I started to dream of having my own house when I became a mother of my eldest child. I wanted to have my own place not because I already had my own family since I was a single mom back then but because I wanted to have my own place so I could have peace of mind. Living with my parents and siblings is very toxic. My parents always had a fight. They always shout at each other. My dad is a drunkard. He always made a scene every time he got drunk.
Finally, when I got married 13 years after being a single mom, I had the chance to be away from my parent's place. Away from a toxic place. After I got married we didn't live in my law's house. We decided to live in Uncle Pino's house. Uncle Pino is the youngest brother of my father-in-law. He is a single man who works in the city and rarely stays in his house. He agreed that we could stay in his house so we could take off his house as well.
In the meanwhile, there is a house of my husband's brother whom they built but they didn't have the plan to finish it. The husband's brother and his wife had no plan of finishing it so I told my husband that we could pay them for what they spent on the house they built and we would be the ones to continue and own the house. The husband and his brother agreed so we paid 20,000 pesos for the house. We bought the house around October 2020. Since I was pregnant with my second child at that time I had maternity benefits from my Social Security System(SSS). That's the money that I used to buy the house. I received more than 50 thousand pesos yet the remaining money was used for paying for our motorcycle and our daily expenses plus a money reserve for my expected delivery. Since it was the lockdown period both me and my husband didn't have a job at that time. We are supposed to use that money to slowly continue the construction of the house.
A month after I gave birth I had to go back to work since my workplace is allowed to operate again after the lockdown. Since I have that goal to finish our house I had to find different kinds of side hustles online so I can slowly save money. Luckily I earn through blogging. I found a micro-blogging site that let me earn little by little. After having a small savings we decided to start the improvement of our house. In November 2021, we started by having our own electricity in our house since the Electric Company had a free installation for indigent people. One of the requirements for electricity is to put doors and windows. So we spent money on the doors and windows first. We thought that processing the papers for the electricity won't cost us money but we are wrong. We had to spend money on the papers and other documents needed to comply with the electricity.
In March 2022, we started another improvement of our house by having the expansion for the future bedrooms of our house. Then we started the expansion of the kitchen and the veranda. Luckily the husband got an extra job around that time that helped a lot to buy the materials needed for the house expansion. Hubby was just the one who did the labor for the house so basically we didn't spend any money on labor.
Slowly we finish the kitchen and our veranda. We still haven't constructed our bedrooms since we still don't have the budget for it.
End of July we started to do the flooring of our house. We are glad that the husband had distant relatives who owned a construction supplies store and let us get the materials needed and pay it in installments. We spent 8000 pesos on the flooring of our house.
Since the renovation of the house where we stayed (Uncle Pino) was ongoing around that time we decided to move out and stay in our own house around August 2, 2022. It was rainy season and Uncle Pino's house didn't have a kitchen inside the house. Our temporary kitchen was placed outside the house. So staying in the house is the right decision for us since our house may be small and still didn't have bedrooms but we have our small kitchen inside the house.
I had to borrow money from my aunt so we could have our own water supply in our house.
Hubby then put a fence on our veranda. I was the one who found a design and what material to use since we didn't have the budget for having a concrete veranda so I told him to use bamboo instead.
It was around December 2022 when we paid up the 8k pesos debt. I used my Christmas bonus to pay the remaining balance. I also paid my debt to my aunt and used the remaining money to put up the temporary division of our living room and kitchen.
For now, we still don't have bedrooms in our house. We are still trying to save up for the construction of our bedrooms. I told my husband that I wanted to have concrete bedrooms. It might need more funds for it but it's way stronger and less maintenance than building with light materials.
Anyway till now we still have our own electricity in our house since we didn't manage to finish all the requirements needed for the installation of the electricity. We still need more funds for that. Hopefully this year we can finally have our own electricity.
I guess that's the journey of how we managed to build our house.
I honestly didn't expect that hubby and I would finally have our own house despite being the only ones who have a regular job with very low daily wages.
Through hard work and determination of our goal, we managed to finally build our dream house. It might not be a big and luxurious house but we are both proud of what we achieved.
Edited using Canva
Photos used in this article are all owned by yours truly unless it is stated
Published: 9/22/2023 01:01 pm (GMT)