Owning your own home

If the planning permission has already been granted then it shouldn't be a problem. It would be a matter of checking the dimensions of the dwelling are suitable for you and resubmitting the application. However, it would be worth checking with the adjacent neighbour to see if they would raise any objections before doing so.

As for building your own home. Would you actually build it yourself or get someone to do it for you?

If you're doing it yourself, you're in for a long journey. Firstly a double garage will probably have a hard standing that is completely unsuitable for domestic contruction so you'll need to dig all of it up and get rid of it. Next there's foundations to lay. This is the most complicated part of any construction and needs to be done exactly right. If the council get any idea that you don't actually know how to build a house, they will be watching you like a hawk and you will often have to work to their schedule, which can be very time consuming and frustrating.

Also, don't imagine that it's that cheap. Unless you know all the building regs and so on you pretty much have to get and arcitect to do all the technical drawings and so on. Prices will ramp up pretty quickly. If you want to do this sort of thing, it can be much easier to recommision and refurbish an existing property such as a disused substation or exchange.

We emailed the surrounding neighbors giving them a rough idea of our plans and they all seem to be positive. I've drawn up a rough idea of what I want and my cousin who is now about to become an Architect has agreed to make them workable.

The next step will be planning permission. Due to my design, essentially a four storey rectangular box (I had do build up due to the size restrictions of 40sqm) Im concerned that the planner wont like it because it will obviously be fairly different from the other 70's council houses that is sits amongst.

The main structure will be built by professionals. All in I have a budget of about £110'000 (minus £20'000 for the land) which is very tight but hopefully possible.

@Hippy - Congrats on the new home. Do you have somewhere to put all your bikes now?