From a DIY/ renovations novice in a tricky situation....
We're having our integrated single garage (part of our house, underneath a bedroom) converted into a room you can access from the inner hallway. No architect involved or planning permission needed, as we checked with our council and they said we wouldn't need PP for such a small job.
The builders have done lots of work so far and its nearly finished. They've insulated, bricked up the garage door opening, fitted a window, installed a lintel and door frame/doors, put in a damp proof membrane, layer of celotex and a floating floor.
The floor has been laid for nearly 2 weeks and admittedly we didnt go in it much to start with. I was at a private medical clinic having health-related surgery on the week the floor went down, so I spent most of that week in bed on strong painkillers. My husband had to help me quite a bit as I struggled to even get in and out of bed without him for at least 3 days. So we just got on with my recovery, and trusted the builders to get on with their jobs downstairs.
This weekend just gone, I finally started to come downstairs more and spent time in the new room. The floor was obviously not level, I could see it really sloped down across the length of the room, towards the front window. A laser level has shown that over the front 2m of the room, the floor drops 30mm (over an inch!) .
But the floor is done according to the builders, the skirting boards are down and that room is finished. Apparently before constructing the new floating floor, they ran possibility of a 'slight drop' past my dad who apparently said itd probably be ok once carpet and furniture is in, but dad insists he thought that a slight drop would be a few mm, and what we have is NOT slight! If you put a tall shelf unit in the room, it looks like the leaning tower of Pisa.... that tilt is really obvious. The floor also has a small left-to-right tilt as well across the width of the room, which is 10mm across a distance of 2.2m, and we can live with that.
The builders are refusing to fix the big tilt, as the floor has been down for over 2 weeks. I know its bad that we have only just noticed the tilt, but I would have thought the builders would have checked it was level as part of their standard practice. If the tilt was within NHBC floor levelling guidelines of up to 5mm per metre, we would let this go. But 15mm per metre?!
We have paid over £11,000 for the garage conversion. The total work they are doing for us comes in at £19,000 of which we have paid 75% and now hubby wants to with-hold the final 25% until the floor is fixed. Are we being unreasonable to have asked them at this stage to rectify the huge tilt? What would you do next? Any thoughts or advice please. Thanks in advance. x