundworks, Garden ---------- £188
      • Brickwork ---------------------- £19244
      • Electrics ------------------------- £8760
      • Plumbing ----------------------- £12299
      • Joinery, Kitchen ------------- £46517
      • Roof ------------------------------ £8056
      • Fencing --------------------------- £139
      • Insulation ----------------------- £2105
      • Guttering ------------------------- £448
      • Decorating, Tiling ------------- £2302
      • Plastering ---------------------- £10613
      • Windows & Doors ------------ £10772
      • Misc ------------------------------ £5214
      • Drains ---------------------------- £5275

    Stage Breakdown

For a more detailed breakdown of the costs on various stages of our self build, click the icon above.

VAT Reclaim

All through the build, Amy had wanted a better car, but we needed the money for the house. From the beginning, I’d promised her that when the Self Build VAT money came, she could have it and buy herself something tasty. Our VAT claim came in at £17,223.72 and within 2 days of banking the cheque, she was off to an Audi dealer.

Here’s our Self Build VAT claim reports …

     Part 2A

     Part 3

     Part 4

Suppliers

We used a lot of suppliers, 50 to be exact, and played each of them against each other when we got quotes. When negotiating with them it was handy to know exactly how much money we’d already spent with each one. It was a lot easier to say to someone ‘We’ve already spent £X with your company, all we need is another £300 off your quote and the business is yours’. Quite often, we had more information than the suppliers themselves. We always got a discount though, otherwise they wouldn’t get our business.

Here's how much we spent with our suppliers …

     Supplier Payment Summary

We always kept that report within easy reach, as the reps could see the money they were missing out on. One rep even paid me (John) £10 to look at it, I didn’t ask for any money, but he was willing to pay and I was definitely willing to take his money for a change.

However, we always knew the importance of keeping up to date with when our suppliers were due to be paid, it's a lot harder to get discount if you have an outstanding bill that you forgot to pay. This report also helped us budget properly each month, we always knew what we had to pay out and when.

     Payments Due By Month

Of course, telephone and address directories were handy too …

     Telephone Directory

     Address Book

You can see some more reports on our 'Reports page'.

Items

During the build we used 1307 items, from a single box of staples for the roof felt, that cost us £4.23, to 650.30 Tonnes of aggregate for the foundations, costing £6922.03 (paying almost 7k for something I wouldn't be able to see almost brought me to tears).

We spent £5135.32 on stuff that we couldn’t reclaim the VAT on. But Self Building is a great excuse to get some new tools.

Software

We started looking for software to help with the accounts for our build, from the very the ‘get go’. It didn’t take long to figure out that there wasn’t any, so we put together a spreadsheet. Within a month or two of using the spreadsheet, we realised it wouldn't give us much more than a tally of what we’d spent. It was possible to start breaking things down stage by stage, but it was an awful lot of hard work.

What we needed was a database and there was only one solution – write the software ourselves. This wasn’t a big deal because we’re computer programmers.

Allsorts is the result – currently we’re up to version 3 as we get lots of ‘feature requests’ from customers and always try to include them in the next version. Of course all customers that use Allsorts get a free upgrade to the latest version.

Although the software didn’t take too long to actually write, we needed to make sure it was accurate so we used it throughout our build and also to produce the completed forms for our VAT reclaim. When we sent the forms off to the VAT office, they wrote back saying it would take them 3 months to check the paperwork. Less than a month later, we had our cheque – we’re convinced the way Allsorts prepared the VAT claim was the reason behind getting our VAT back so quickly.

If you need help with the accounts for your build and are struggling with a spreadsheet, or just need more information about where your money is being spent,  check out these 'How to videos' page, by clicking the link below.

     How to videos

If you’ve already looked at the videos and would like to buy a copy, just click the icon below to visit our orders page. Ordering is safe and easy and you'll be up and running within a few hours.

     Buy Allsorts V3

If you would like to download the Demo first, use the link below to get a copy of Allsorts V3 from our FTP server. When asked for a username and password, enter ...

Username:-    u38745198-Allsorts

Password:-     Wannano

     Download the demo

Please note. This demo is not Windows Vista compatible.

Download the 'AV301.zip' file, extract it to your desktop and then run the 'setup.exe' to install the demo.

The demo will give you 5 tries before timing out. The other restrictions are, you can only view the reports, ie no printing or saving, and the export feature is disabled.

If you decide to buy, please visit the orders page and step through the order process, we'll get an activation key to you ASAP. Any data you add to the demo will be safe.

If you decide not to buy, simply un-install Allsorts through the 'Add / Remove Programs' part of Windows Control Panel.

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