Is financing a single-family house feasible for us?

I also say respect ... you will recover eventually, but surely in the future, when others ask you, you will also talk about the difficulties and the slight naivety with which you once started the project. Good luck with the final phase.

Thank you, Pfadfinder, for your honest words!

We won’t be able to avoid the fact that it will be a nerve-wracking, very exhausting time. I just hope that we get through it unscathed.

However, our house is smaller than yours, which hopefully makes a difference when it comes to DIY work. With 230sqm, laying floors, electrical work, and painting takes considerably longer.

In addition, we live rent-free and don’t have any children planned for the next few years. So we can take our time in that regard. We also have 18 months of interest-free period, so here too we don’t have any time pressure for quite a while.
And finally, it’s 500m from our apartment to the house. Our parents/in-laws/other family members/friends also usually live no more than 2km away. That makes things a lot easier again.

Well, now there’s no turning back, so we just have to make sure we manage it.

Next, we have to lay the empty conduits in the upper floor ceiling.
Next weekend we’re having a painting party in the carpentry workshop and will paint the roof overhang together.
Four people have already promised to come, so even if half suddenly back out, we should easily manage it with four.
We also already have six friends who have promised to help us with the garage masonry. Everyone is eager to play mason once.

So it’s STILL going as we hoped, but we will surely get some setbacks when in one year neither we nor our friends have any motivation left for extra work...

Current status:
- Masonry finished. Everything went perfectly.
- In the last few days, the roof was put on. After it rained partly, I could have imagined nicer things than helping with it.
But in the end, it was an interesting experience.
Tomorrow the roof will still be covered

Hi Hausbautraum20,

Wow, you’re actually making good progress, respect. You really have great conditions for a lot of EL in your framework. Back then I naively didn’t pay attention to the interest-free period, for example. Although today I’d bet that even if I had considered 1 year realistic. Rent-free is, of course, a luxury as well as the proximity to the construction site.

For us, it is currently the case that we moved out of the apartment last Saturday. Three months’ notice period and then we already had a new tenant, so we couldn’t change anything anymore when we realized we were missing 4 weeks.

We’ve now moved in with my parents. The furniture we took with us (bed, sofa, chairs) we could already put in 2 finished rooms as well as our boxes. The rest is in the basement.

Current status is: with sanding and filling we are mostly done, just some fine filling here and there. Some rooms upstairs are already painted and the flooring is just now in 2 rooms. One bathroom is tiled. I actually wanted to do that myself too but then decided to hire someone and I’m glad about that.

The kitchen is expected to come in calendar week 49 and the interior doors in calendar week 48. By then everything should be finished.

Having children wasn’t urgent for us at first, but since the kids’ rooms have been built, my wife sees it differently; I’m ready too, you don’t get younger after all. So we are still working on that.

I think you’ll pull it off better than we do. I really feel worn down more and more each day and my enthusiasm is fading too. This week I haven’t made it to the construction site even once in the evening although I only live about 500m away as the crow flies. But I always got home late from the office.

Keep us updated, I’m very curious how it continues and I’m happy about every step you make further.

Thank you for your kind words!

I can well imagine that it gets more exhausting from week to week.
For us, it’s a bit easier because we don’t do everything OURSELVES, but the parents/in-laws help out properly.
But I believe by the time the flooring is done, all of us will have run out of energy as well.

The situation with your apartment is unfortunate. Fortunately, you at least have a place to stay!

I can well imagine the desire to have children once the kids' rooms are ready
But there’s nothing wrong with waiting until the house is finished. It’s actually all perfect
The relationship has obviously survived the stress so far, and that’s something valuable too

Current status: We are diligently using the vacation days for working. Slots for cables and other rough work are now mostly finished. The windows will arrive at the beginning of January :)