I need to make some thermocouples (approx 10) for temp measurements in and
> around the house,
Just buy the things - they're cheap enough.
If you _must_ buy them, then build a capacitor discharge spot-welder for doing it, and run it in an inert shield gas (welder argon, or kids' balloon helium). If you're going to do a lot of this sort of thing, go the whole hog and recycle an old switch-mode PSU into a micro-TIG setup. Plans for both of these are around on the web.
For ambient domestic temperatures though, a solid state absolute temp. sensor is going to be a lot less trouble than a differential sensor like a thermocouple and having to do cold junction compensation.