Hey Captain,
I am sure you will get back your money and then some. My mother sold her house after my father died in 1967. This was in Wallingford, Oxfordshire. She sold it for 8000 pounds and it is now worth 1.6 millions pounds.
Cheers, Guy.

YES! Please do!

O/T sorry
Prior life was business degree (accounting), 20 years in banking, now in home building nearly 18 years. Would love to hear more - have you thought of starting a thread?

Not to hijack the Captain's thread, but as there have been a couple of requests, I went looking for photos of my house construction. My wife advised me I was mostly shooting slides at the time but I found a snapshot of me on the roof putting the last of the siding on the upper part of the house. My phone won't upload it so I'm going to have to get it onto our computer to post.
Basically the house is a back split based upon a design from a competition 50 years ago for an energy efficient house design. It had been conceived as a two part modular design to be constructed in a factory and placed on a two level foundation. This would place the kitchen, dining area and living room on the main floor with a bathroom and two bedrooms on the upper level. There was a space for a finished half basement under the upper level and a crawl space under the main floor.
We had small local contractors do the excavation, concrete and septic. Another acquaintance milled the lumber and I got busy. I was working as a route supervisor with the dairy but would be finished most days by 3 PM.I would work until dark and get some sleep. We were living with my in-laws whose house was just across the field, so if I had some spare time, I was on site.
The excavation was done on August 13. Foundation was in by the first week of September, then my part of the work began.
Our plan was to live in the half basement until we could afford to build the main house. I didn't have electricity on the site for two months, so all lumber was cut with a hand saw: 2x4s 2x6s,2x8s and ( gulp) 2x10s. I got the main floor built over the crawl space and the pony wall erected to carry the upper floor. Then we put up a shed roof over the upper floor and stairwell and covered the whole thing with tarpaper. Insulation and gyprock got us in just in time for Christmas.
When the bank account recovered two and a half years later, another load of lumber allowed me to build the 2x6 stud walls in sections, rip off the shed roof, erect the wall sections and get the permanent roof on.
I'll try to get some pics dug out.
Best
Les

I seem to have one image at the moment of the house as built. I am standing on the south facing roof, installing the last pieces of vertical t&g siding. This choice of material was a mistake. At first it was lightly stained, but the wife didn't like the yellowing nature of the pine. She wanted it darker, so we changed to a heartwood stain. That caused solar gain and it warped in the sun over twenty years and had to be replaced. Since I was re-doing the south and west sides, it all was re-done in clap boards.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1655553625.jpg

You can see the basic design idea of the upper half story getting sunlight through the clerestory windows. Then we decided to add a sun room to the south side and a porch to the east end.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1655553857.jpg

That was relatively simple except to continue the roof line, the floor of the sun room was at grade. It is concrete with air circulation pipes under in a heat sink of several tons of course rock. The white round fittings on the right side of the sun room were warm air circulation pipes to and from solar collectors I built. There was not enough insulation in the foundation to make it worth while and I removed the collectors after a couple of years. We had our domestic water heated with a solar array for about ten years, but it failed the same summer the pv solar array was installed.

The solar water tank was re-purposed as a rain barrel and in this image you can see it, also note there are only two windows on the north side of the house. The wire enclosure on the left side of the image is a cat kennel to which our cats (8 at one point) had access. Coyotes in the area mean there are no kitties loose around here.

Hmmm. That one doesn't seem to want to load.
Best
Les

Let's try that again.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1655554906.jpg

There. Got it. Sorry for the rhubarb flowers obscuring part of the north face. You can see part of the garage and, on the end of the garage, the shed with the pipe sticking up in a generator/gardening storage space. Wires from the generator to the house are underground.

Best
Les

Over the years, I have changed out all the wood framed windows for vinyl . As I go on, the glass is getting upgraded from double glazed to triple glazed. The flue serves a tiny air tight wood stove on the main floor. We burn about two cords of wood through the winter. There is a heat pump visible in the last image which helps warm the basement, which doesn't get much solar gain.
The contrast between the Captain's house and this one couldn't be much greater. walls are 6" studs with 5 1/2" of fibreglass insulation. Roof is 5 1/2 " of fibreglass plus 2" of styrofoam board for a total of R30. That was radical when the house was built, but way behind standard now. Basement walls are 3 1/2" of fibreglass inside and 2 " of foam board outside the walls.
Also in the last image, just to the left of the thermometer is a white pipe and a stainless steel plenum. That is a cold air feed for the airtight wood stove so we are not using inside air for combustion and thus not drawing outside air in through cracks and vents which would make the inside of the house colder and more dry.

Best
Les

Les, your house looks great, kudos to you for doing most of it yourself

Unless you build houses for a living or have done it for fun it's hard to grasp the enormity of the amount of work involved

Steve, the whole thing was " learn as you go". I was so naive I didn't know enough to know I knew nothing. I just did what my Dad used to do on the farm when he needed something: he built it.
I was able to work through most of the challenges, but after four decades there are things I shake my head over. After the house was finished, I did a small horse barn, then a garage for my toys. Each one got easier. Should have built the house last :D

Best
Les

Slightly late update, been too busy enjoying some mountain weather/scenery and not doing any building work

This week the UK has enjoyed a few unusually warm days this week, new record of over 40C or 104F for the 1st time

A national emergency was declared, ie stay indoors or you will die if you go outside so we were very pleased to find all the extra insulation we recently added to the original house roof made a big difference to the indoor temps.

Top room was a very comfortable temperature and the whole house felt a lot cooler. Hoping it translates to a more comfortable winter too!

In other news, I've finally finished doing all internal glazing bar work on all the windows and fitted all the rear windows

The window cutting and shutting was a heap of work but I think the end result was well worth all the time and effort. Even up close the new windows are visually almost identical to the old windows

Rear of the house now looks less like an old house with a new build extension and more like a whole old house, well it should do as it's taken so long

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1658529666.jpg

I'm now part way through fitting the front windows and it's starting to look like it might turn out ok too!

Wow

So nice!

Looks great! Did you guys escape to the continent for a little bit?

There is nothing like standing back and admiring your accomplishment, and all the more sweet if it involved years and a thousand details and literally tons of work.

That is so beautiful. As a west coaster in the U.S., I always found the old buildings in Europe fasceinating. Something centuries old is something you can't find here. If something is a century old here, it's considered ancient.

You and the Missus have done a fantastic job on that property. Unless you know the history of the project and know where to look, one wouldn't suspect any changes from when it was first built.
Re the insulation in the older part of the house, even though you have increased the total volume of the living space by approximately 40%(?), I suspect your cost to heat the place should drop by 25-30%.
Well done!
Best
Les

Gorgeous!

Glad to hear you got to get away and enjoy other outdoor beauty.

And a lot of satisfaction from having done it yourself.

Thanks for the gracious comments gents

Sometimes I think we must be slightly mad taking on so much work, occasionally even thinking we've made a huge mistake but when we do find time to take a step back to look at what we've done it all seems worth it

Front is starting to look good too, was hoping by now to do the 'front reveal' with windows all fitted, taking a bit longer due to distractions sucking me away from building fun!

So instead here is an update with a picture taken today from the top of my 17ft tall scaffold tower while I was trying to fit the last window frame

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1658957723.jpg

This was me while taking the photo :mad: it didn't work as it still rained :( but not for long :)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1658957815.jpg

Also a few more pictures to show what our hood looks like

Thinking I need to throw up some laced together sneakers onto the telephone lines to let the rest of our village know our end of the village is a no go area for them

Hang on, maybe I should forget that idea as the brewery, two pubs, post office, meat butchers, doctors surgery and grocery shop are not in our end of the village ;) All we have is a post box, dog poo bin and a bus stop :D

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1658958425.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1658958498.jpg

I cannot express how different your lifestyle is and what we typically see in the US. I would trade what I have for that in a heartbeat.

Javadog, I think you'd enjoy the summer and would quickly be jumping back on the plane back as soon as winter starts setting in

Living in rural middle-England has it's charms but there is too much traffic, we're a 2hr flight away from a sea warm or clear enough to swim in, not enough good driving roads, no Tex-Mex restaurants, everything is expensive or very expensive, house/land plots are too small/over looked, weather in winter sucks in a cold, damp way, summer is too short etc

Like most people we chose the area we live due to my work and I've been to plenty of places in the world where I'd trade my lifestyle for theirs in a heart beat too

As soon as I get bored with working, maybe in 10yrs time or so we'll sell up and move to somewhere nice without factoring in work locations