The birth pangs of SelfBuild & Design

There can’t be too many jobs likely to be won by pure spleen. Grand High Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, perhaps; special advisor on American relations to Kim Jong-un? But I can say, with almost complete truthfulness, that I managed to find one. It happened like this.

I self-built a house. Actually, my wife did most of the project management while the building was done by a timber-frame firm importing Norwegian frames. I provided the inspiration, the imagination and, mainly, the angst. But, as I regularly told my wife – who had office-managed a small contracting firm and so was much more builder-savvy than I – there was much to get angsty about.

For a start, there was the planning permission – or rather the lack of it. The plot was conveniently adjacent to the house in which we were living. In fact, it was part of the garden, a 22ft-wide strip running from front to back.

Steeply sloping, it was smothered in brambles over eight feet high and largely hidden behind a collapsing six-foot fence. How pleased the neighbours would be, we thought, to have this eyesore removed.

They weren’t. In fact, despite the friendly interest displayed when we showed them our plans, objections flooded in, and not just from immediate neighbours but from surrounding streets.

The design, done by an architect friend, had been intended to bridge the styles of our deeply unassuming 1950s ex-local authority semi with the sprawling detached villa next door. It was rejected. As were two subsequent modifications.

Months later a chance conversation revealed that the local conservation officer had become involved. He thought the new house should reflect our existing home’s 1950s style because so few 1950s properties remained in the borough. We were not, I should add, in a Conservation Area. The nearest was about a hundred yards away. Around a corner.

In a fit of desperation our architect submitted a design that made the worst excesses of Stalinist architecture look like Lutyens. Our original design, with minimal modification, was passed without comment – 18 months after first submission.

The build finally started just in time for the wettest winter in decades. Our builders unaccountably arrived with an excavator that almost spanned the plot, scooping out a hole almost twice the specified footprint. This quickly turned into a swimming pool, shortly before the neighbour’s garden collapsed into it.

When the water level was low enough to start work on the footings, Building Control decided the agreed metre-deep foundations wouldn’t be up to the job and insisted on piled foundations, instantly adding £10,000 to the costs. They had a similar change of heart over our connection to the neighbouring communal drain, requiring a new connection to the main sewer, complete with a six-feet-deep inspection chamber large enough to host a small party. Cost? Another £10,000.

Intrigued

I could go on. I have, on many occasions. But the one that didn’t clear the room was an interview for the job of launch editor of this magazine. Like many journalists, I was intrigued by the idea of starting a new publication. But I assumed it required a deep and extensive knowledge of the subject covered. I treated my interview, then, as useful experience and, as it turned out, hugely satisfying therapy.

I ranted, as far as I can remember, about the lack of self-build information generally, the blinkered attitudes of the construction industry and its poor organisational skills, the arbitrary nature of local planning, the inability of high-street lenders to comprehend self build and what I regarded as the less than ideal support provided by existing magazines.

Nothing I’d read had prepared me for the excruciating circumstances of my build. What was clearly needed was a new publication that was inspirational, informative but, above all, honest.

I left, mildly surprised I’d been allowed to go on so long. But that was nothing to the surprise I felt when I heard I was the editor.

Launching a new magazine, I quickly discovered, is an exhilarating, exhausting, all-consuming activity which demands the acquisition of new contacts, knowledge and skills at a dizzying rate – very much, in fact, like building your own home. Certainly the satisfaction in accomplishing both is remarkably similar. All the memories of angst fade away – well, mostly – leaving a warm glow and a fierce determination to do better next time.

And suddenly 20 years have slipped by - two decades of gradual advance for self build, from an easing of finance to TV popularity to government recognition. Self build today is markedly easier than it was for me, but still not a patch on the consumer-based markets of Austria, Germany or Canada. It’s always struck me as an odd contradiction in a country as devoted to homeownership as this one.

Plenty, then, to keep ranting about.

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