BUILDING EDEN - How we built our home with zero experience and not enough money

By OGE AUSTIN-CHUKWU

Ever had a dream that was much bigger than your resources?  Or took a risk with far-reaching consequences that meant failure was not an option?  In this book, Oge Austin-Chukwu writes about one of the greatest adventures of her life – building her home from scratch.

Join her on this rollercoaster of a ride; experience the highs and the lows and discover how she and her family accomplished the improbable, against all odds.  This book will make you laugh or cry, but above all, it will show you how to accomplish your own dreams by remaining focused and not giving up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: OGE AUSTIN-CHUKWU
• Release date: Feb 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201664268

OGE AUSTIN-CHUKWU

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Oge Austin-Chukwu left her lucrative medical practice to pursue her dream of helping people achieve their highest goals and biggest dreams.  As a Leadership/Executive Coach and Property Developer, she invests her time helping people dream bigger and achieve more.  Through speaking, writing and Coaching, she helps individuals and organisations create and achieve compelling visions for their personal and work lives.  She is the founder of Reach Coaching and Co-founder of Mok Properties Ltd.  Oge is married to Austin.  They have two children and live in Essex, England.

Book preview

Introduction

Stop. Before you skip to the next page, read this...

This book is not intended as a manual for self-build.  I am merely telling my story.  We took risks I wouldn’t advise anyone to take, unless they firmly believe in what they are doing. We made mistakes that proved costly, both in time and money. In the course of reading, you’ll find that I acknowledge my faith in the Christian God, because it is an integral part of who I am. Regardless of if you believe in a Higher Power or not, I hope it doesn’t keep you from enjoying our adventure.  I also hope you’ll learn something that will change your life in some way; perhaps spur you on to go after your own impossible dreams, even if it has nothing to do with building your own home.  Whatever your dream may be, the principles for making them reality are the same.  At the very least, I hope you enjoy reading about our experience.  You may have picked this book up out of curiosity; you have no intention of building your own home.  That’s ok.  I too, like a good story any day.

The events are not always in chronological order because I believe it reads better that way.  I haven’t included every single detail of the build project; otherwise, this book would be twice its size.  Besides, this is not a how-to guide – I leave that to more experienced builders.  While you will definitely learn a thing or two (even if it’s how not to self-build), it is not a book about the technicalities of house building. I barely have a grasp of these technicalities myself.  I have had to change some names and places, for legal reasons; I don’t want to end up in court.  The figures quoted are correct for the year of the build - 2019 - but I am quite sure things have moved on since then.

It goes without saying that I firmly believe ‘all things are possible to him/her that believes."

Oge

Contents

Part One - The Dream      page 6

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Part Two – The Search       page 16

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Part Three - The Build   page 30

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Part Four - The Move and Beyond page 74

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Conclusion     page 81

The Dream

I can’t say exactly when the desire first settled.  I use the word ‘settle’ because that is how it felt. Just like falling snow settles slowly at first, then before you know it, the pavement is covered in inches of snow; this is similar to how the desire to build my own home crept upon me surreptitiously.  At first, it wasn’t clear to me what it was my heart was longing for. 

After I first came to live in the United Kingdom, for a number of years, I had a thing for property.  A friend of ours told us how he had put down just £99 as a deposit for a home in a new development in South East London.  At the time, we didn’t even own our own home.  We were renting, hopping from one town to the other, in the true fashion of a trainee doctor – this was before the Royal Colleges got their act together and streamlined doctors’ training. Our friends were in the same boat as we were; newbies in a country that wasn’t our birth country, hustling to complete our post graduate medical training so that we could start to live like normal human beings instead of examination machines.

Shortly after buying their first home, our friends bought another property as an investment.  We were intrigued.  It didn’t matter that Austin (my husband) and I were still trying to get to grips with being married, having kids and burning the midnight oil, studying for post graduate exams.  Or that we didn’t really have money that could do more than pay our rent, make sure the bills were paid on time and provide for our two kids.  Seeing our friends achieve all of this, we decided that if our friends could find a way, then so could we.  The only difference between them and us was that they had no kids, so, no dependents.

The annoying thing about dreams is, they don’t ask your permission to invade your thoughts.  They don’t ask if you have money in the bank or the wherewithal to make them come true.  They don’t even ask if you’re ready for them.  But then I suppose they wouldn’t be dreams if you could pick them off the pavement like a shiny penny an unwitting person drops. Or, get rid of them at will.

I believe my love affair with property began right then, when we watched our friends take hold of their destiny in that way.  I think that’s when a seed so tiny it was barely perceptible, was sown in my heart.  It was a seed nonetheless, and the thing about seeds is, although they seem to die right after they are planted, they have this habit of popping up when you least expect it.  Such was my dream to own property, not just one, but several, that we could let out and get passive income from.

When we finally bought our first home, we were older than the average couple in the United Kingdom would have been when they became first time homeowners.  We had come to live here as adults, and thus, didn’t have parents who lived locally that we could live with while we saved for the deposit for a house.  So, it took us a while to buy our first house, but in less than two years, we re-mortgaged our house and took some equity out to buy a small one-bedroom house in London that we let out.  It was one of those decisions that was scary to make at the time, but in hindsight, it was indeed one of the best decisions we ever made.  A few years later, we re-mortgaged that first buy-to-let to buy another property, this time in Preston, where we were living at the time. So, now, we had a small portfolio and I could really see how possible it was to earn passive income through property.

Our first home was a new build in a nice suburb of Preston and we were very grateful to have been able to buy it.  Those were the days when all you needed was a 5% deposit and houses up north were very affordable.  It was a four-bedroom house that had cost less than a hundred grand, and for the first few weeks, our living room furniture was a couple of wooden foldable chairs that a friend who was emigrating had given us.  Having been renting prior to buying, we didn’t have much furniture.  Thank goodness the floor was carpeted, and our young kids thought sitting on the carpet was great fun!  They were too young to figure out that we just didn’t have the money to buy all the furniture we needed before we moved.  It was all we could manage to scrape together the deposit, saving all we could from our junior doctor salaries.

We didn’t live in Preston for too long.  It was far away from the few friends we had (we didn’t have any family in the United Kingdom) at the time, and it rained all the time up there!  Once Austin and I had completed the last bit of our training, we decided to move back down south where the sun wasn’t so shy and it wasn’t so lonely.  Our second home was more than double the cost of our first, not because it was any bigger, but simply because it was in the South East of England where house prices have always been considerably more than it is in the North.  This time though, we did have money for furniture thanks to our home having appreciated by 55% in the three years we had owned it!  Those were the years of the house boom before the burst of 2008!

We had lived in our second home for about two years when I began to feel like I wanted something different. This wasn’t a feeling I cared to share with my husband, Austin, since we had just spent most of our savings relocating down south from the much cheaper North of England.  Just like our first home had been, our current home was a modern house on a nice estate that came with its fair share of green, open spaces.  There were houses that boasted of well-manicured lawns, a considerable number of luxury cars parked outside them, and impeccably kept parks.  Even the dogs were generally well-behaved and the usual quota of affordable housing was not so affordable.

We had been informed by the estate agents when we were looking for property to buy, that it was considered a rather nice place to live, even posh by certain standards.  For us the important thing was that it looked like a safe place to bring our kids up, and it was close to good links out of the town, so, Austin’s commute to the next town could be easier.  The development itself was less than 20 years old, and whilst it didn’t boast of a grocery store or a school, there was a supermarket in the neighbouring estate that was a walking distance. 

Our house was at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, which meant hardly any traffic, and the walkway in front was ideal for bike riding for our two kids, under Mama’s watchful gaze.  It was a lovely place to live, and I should have been more content.  I was.  Most of the time.  Not sure exactly what my heart was yearning for; it wasn’t until after a weekend away with some good friends that enlightenment came. It wasn’t often we could go away without kids (in fact, not having parents who lived close by meant it was something we rarely ever did), so, we jumped at this opportunity to hang out with two other couples in an old manor in the Cotswolds.

Nestled in a