Built for £125,000!

Ian and Sarah Gluyas found themselves in the right place at the right time when a small building plot came up almost next door to the three bedroom terraced house in which they had been living with their three children for the last four years. “In one sense we could not believe our luck, because we were looking for a self-build project and very keen to remain in the same Oxfordshire village,” says Ian. “On the other hand it was a big gamble: the site came with permission – and plans – for a three bedroom detached house that was very little bigger than the one we had been living in.”

Nevertheless they decided to go for it, and so in January 1994 they paid £120,000 for the plot and ended up living on site in a 34ft by 10ft caravan with Sarah at home caring for their youngest daughter, Phoebe, and Ian working away a great deal of the time.

“We had attended several exhibitions – we had always wanted to self-build – and thought we were well prepared,” Ian recalls. “We found a local builder and made the mistake of believing him when he gave us a verbal quote of £117,000 for a watertight shell. This fell within our budget of around £120,000, but when he presented his quotation in writing it had risen to £150,000 which was well beyond our means.”

An argument ensued when Ian and Sarah had to extricate themselves from the deal, and they finished up paying the builder half of the £600 he had demanded for drawing up a bill of quantities. “All round it was a pretty disastrous start, and although at that point we decided to subcontract much of the work, it was not until May – four months later – that we had managed to find the subbies we needed and were able to start,” recalls Sarah. “We had lost four months and had encountered further problems extending the services to the main house site.”

Fortunately they had found a good architect: Marianne Smith of Matthewson Whittaker Architects, based in nearby Lambourne. “Marianne was lovely throughout and most understanding about our cramped living conditions,” says Sarah. “She had good ideas for adding a wing at the back that would give us the fourth bedroom we needed. She also realised we were on a tight budget – I was working from the caravan as a home-based ironing lady – but encouraged us to press on with the four-bed scheme. Her advice was to design a two storey wing at the rear and to make the front, which was rather plain and sterile on the plan, more ‘cottagey’ to fit in with the village setting. This would be achieved by adding some brick detailing, and also an additional front dormer at the top of the stairs.”

Marianne’s amended plan increased the size of the house from the proposed 112m2 to 155m2. It went through the Vale of White Horse planning committee without difficulty. Encouraged by Ian and Sarah, Marianne also redrew the internal layout to give them a much larger kitchen and also two upstairs bathrooms.

In addition, Marianne adopted a device of Ian’s, using what he terms ‘45s’, downstairs as a means of gaining space. This revolves around the concept of squares and corners. “By rounding off the corners you can gain space in an unexpected way,” Ian explains. “It is not something we read about in any of the magazines we studied or by talking to builders, but is a technique we had devised renovating our previous houses, and both agreed on.

“Generally the corners of rooms are ‘dead space’ because, apart from the television, you just end up placing a plant on a table there. If you angle them off at 45 degrees you lose nothing inside the room and gain valuable space on the other side of the stud wall, as we have done in our hallway and lounge.” Even though the project’s final build cost added up to around £125,000 – meaning a reasonable final figure per square metre of £806 – the house does not appear as though it was built on a tight budget, featuring quality fittings throughout.

One way the Gluyases saved was by using cheap, but very sound, French clay roofing tiles. These counteracted the far more expensive figure for the Michelmersh facing bricks specified for the outer skin. They also saved by selling the old clay tiles from the semi-collapsed brick barn on the site that they had to demolish, raising a much-needed £800. In addition, through scouting around they were able to buy two Belfast sinks in near-perfect condition for £60.

They also did a huge amount of work themselves. Ian laid all the downstairs floors – tiles in the hall, kitchen and utility room and oak strip in the dining room – and fitted all the skirting, architrave and door linings. “We also have two sets of parents who were prepared to drive up from Cornwall quite regularly to help out whenever called upon,” Sarah says. “My father is in the building trade and Ian’s father is a semi-retired commercial electrician, so they are both pretty handy. It’s hard to see how we could have done it all without them. Our sons were also marvellous — they always lent a hand when needed.”

The luxury kitchen cost just £6,000. “It is the sort of farmhouse-style kitchen that never goes out of fashion,” Ian says. “The supplier, Parlour Farm, was prepared to supply it to us unpainted and let us install it ourselves. Measuring up for it and erecting it was not difficult — just time-consuming, as was the painting, which took nearly three weeks to complete.”

The result is a high-quality build on a remarkably low budget. “It is only a little more than we had budgeted for,” Ian says “We are really pleased. It just shows what you can achieve on a limited budget if you shop around, keep your head, have an enterprising approach and are prepared to get stuck into an enormous amount of hard work.”

Further reading:

• 10 Secrets of an On Time, On Budget Project
• The Secrets of Building to a Budget
• A Budget Self-build

Find out more about building to a budget in The Book of Great Value Homes from Homebuilding & Renovating