The End !!

Strangely, exactly three years to the day since we submitted our planning application for our house (October 21st, 2008), we have today signed off on all outstanding Building Regulations and Planning requirements, meaning that our house is 'officially' complete :-)

We do, of course, still have things to do - like finish the bathroom, fill in the hole in the garden where the soakaway is, tarmac the last few metres of the service trench, but the paperwork is all signed and sealed now, which is a great relief. The ten year NHBC guarantee has now come into effect, and we can look at our options for buildings and contents insurance, and of course re-mortgaging the property to pull out some of the equity we have worked so hard for. Unfortunately, most of this will be going immediately to pay off our debts, in particularly to my parents who were kind enough to lend us the money to re-do the rendering - without which I'm not sure we'd have been able to actually complete the project!

www.selfbuilder.tv has the full episode from Wednesday night (episode 15), if you would like to watch us talk about the experience, and see some cool shots of the finished house.

I'm not going to do the whole Oscar speech thing just yet, I'll continue posting to update this blog until the house is truly finished (probably into November), and then I'll sum up the experience and do all our thank-yous etc, but suffice to say we're going to have a few bottles of wine tonight. I think I'm finally happy to say we deserve it :)