The beginning of our Self Build journey

Thanks for visiting our new blog, which aims to record the progress of our house build.  We are Jamie and Craig, a married couple who like all sorts of random things. We have a VW campervan, like cooking, travelling and making the most of everyday, night and weekend when we are not working. We live in Gourock in a small 1-bed flat by the River Clyde.

Jamie (left) and Craig

This first post will give a little background to how we started this thing. 

January 2013 started well - whilst looking through rightmove, I (Jamie) spotted an old barn for sale at what appeared to be a good price near West Kilbride. Although Craig and I had discussed building a house one day, we'd never really done anything about it. In fact, we'd never done anything at all. However, within a week, we had viewed, and fallen in love with  this old barn. What a find! Why didn't anyone else buy it?

Glenhead Farm - the Barn

I could write a whole blog just about this, but will try summarise. The barn was part of a farm, however the farm house itself had been sold 20years prior, but the outbuildings and surrounding land retained. 

We were buying what was the stable/hayloft with an acre of land and two large outbuildings - perfect for me to keep my cars in! The barn had planning permission, although there were some conditions around upgrading the road access. This was burdensome, but didn't put us off. To cut a long story short - when the farm house was sold, the purchaser was promised first refusal on the barn. The purchaser and seller fell out in the intervening 20 years, and also , the sellers company went bust. 

The fall out was the issue - the owners of the farmhouse wanted 'our' barn, They were determined that they had a legal right to it, and if it was sold to someone else, they would go to court. Having met the lady a few times, I believed she would have gone, even though she would probably have lost. As time went on, the term 'bitch of hell' kept coming to mind. There has been an access dispute to the courtyard at the back of the barn that had been to court....we were told the water supply wasn't good enough....all sorts of things kept being dropped in our ears from this woman. Strangely, when we made it clear we would be buying, grafitti appeared on the bridge...bizarre!

We ended up pulling out completely. It had cost us a small fortune in legal fees, architects drawings (we had to amend the original plans because they were...rotten), mortgage fees, loan interest, you name it. 

Our barn would have looked something like this

This was now July 2013 and we had to start again. We looked, and looked. Lots of overpriced plots, plots too far away, plots with no redeeming features. There was a disused water tank at auction, but there was no way we'd get planning permission. 

And so we gave up for the time being. Even looked at some houses. 

But...the bug never goes away, and we'd caught that bug. Craig had always been keen on the water tank idea, but I didn't think we'd get permission, so despite it being relatively cheap, wasn't worth it. 

But when you're running out of options and champing at the bit, something has to give. We went and had another look at it. 

Craig always liked it, and it started to grow on me. Half an acre of land...in the countryside, near a town, near a train station. Wildlife galore. Hmmm....So then I started reading the North Ayrshire Local Development Plan, all 90+ pages of it...and from that plan, I started to form a plan. I reckoned planning permission might just be possible. I read some more, I contacted Planning Aid Scotland, I read all the planning documentation I could find for the area. I looked for other water tanks that had been converted. I spoke to planning (who said no!), but I had a plan for that too.

We contacted the auction houses that had previously marketed the tanks. They were totally unhelpful, even although I told them that if they were able to arrange a sale, they would get the commission. And so, I contacted the Land Register of Scotland. They gave me the names of the two owners and from there, google was my friend. I did various cross references until I was certain I had found one of the owners. I contacted him and he was still keen to sell. I kept my cards close to my chest - I didn't want anyone else realising that planning permission was a possibility. 

Eventually, we bought it. It was ours. It had no planning permission, and might end up being a white elephant, but we both decided it was a risk worth taking. 

And so, on July 11th, Craig's birthday, we became owners of half an acre of heaven. With a lot  of water in it!

So the next step now we'd bought it was to get planning permission. Permission had been refused for the site previously and it was in an area designated 'Sensitive Countryside'. So it was going to be easy, yes?!

Next update will tell all!