Building a House

A few years ago we decided to build a house in the wilderness - walls, doors, windows and all. We designed the place ourselves and a friend of ours built the thing, with help from his son and his son's tractor and our border collie Tudor. All in all, it was a very enjoyable experience and - should you wonder - the house is not for sale.

There are several parts to this story - part one is below Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 can be accessed via these links.

Building a House

Part 1: The plot

The problem with building a new house is that you first have to find a piece of ground to put it on. We looked for 30 years for a plot of land that:

Had a dramatic view.
Looked out over the Roe Valley.
Was way out in the wilderness.
Didn't cost so much that there was no money left to build.

We didn't meet all the criteria, but we came pretty close. This is what it looked like:

You are staring at the Roe Valley, romantically shrouded in an Irish mist. The tree covered area on the left belongs to a piece of Ulster soil that will henceforth be referred to as "The Site": An incomparable challenge to builders with a taste for adventure. Beyond the clouds you can just see the Sperrin mountains.

Let's take a closer look.

The old lane

The first thing you come across is a rather nice old lane which - after heavy rainfall - turns into a medium sized river. It is so narrow and rough, that it can only be navigated on foot or with a tractor. We will obviously have to build a road as well as a house.

On the site we found a farm house as ancient as it was deserted. It showed ample evidence of having been used by generations of enthusiastic cows as the venture for their frequent "Bring your own Stool" parties . Initial thoughts of restoring the 200 year old building were dropped when we saw the state of the gable and the collapsed ceiling inside. Hundreds of years of native building skills have gone into yon construction, which despite its rather primitive appearance has survived countless stormy years.

The site

The rest of the site is a rather rough but quite a beautiful collection of trees, weeds, collapsed old stone walls and knee-deep evidence of the success of the natural fertilizer activities mentioned above.

We decided to try and buy the place!

There were some problems of course. We needed electricity, water and most important of all, a telephone - no point building a house if you can't tell the whole world about it on the internet.

The well On further investigation it turned out that water was no problem. About 30 metres below the site we spotted an enclosed spring which produces plenty of drinking water. You can see it on the left. Not only does the photograph demonstrate what a well-kept spring should look like, but also the obsessive tidiness of people around here. However, pumping water is for the future. Presently we needed any old water so that we can mix and shovel mortar.

The dipper

Meet "the dipper". We had never heard the name before until Arnold, the man who owns the land around here, mentioned it. It has little to to with astronomy and is all about cows dipping their noses into refreshing wild water that is not fit to drink for a man but is much appreciated by parched animals. This gift of nature should allow us to build our house.

There remained the problem of electricity. By a great stroke of good fortune the craze for mobile telephones has resulted in a phone company building a relay tower not all that far from the site of the house of our dreams. For a price we can easily tie into their power supply.

If you examine the photograph closely you will see a lot of gorse - which belongs to Arnold, a pretty ugly tower, which belongs to Orange, a rather nice old house with wonderful trees all round, which belongs to us and the Roe Valley below, which belongs to everyone else.

We will draw a veil of silence over all the hoops that officialdom made us jump through and all the fees that had to be paid to various official bodies that offered very little service in return for hefty sums I have full praise for the planners though. They had the good sense to permit the building of a large house, designed by a total beginner with a veranda and a generous balcony from which to enjoy the view. A building style unjustly avoided in the Roe Valley. In the beginning there was a digger

Time for action. Notice the digger driven by Clive and watched by Wesley, his right-hand man. Don't get the wrong idea though. The machine has hardly started. Most of the open soil you see has been shifted by Tudor, the wonderdog, who thinks that building sites are even more fun than sheep.

An ex house

Here is the moment where the old house bites the dust. It was a pity, but the place was just too badly worn. The stones made an excellent foundation for the road and part of the large yard we plan to build. Considering how long the house had stood there, it took only a slight tap with the digger and it all collapsed in a heap.

After several days' work the splendid new driveway was ready to be examined by the two local experts: Tudor and Meg. The hedge has been cut, so that it doesn't get ripped out by passing heavy vehicle traffic and most cars can now leave the site in what may just pass for one piece, though I know some lorry drivers who would dispute this statement in a loud and angry voice.

Time for some brain-work.

Raymond is trying to make sense of a drawing that has been revised nearly a hundred times during the last few days. Raymond is Clive's dad and the man in charge of operations - or so he thinks.

At the moment the idea is to mark the outline of the house with wooden pegs so that Clive has something to aim at with the digger. In other words - we are going to dig the foundations.

Tudor, the border collie, misunderstood this procedure entirely and thought the pegs were marvellous toys placed there for his private amusement. We didn't mind until he started to pull them out as fast as we could knock them in.

Here is the digger. Clive can handle the big machine like the pro he is, but he still needs Wesley to do the microscopic work with the shovel.

Here is the concrete lorry ensuring the steadiness of our future house. A discreet veil of silence will be drawn over the language of the driver, when he realized he had to reverse his lorry for half a mile because there was no room to turn it in.

After all, this is all in a day's work.

This high up on Benevenagh there is no access to a main sewer - you have to dig your own. Clive and Wesley are adding the finishing touches to the founds of our septic tank and Raymond thinks:

"This is a shite job if ever I saw one".

Let's just re-cap.

We have a septic tank and a discharge pipe going down to the next stream.
We have installed a waterpipe going 150m down to the spring as well as a power line for the pump.
We've got the foundations poured and some nice person has delivered the bricks for the under-floor work.
Meg has just inspected the sand and found it satisfactory. She shouts: "Come on boys, what's holding you back? Get bricking.!"

Mixing cement

No sooner said then done. Wesley has started the mixer and is filling it with cement, sand and water quite lustily. The bricks are waiting, the wheel of the barrow is oiled and the weather is going to be fine.

The boys have had an extra large breakfast and here they are - an elegant bricklayer's tableau watched by an appreciative audience.

Cunning observers will already have noticed that we only think we are building a new home and Raymond just imagines that he is the man in charge. Tudor knows better: This is going to be the dog house of his dreams and he is supervising the work very closely indeed. Should that pup smell a rat, we are all going to be in a lot of trouble.

A few days later it looks like this. Tudor doesn't think it is big enough and Meg wonders what we are going to put on all the floors. Notice the pile of wood on the right. It consists of the larger pieces of various hedges that overgrew nature's bounds and timber from the old house. It is going to heat the new house, given time.

After yet another few days the site looks like this. The filler has arrived and it won't be long until the concrete is poured again. Mind you, the digger has sprung a track and even though it still looks business-like, it can't do a thing!

Heroic deeds were performed during the next few days. The filler has been smoothed and topped with sand, insulation and damp proof course have been laid everywhere and the steel re-inforcement for the back floors has also been installed. Roll on cement transporter and do your worst.

Next installment