Idiots guide to building a house?

[duckfortea]

I have no idea where to start and would be really grateful for some pointers in the right direction.

We currently have a mortgage on our bungalow, it's fairly old on a decent size plot and we would like to rent temporarily whilst we knock it down and rebuild our ideal home. We love the area, great for work and schools etc and unless something drastic happened we can't see ourselves moving. Houses rarely come up for sale so we're quite limited with that option.

However we obviously don't own the property outright so how do we go about doing it? Clearly extremely out of my depth here!

I'd imagine the first thing you need to do would be talk to your bank?

then get plans drawn up in your budget by an architect

You may have to build before knocking down unless the land is worth as much as your current mortgage.

Only the bank can really advise. Can you build up to add another floor on your bungalow?