Whoever said building a house is arduous is so damn right! The tougher part is in homing on the house plan and the design. The trouble is not the lack of ideas but the multitude of them. You can easily be swamped with hundreds of ideas. It gets even more complicated if you don’t go to a professional architect.
We decided against going to an architect. Partly to take on the challenge of doing it ourselves and partly to save on the cost. There’s a special joy in ideating on your own and coming up with your own design. That’s what me and my Dad did. My wife and Mom pitched in with their ideas. Even the kids rhymed in.
We were certain that we wanted an earthy feel to the home and the design has to be as close to the village style as possible. We need to do this without compromising on safety and comfort.
We firmed up on the design and started the foundation work. We chose a venue that is at the centre of our 7 acre property. The idea is to be as secluded from the road and the neighbors’ as possible. Right now, its barren land but soon the house will be shielded with layers of trees.
Leveling the land using a bulldozer. Here in the village, people call this as JCB and not a bulldozer. What an amazing brand recall for the company!
This land was once full of thorn trees. For over 30 years, it was uncultivated. Now, all those thorn trees have been uprooted and the land is being leveled. You’ll soon see this place completely transformed.
That’s the marking for the septic tank. The JCB, using the excavator bucket, is getting prepared to dig a 5 feet pit. This machine is damn powerful. So glad these are available for hire. They cost about Rs.600 per hour which comes with a very talented driver.
Here, these two men, fine tune the pit’s side walls to make it even.
The foundation pit digging work is now complete. What’s next is laying a layer of brick rubble at the bottom of the pit. After that is when the concrete pillars will be raised. All this work was done in a half-day’s work. In olden days, it would have taken 3 days for a dozen men to complete this work!
