My wife and I decided on building our house in the Philippines after our arrival in April of 2006. It wasn't an instant decision and there were a lot of factors involved. The best way to explain everything is to allow you to follow along as I describe everything that happened, from start to finish.

The Original Plan

Our original plan was to take the money we had earned from the sale of our house in the US and buy a decent house, already built, somewhere in Olongapo City, Philippines. We spent a month looking around and found a few that we liked.

The problem we faced was that of the houses we liked, most were overpriced and some of them had been pawned to renters. I'll have to explain the pawning thing someday. Anyway, the short version of this is that we couldn't find a house that met our requirements and we decided to have a house built.

The Final Plan

More than a year (and I can't remember how long it really was) before moving to the Philippines, my wife bought the lot next to her mother's lot. Her mother's lot doesn't really belong to her mother. It belongs to us, but that's another story I'll have to relate at another time.

Before we decided to use our lot, we looked around for empty lots throughout the city. After seeing what was available, the lot we already owned ended up being the logical choice. I didn't like living so close to the in-laws, but it made the most financial sense out of all the options we had at the time.

One of my wife's brothers-in-law used to work in construction. My wife ended up hiring a contractor through him. The guy was a lousy contractor, but none of us knew that at the time.

Before Construction

Our lot sits next to a big creek. From the road, downhill to the end of the property, it was an uneven slope with a huge Santol tree in the middle of it. The tree had to be uprooted and part of the land needed to be leveled.

It took the construction crew more than two weeks to get the tree out. Getting the trunk on up was the easy part. Uplifting the roots, which were extremely huge, is what took all the work. The lousy backhoe they were using didn't help matters as it kept overheating.

Building Our House

The skeleton of the house started being built shortly after the Santol tree was completely removed. The house was being built on the front half of the property. The foundation was laid without any leveling being done first. That should've clued us in to how lousy the contractor was, but it didn't. They ended up doing the leveling the hard way, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I watched the forms being pulled away from the skeleton in June of 2006. I and my wife were able to walk around on the second floor (the first flooring for the first floor wasn't even in place) to see how much space we would have when it was all done. It didn't look like a lot but at that stage, looks can be deceiving.

Construction was impeded by heavy rain near the end of the month. It lasted for a couple of days, but every day drags when you're anxiously waiting for something. Construction was again impeded, for quite a few days, in July and August. Tropical Storm Bilis (which became Typhoon Florita) was in the area during the second week of July, followed by Typhoon Glenda in the fourth week, and then Tropical Storm Hendy during the first week of August. Anyway, the monsoon rains continued after the storms left, causing construction to slow down tremendously.

I and the wife returned to the US for two weeks in August to attend my older son's wedding. When we got back, the roof was on the house and the first coat of paint was on. The staircase wasn't finished and some of the plumbing was yet to be put in place.

The house was almost done during the first week of September, but they had to go back and fix all the mistakes that were caused by shoddy workmanship. It was done before the end of September, but we had to wait until another storm, Typhoon Milenyo, left the area before we could move in.

We finally moved in during the first week of October, more than four month after construction started.

Cost and Other Factors

The total cost of the house itself was 2.4 million pesos (around $48,000 in US dollars at the time). The cost didn't include the things we had to do ourselves.

We ended up hiring our own person to fix the electrical and plumbing problems. We paid to have a rock wall built to separate the lot from the creek and to connect with the rock wall behind my mother-in-law's lot in the back. We also paid for the materials and had relatives build our front fence.

Due to being misinformed, we wasted money on a water pressure tank and a water pump (before we hired our person) when what we really needed was a gravity tank. I'll address that in a later article.

Nearly Two Years Later

Due to other, unforeseeable expenses, we haven't finished everything we need to do with our house. We haven't completed the finishing on the interior of our front fence (which includes an area UNDER the driveway). We haven't completed the part of the house to be attached to the rear, which is a combination laundry room and dirty kitchen.

We have furniture in the house, but one bedroom is unfurnished and three windows are without venetian blinds, like the rest of them. We have most of the appliances we need, but we don't have televisions or audio equipment.

My wife, who is in the US right now, will be returning on the 27th of this month (via Philippine Airlines I might add) for a period of a month. Why she's leaving again is another long story that I can't get into right now. While she's here, however, we're going to take what little I've managed to save and do as many things with the house as we can.

I will not include any pictures of our house or the property until everything's completed, even if it takes another year. Due to the length of this article, I'll get into more specific details in future articles.