Why Skye? - Our Story

Above - the finished house.

It is said that the two most stressful things you can do in life are to get married and to move home. In 2004 Carol and I got married in New Zealand, sold our two houses in Somerset and moved to the Isle of Skye to build a new home.

It was an easy choice of location. The quiet lifestyle and breathtaking scenery are hard to match, and the weather, well you can’t have it all but when it’s good it’s stunning.

We first encountered SkyeHomes through their website when we were still living in Somerset. At that stage it was not clear whether we would be buying or building, but after looking at prices, layout and location of many properties it became clear that we would get much more for our money by building.

Above - Loch Greshornish from the site

However, finding a plot of land that matched our vision of where we wanted to live on Skye proved much harder than expected. By a pure stroke of luck during one of our preliminary visits to the island we heard that some building land was available whilst talking to SkyeHomes in their Portree office. Within an hour a shake of hands had secured the land just ahead of another offer, such is the demand for good building sites on Skye.

The decision to use SkyeHomes as the supplier of the timber frame home was an easy one, having met them on a couple of our house-hunting visits, viewed one of their satisfied customers’ home, and done our own research. The quality and traditional styling of their homes together with a willingness to accommodate every bespoke change to a standard design that we came up with gave us the confidence to proceed with what was a move into the unknown, in location, build method and also build culture.

Above - Early stages of the build

Our next big hurdle was finding a builder to build the house. This is where the real work began, and where the realisation of what we were getting into first hit. Our attempts at getting a price for the build either went unanswered or offered a start date 12 months away. It was only by a stroke of luck and through a local contact we found ourselves a builder able to start quickly.

We were promised a home to move into inside 4 months, but naively we had not accounted for the protracted planning process and the actual build did not start until some 3 months after we had moved into rented accommodation nearby. But, true to his word, our builder had a house for us to move into just 3 months after the timber frame kit had been delivered to site.

It took us a further 3 months to get all of the internal decoration of the house completed, in between the numerous visitors coming to stay, probably to check up on us to see if we were still of sound mind.

Above - the interior

We now have the house finished as we want it and still have to pinch ourselves regularly to believe that the whole relocation has really worked just as we had dreamt.

It has not all been plain sailing, and there were many nights spent with a cup of tea at 3am working through the house plans or material invoices or financial spreadsheets. However, if we did it again there is not much we would change. If I were asked for advice on doing as we did it would be thus: -

• It will take longer than you think to find the right plot of land.

• It will take longer than you think to get planning approval.

• It will take longer than you think to find the right builder.

• Once started the house site will consume building materials faster than you can get it delivered.

• The end result is worth every minute of panic, chaos, frustration and misery while the build is in progress.

Yes, on reflection we were very lucky with our choices, but if we were trying to do all this from a home elsewhere it just wouldn’t have happened. The best decision of all that we made was to move to Skye early to oversee the build, and to be on the spot to chase the service providers, source the fittings, answer build queries, photograph the entire build for posterity and to keep the site teapot brewing.

Peter Steer. August 2005