Halfway up a ladder, paint in your hair, you’re tired but you’ve almost finished the fascia. You think of all the money you are saving and when you stand back and look at the great result, you know it’s been worth it. For most people, this is what “Owner Building” is all about – Participation – getting involved, getting it right, having the satisfaction of achievement and best of all saving lots of money.

Today we are bombarded by thousands of ways to spend our hard earned dollar, so applying resourcefulness to help stretch our budgets is becoming the norm. With our aspirations usually exceeding our budgets the “do it yourself” industry is booming. This is especially so within the building industry where a good part of the work is semi skilled. Painting, tiling, simple carpentry etc.. is well within the capacity of most of us to do ourselves, and the resulting savings can be channelled into a better quality finish, a larger home or a reduced mortgage. Storybook Cottages has a specially developed ‘Owner Builder Assistance Program’ to help these resourceful folk, marketing our designs and services exclusively to Owner Builders.

Our Owner Builder program is extremely flexible. Carefully prepared budgets reflect clients varying degrees of participation. In most instances our clients arrange tradespeople to construct their home structurally and participate to a greater extent with the less demanding post lock-up completion items. Ninety percent of our clients do their own painting, wall and floor tiling etc.. and to a lesser extent many take on the more demanding areas like installing plaster and completing carpentry. Often clients have friends or relatives who also pitch in. Our clients follow carefully prepared budgets when purchasing completion items. This assists greatly in avoiding budget blow-outs.

For those on tight budgets, we sometimes suggest that they apply themselves to hunting out sound second hand items like internal doors, bathroom fittings, wood heaters, hot water services etc.. even complete kitchens. Often these products are as good as, or better than new once restored. By purchasing all of the fixtures and fittings themselves, each client puts their own individual stamp on the end result. In any event, the level of owner participation and choice of fittings is a personal decision that is determined by each clients budget, level of skill and confidence, available time to do any work, and their desired quality of finish.