A Nice House With No Mortgage
This weekend we went to look at a friend's house out in the country. He had built it himself ...with help from his sons. It was a beautiful stone cottage, perfectly proportioned with French-style windows, shutters, and a clay tile roof. On the inside, was a terra cotta floor, exposed beams, and a wood stove.
"Yes, we just built it ourselves. You know, nowadays you can't do this. You certainly can't do this in England. I'm sure you can't do it in America either. But we just didn't say anything about. And we did it all ourselves so not many people knew about it."
The house was hidden from the road by a dense hedge.
"And cheap? The whole house barely cost anything. We got a few truck loads of stone delivered. Then, I just bought mortar - one bag at a time - as I needed it. We recycled the floor tile. And the roof tile too. And we made the wood beams ourselves. We just cut down a couple trees and then cut them to the sizes we wanted. It took a little time. But we just did it on weekends and vacations. One of my nephews came to help too. It was fun.
"The only things that really cost money were the roof tiles, which we had to buy...and the doors and windows, which we had made by a local woodworker. Everything else was very cheap or we found it or recycled it ourselves. So, in the end, we have a nice house with no mortgage."
Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia
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About the Author
Best-selling investment author Bill Bonner is the founder and president of Agora Publishing, one of the world's most successful consumer newsletter companies. Owner of both Fleet Street Publications and MoneyWeek magazine in the UK, he is also author of the free daily e-mail The Daily Reckoning.
Comment by prozak on 20 October 2009:
You most certainly CAN build your own house in England and most likely any other country in the world.
What a preposterous thing to say.
Maybe this guy doesn't have planning... perhaps that is what he is saying... he doesn't have planning and has built on a green belt where building is restricted... which is totally irresponsible....
If that is the case I eagerly await your next article with the title:
"A nice pile of rubble with no mortgage"
Comment by Ned S on 20 October 2009:
Good for him - Build house, buy gun - Bend barrel on copper's knee when council bulldozers turn up (I'm reasonably non-violent - Smile!) And cop a few years inside living well - It's called an "alternative" retirement plan perhaps? Build, bend ... bastille! Build, bend ... bastille! Hmmm ... Could work for me? [As a potential alternative] ... Ta Bill - All grist to the mill!
Do any of you other DRA readers ever get the feeling BB is having a bit of fun "taking the piss"? [A life spent analysing the activities of the US Fed has to deserve a bit of comedic relief occassionally surely?]
Comment by mike on 21 October 2009:
...most people want to move into a fully grown house, and are willing to sell themselves to the bank for the privilege rather than build the house they can afford, then add to it room by room overtime...as brenda colvin writes in "land and landscape", "the artificial completion of the project at one stroke is one of those means by which civilization( or that sophistocation which we call civilization) impoverishes the realities of living in time"...