A reader writes:
I have read this site for a while, and I keep seeing people ask how to build when the bank will not lend to you. I am not an expert and I do not want anybody to think my way is the right way. But I promised myself that if the house ever finished, I would tell somebody how it happened, because when I started, nobody told me anything that was not either a sermon or a warning.
I am a school cook. My son was nine when I started and he is fifteen now. The land came from my grandmother, and my uncle and I had the title sorted out properly first, which took nearly two years by itself and is a different story. When that was done I had a lot of dirt, a strong back, and a salary that no bank officer took seriously.
So I joined two pardners. One at work, one at church. My hand at work fell in August, so I knew every year that August was foundation money, or blocks money, or roof money. The church one was smaller and I used it for steel and the little things. I was always behind on something. There were months I threw my hand and then had to borrow from my sister for taxi fare. I am not proud of that part.
The first thing I did right, and I only understand now that it was right, was I kept the house small and plain. I had seen too many houses in my district that start big with columns for a second floor and then sit for ten years with steel rusting in the air. I asked a draughtsman to draw me a two-bedroom with a shower and a small kitchen, but I told him I wanted to be able to add a third bedroom and a verandah later without breaking down anything. He put the future bedroom on the plan in dotted lines. I still have that page. I used to look at those dotted lines when I was tired.
He also made the roof a simple hip shape and kept all the plumbing on one side of the house, the kitchen and bathroom back to back. He said it would save pipe and save trouble. It did. When I see these designs now with bathrooms at every corner, I understand how much money that one choice saved me.
The labour is where I have to give God thanks, and my community. I paid a mason, Mr B., for the skilled work, the foundation and the columns and the setting out. I would never let anybody who was not trained do those parts, and he was firm with me about that too. But for digging, carrying blocks, mixing, passing buckets, and clearing, I had people. My cousin’s boys. Two brothers from church. A neighbour who is a mechanic and does not know much about building but knows how to keep a mixer running. Once, eleven people came on a Saturday to throw the concrete for the floor, and the church sisters cooked in my aunty’s yard. I cried that night, and not from tiredness.
I will be honest that it was not all sweet. Free labour is not free. You feed people, you give them bus fare, you listen to their advice even when it is wrong. One Saturday a group mixed the concrete too wet and Mr B. made them break out a section, and there was vexation for weeks. One of the young men took a bag of cement home and I never said anything, which I still think about. And people remember. Even now, when somebody who helped needs something, I feel I cannot say no.
There was a year, the fourth year, when I nearly stopped. The walls were up to the window level and then my son got sick and all the money went there. Grass grew inside the house. A neighbour said to me, kindly, that maybe I should sell the lot as it was. I went to church that Sunday and the pastor read from Haggai, where the people had let the house of God lie in ruins, and I know that verse is not about my little house. But the phrase “consider your ways” stayed with me. I did not feel condemned. I felt asked. So I considered. And I decided to go on, slower, one row of blocks at a time, and to stop comparing myself with the people whose houses went up in eighteen months.
We moved in when it was not finished. No ceiling in the second bedroom, a curtain for a door, a concrete floor with no tiles. My son did not care. He had his own room for the first time. That first night the rain came down on the roof and none of it came inside, and I sat in the dark kitchen and I just listened to it.
The third bedroom is still dotted lines. Maybe next August.
If I could tell another woman one thing, it would be this. Design the house for your life and your pocket, not for the road to see. And count the people. A house built by many hands comes with many relationships, and those are worth more than the blocks, but they have to be looked after too.
— Paulette, Clarendon
Editor’s note
Paulette’s letter carries two lessons worth underlining. First, design can make a slow build possible. A compact plan, a simple roof, plumbing grouped together and a clearly drawn future extension let her build in stages without waste or demolition. Anyone building from savings may find it worth asking a draughtsman or architect specifically for a plan that can be finished in phases.
Second, community help is a gift that carries obligations of care on both sides. Keeping skilled and structural work in trained hands, as her mason insisted, protects everyone. And gratitude, fairly shown, keeps the relationships as sound as the walls.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
Visit our YouTube Community ↗