They started with a piece of land bought for £70,000
A couple are saving more than £100,000 by building their own house – using polystyrene blocks instead of bricks. Hannah Bird and her husband, Charlie, a professional golfer, both 26, bought the 0.25-acre plot of land in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, in June 2022 for £70,000.
They chose to build a home from scratch rather than buy a new-build property, with prices in their area starting at £375,000 for a two-bed on a new estate. To avoid having to pay for £30,000 in labour costs, the pair have done 80 per cent of the work themselves and opted for polystyrene blocks – called ICF (insulated concrete framework) – which slot together and are filled with concrete.
Their 140sqm home is around halfway through the building process, with the roof due to go on shortly and tunnelling for electricity and water almost complete. Hannah estimates they will have saved £100,000 by doing the majority of the work themselves and will be left with a two-bed, one office, detached home with a garage and eight parking spaces. They expect to complete the building process and be able to move in in the summer of 2026.
Hannah, a travel blogger from Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, said: “We originally always wanted to renovate, but the renos in our area were £200,000 and had no roof. We did look at new builds, but they’re not for us.
“We knew so many people with new builds whose stairs broke or pipes broke two weeks in. We didn’t have many options – we thought ‘well, we either live with our parents until we die or we buy somewhere’.
“We completed on our land in Easter 2023. In December 2023 we went to a build show. They had really cool stuff there, including three different suppliers doing these blocks.
“For what a bricklayer took a week to do, together we could do in an hour. We did the up to DPC (damp proof course) level in a couple days.”
Hannah said they sent their house plans off to the company that supplied the blocks to assess how many they would need and a representative visited them on-site to run them through the process of fitting them.
“It’s literally like Lego,” she said. “It’s idiot-proof. We did scroll a lot on Instagram and TikTok because we were like, ‘are we doing this right?’ It seemed too easy to start with.”
Hannah and Charlie’s plot already had planning for a “small two-bed property”, but the couple applied to make it into a two-bed, one office, home in 2023 before starting the build on the blank plot of land in April 2024 after it was successfully granted.
Hannah said: “The first thing we did was clear the land and put up some fencing. The driveway before was absolutely horrendous.
“It was two metres wide. I used to drive a Mini and I could just about drive it down let alone drive a lorry down it.
“We used recycled Tarmac, which I didn’t know was a thing. We just hired a roller thing and got my sister, Lauren, 24, to drive it down. We planted lots of nice trees and bushes, flowers, all sorts.”
The couple have a strict budget and have saved their money through college and university throughout their seven-year relationship.
Hannah said: “£100,000 is the total amount we’re going to spend on the house fully excluding the cost of the plot of land. Inside we’ll have a nice kitchen, nice bathrooms – Charlie’s obsessed with having a laundry chute.
“We do want heated floors. If you bought a house in our area you would pay £375,000 and that’s for a rubbish one.
“We’re going to spend less than £200,000 all in, hopefully. We’re making a lot of profit doing it ourselves.
“I suppose it’s no different to doing a renovation, but the fact is essentially we’re making more money doing it from scratch. We’re taking the time to save more money.
“I don’t think we’re going to stay there forever, but we’ll stay a good amount of time. We’re not allowed to sell for two years, otherwise we’ve got to pay a horrendous amount of tax. I think we’ve got a little bit of a bug doing stuff ourselves – we’ve already looked at renos in our area.”
The couple, who spend a lot of time travelling, are staying with their parents in Burnham-on-Sea until they can finally move in the summer of 2026.
Charlie and Hannah’s costs
Plot of land: £70,000
Plot preparation and groundwork: around £18,000
ICF structure, concrete and steel: around £40,000
Roof and windows: around £22,000
Plumbing, electrics and heating: around £18,000
Internal works and finishes: around £22,000
Total: £190,000