Couple build their dream home and six others on Seahouses plot
IT’S certainly not every couple’s idea of a retirement dream but for former IT consultants, Trish and Steve Williams, becoming project managers on a building site is the perfect solution to their own personal housing crisis.
Trish and Steve had been searching in vain for their perfect home on the Northumberland coast for a few years. Having lived in an old Victorian house in Tynemouth, they were looking to down size to somewhere modern and easy to maintain with a garden.
It seemed the dream might elude them forever, until they just happened to spot a site for sale in July 2011, on farmland at North Sunderland.
The major drawback was that the site was for seven properties when they really only wanted one. Undaunted, Trish and Steve decided to turn the project into a new career and to manage the development of seven houses on the site, including one for themselves.
They approached George F White Chartered Surveyors and worked with partner Richard Garland and architect Tim Brook to bring the site forward. The end result is St Cuthbert Close, consisting of seven serviced, self-build plots with full planning permission. One plot is reserved for Steve and Trish and another is sold, subject to contract, with the remaining five plots available now, priced at £120,000 each.
Steve said: “Work is planned to start around Easter, to widen the road for site access and begin to bring in services, and the house building should begin in May/June. Trish and I are hoping to have moved in for Christmas.”
Trish added: “Becoming a site manager certainly wasn’t on my wish list of things to do a few years ago. But now that I’m here, it’s certainly fun, and never a dull moment!”
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Saturday 18 May 2013
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