101 Things #25 - Housebuild

One of the more outlandish bucket list suggestions found on the internet, that we will dissect today in our series 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die  comes from Pick Your Goals, where they suggest that I should

Build My Own House.

  Obviously this is not going to happen. It was never going to happen. I have lived nearly all my life in London, have been in full time employment for all of it up to my retirement a few years ago and have few skills in architecture, design, building, carpentry, electrics, plumbing, roofing and interior decoration. Why on earth would I wish to dedicate myself to the enormous task of building a house?

There are people who do build their homes. They have lots of time, enough funds and sufficient know-how. They usually build them in secluded country areas. Here, in beautiful Ruislip, land is very expensive, there are building regulations that tell you the standards needed for residential use and planning regulations that determine where you can build, what it can look like and how big. It can be done, certainly, but as I would like to have a few stress-free years, it is not going to be me that starts the long process of local construction.

Of course it is much easier in the United States where this idea originates. Land is cheap and easy to find (if you are happy to live in semi-desert or in the decaying spaces around the rust-belt cities). Construction techniques are simpler too, with wooden frame houses being the norm in a great many places. You don't need to build an upstairs if you've got lots of space to spread out, though a basement is a good idea.Yet to do it oneself is still a massive task and is bound to involve hiring people to do the heavy lifting and digging.

I suppose by "build" could be meant that you design the house and then get others to do the actual construction. That always used to be understood when you heard about someone having a house built; it really meant they paid for it to be built from scratch. Just doing the pure design might be fun, up to a point. Using computer software to lay out the rooms, colour in the wallpaper and place furniture here and there is a clever way to see what it would look like. On the other hand any fool can mess about with a design app - the architecture still has to work - the walls have got to support the load placed on them, the layout has to be sensible for whoever is going to live there - and you still have to get someone to build it.

Some bucket-list ideas are inspirational and achievable. I don't think this one is, certainly not for the vast majority of people, and on this occasion I am happy to be part of the majority.