I lived in the Philippines from 1993 until 2002, then my wife and our (fairly new) daughter and I shipped out to England.

We stayed there for eight years, but found it got stagnant and stale, so we moved back to the Philippines just over a year ago.

Plans were to NOT buy a house or any land until we had been here at least a year, but you know how that goes…..

First thing to do was acquire some land. We were already renting a house in the area we knew we wanted to live, a guarded and fenced ‘secure’ subdivision called Timog Park, so we bought 300 square metres not 300 yards from our house. This cost the equivalent of about £20,000

Mum in law guarding the joint, just after the wall was built.



After a bit of a frustrating search around we engaged the services of an American contractor who had recently set up a business over there. We had a look at a couple of places he had already built, and we both liked his build quality and attitude.

Next was for me to design what we wanted to build, using Sketchup. This took many hours, as the wife and I went back and forth over what we wanted. I wanted a huge garage, no garden, she wanted a small carport and a huge garden. So, we agreed on a fairly large garage (6m x 8m), some garden, and a roof garden as well.








An 8' wall was built around two sides of the property, as we found the 'secure' subdivision seemed to be lacking perimeter wall right where our land was, folk could walk in and out at will.

Oh well, this is the Philippines...

They have an odd way of building in the Philippines. When you want to build a place, you have to pay an architect to design it, pump out the blueprints, and get them approved. Not a lot differently to the UK you may think, but in the PI once you have applied for the building permit you are allowed to start building, immediately.

I gave our architect my detailed drawings and let him loose to do his worst.....

Building started the same day, by digging a series of 1 metre square holes down to solid subsoil. These holes were filled with re-bar and concrete, and would be the bases of the 12 vertical concrete columns that run right up to the roof.

Between these they then dig more trenches, add more steel and lay concrete in them for the walls to be built on. Everything is criss crossed with 12mm re-bar vertically and diagonally, as we are in an earthquake zone.





Unfortunatly I was offshore for most of this bit, so I had to rely on the wife to take piccies.....









I have no idea how much steel goes into the finished house, but it is a lot/ The concrete blocks are hollow, but filled with concrete as they are laid. An odd way to build, but this is the way it is done.



I included several arty farty arches in the house, at my wifes request:





And we initially had a spiral staircase up to the roof, but this was binned after a couple of mistakes were made in the build....



And the pile of blocks grew higher:

How much must that house weigh. I don't think I have ever seen a build with so much concrete apart from an underground bunker. The noise isolation will be fabulous. With so much thermal mass does the house remain at a fairly constant temperature or will you have AC fitted.

Most modern buildings are built very much the same way in these parts of the world. We built it with minimal windows, keep noise and heat out, coolness in.

Hopefully it will be fairly thermal steady, but we will have air-con in most rooms, just in case.....

Funny you should say that, Friday afternoon is known as SMB: San Miguel Ber. Their boss buys a couple of cases, put's 'em on ice, my wife buys a half dozen lechon manok, and we go down the site and gasbag for an hour or two.

The sweet young niece is on a couple of dating sites already, but no luck yet. :-(

It is absolute hell for me when she wanders around the house in skimpy little shorts and tight t shirts......

I was in Thailand when there was some building work being done behind the hotel I was staying.

All construction being done wearing flip flops, bamboo used for for holding up floors etc !!

I wondered if you were going to adorne this garage with one of those spedeworth type stock cars

I just came back from the philippines and everyone doing construction work wears safety flops. I couldn't watch one lad using a pick axe to excavate something inches from his unprotected toes, I had to look the other way. Should be a sweet house when it's done, where is it then?

The builders have started work on the centre walls for the roof top rooms, plus laid the base for the perimeter walls. The architect has turned out to be a total flake and doesn't seem to be able to draw the roof for us. He has had all his fee already, so obviously feels he has no need to do anything more. Just the sort of thing I expected. So, I guess I'll have to break out the Sketchup once again and design the trusses etc.

Looks really exciting - keep it coming!

£10K? You could buy a place for that, but it won't be in some lucrative resort or anything like that.

Our whole project, land, garage and house, will end up in the region of £80k, so you will find you can buy a small basic condominium/apartment for £10k. And bearing in mind Angeles is one of the most expensive areas in the country, you'll get better value for money further off the beaten track for that price.

Foreigners can't own land in the PI, but condos are okay.

Do a Google for 'condominiums Angeles - Cebu - Subic' or something like that.