We are in the very slow process of extending our house. At the moment I would say we are at least a year behind schedule - and have yet to start building work at all. I know my question is a bit how long is a piece of string, but I'm hoping for some sort of guide.
Our project will be big - single storey extension, 2 storey side extension, loft rooms, basement rooms, interior walls moved, whole house rewired, plumbed, heating, new windows and roof. So basically a gut and rebuild.
How much work would you expect it to take to get from planning permission to having documents ready to send to builders for tender? We keep being told there have been delays.
Although cross about this we felt that they were ignoring our job in favour of other work so decided to keep closer checks on them to get ours prioritised. However we now have another bill and basically they seem to have billed us 30 plus hours a week for the last 6 months. Most of this hasn't been the architect, but his assistant, but it just seems excessive.
We haven't been changing our minds - sometimes we have made them change plans because they have ignored our requests - so at the meeting I will say I want X, they come to next meeting - no X - so I say I really want X, they go away again and give me what I asked for. Or for example we spotted late on the only heating they had put in a large bathroom was a towel rail so we made them put underfloor heating in all bathrooms (we had just assumed it was in place).
So does this seem a reasonable length of time or are we being charged for hours of aimless internet searching / someone learning on the job and being very poor at it.
TBH if we had been given a bill of this size 6 months ago, but been about to start building we would have been shocked but glad we were starting the work. It's the huge bills and the massive delay that makes us feel they are taking the piss. (Oh and we have a QS, structural engineers, some guys who checked the ground for water table depth for basement and a drainage engineer who we have paid independently)
I would be very grateful if anyone could give some sort of guidance. I'd really like my family home finished before all the children leave home!
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Question for architects or people who have used one recently.
4 replies
SilasGreenback · 18/03/2014 09:48
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