Award for ‘Wife of the Year’ goes to 48-year-old Jayne Tapper, a nurse from Newton Abbot, Devon England. This wife builds a pub after she decided that if she couldn’t stop her husband from sneaking off to the pub to have a drink at night, she could bring the pub home and get to spend more time with her man, Paul Tapper, 53.
She was determined!
And she went all out to bring her plan to life.
“My husband Paul, an engineer, had always loved popping down to our local, and I could never seem to keep him at home,” she said to Mail Online. “And so I got thinking – why not create my own pub, become my own landlady and then I can really tell people – my husband’s in the doghouse!”
Jayne thought of everything as she built her pub. She discovered that most of the sub-projects she undertook while building the pub were things she’d always wanted to do. They had the garden leveled for £15,000 ($19,498), built the cabin for £2,700 ($3,509), got a space invader game for £650 ($844) and a church pew for a £100 ($129).
“We’d had to get the garden leveled out anyway, which had been expensive, over £15,000, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to play out what I’d always wanted,” she explained. “He won’t want to go to the local anymore – we have three basset hounds and a mate was able to create us a sign for the front of the pub, with one of our dogs, Rufus on. Then I worked on making it like a proper pub – because to start with, it was just like a log house.”
The Doghouse Inn
Jayne wanted to amaze people with the quality of her finished work, so she worked hard to make her pub look everything like a proper, high-end one. She thought of insulating the wooden walls to keep the inside warm, and luckily, all the insulation materials were given to her by a friend. Then she began to furnish and decorate the interior, and it was a thrilling exercise for her all through.
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She searched social media and web stores for deals on most of the items she wanted and stocking the bar itself cost only £400 ($520). Family and friends donated the sofa and TV to the Doghouse.
“We had fridges donated and then a double one costing £100,” Jayne said. “A fire heater became one of the pub’s center points costing about £70, and then all the little knickknacks, like signs, pictures, and tankards I went and collected from car boots and eBay.”
Jayne says she’s thoroughly enjoyed herself stocking the pub, and she’s always discovering something else that would look perfect at one spot or the other.
Fun nights forever
Paul now gets to stay home every night and enjoy himself in the backyard pub with his friends, often hosting drunken parties and happy reunions. All the family’s friends get to drink at no cost at all. Paul and Jayne’s children, Tom, 31, Lorren, 24 and Jack, 26, enjoy having a great time at the Doghouse and they get to have their friends over for free drinks.
Overall, the pub has made the family happier and brought them closer to one another and their friends.
Jayne says she loves spending her nights in the pub with her husband, and it will certainly save the family a lot of money in the future, from cutting out drink prices to Uber fees every night to go to the local pub.
“It’s great to chill in and it really does feel like I’m in my local!”
Pub price breakdown
- Level the garden- £15,000
- Build of the cabin- £2,700
- Materials for insulation- Free
- Church pew- £100
- Space invader game- £650
- Bar- £400
- Fire heater- £70
- Fridges – £100
- Signs, tankards, and pictures, – approximately £50