The end of the beginning?

First a quick introduction... My wife and I have been together for almost 10 years now, we discovered early on we had several common interests, one of which was to build our own home. It's only been in more recent years that we have found ourselves in the financial position to start seriously looking for a plot for this dream.

In fact, we started looking around in 2006, the height of the property boom, with land being bought up at a dramatic pace by developers. Fortunately in July 2008 we were made aware of a plot quite local to us, this was it we thought, now or never!

After a little bit of haggling over price, a holiday in between and a little bit of confusion caused by the usual estate agent wranglings, we agreed a price and had our offer accepted in September 2008.

Here we are toward the end of March 2009 and we're on the verge of exchanging contracts... Hooray!

Why the length of time in between? Well, first there was the need for the seller to get planning permission to allow us to secure our self-build mortgage, that took its time, and again came with a few misunderstandings; did it need to be outline, detailed, what about the fact that it didn't represent exactly what we intended to build? Then there was the usual drawn out dealings with solicitors and an interesting rights of way issue.

Once the exchange has happened, we can get on with the real business of designing our future home... the end of the beginning is upon us.

What happens next should be fun and what's written here will hopefully be frank, showing the highlights and lowlights of doing it yourself and insightful for those interested in doing their own self-build.