Planning an extension this year - anyone else?

[pigsinmud]

Anyone fancy joining a support thread for extension planning & building! We have lived in our current house for nearly 15 years. It was built in the 1870s and had a kitchen extension at the back built in the 1950s. We are going to demolish that and build a 2 storey extension converting the current music/dining room in to a kitchen/diner and a new bedroom with en suite above. The kitchen has a terrace and steps/slide down to the garden.

A planning application has just been put in and I'm nervous! Plan is to start building when ds1 has finished his gcses this summer. Anyone else got plans?

I was a late joiner to this thread, but our kitchen/diner extension (plus remodelling) finished 2 weeks ago which was a total of 16 weeks and on time. We absolutely love it and the builders/subbies were all great. The only slight downside is that our builder wouldn't give us a detailed quote and now it appears that a few things (such as nice column rads) that we thought were included, were not, so it is costing us a bit more than anticipated. 16 weeks without a kitchen was hard work but well worth it

Glad it's almost all over for you Marmite, and it's good to hear you were happy with the builders/subs, that must make things a lot more bearable. Enjoy your new space :)

Ohnoyou - Hurrah for planning permission! Hope the neighbours are ok. We had an objection from our next door but one neighbour and haven't spoken to them since, although we hardly saw them anyway. It was a little awkward as they were positive to our faces, but then objected on paper.
Marmite - glad it's over for you.

We have managed to find the money and have cut down a bit here and there. We wouldn't have gone ahead if we'd had this price to begin with. It is hard though. Our project manager/builder/architect says it takes at least 2 weeks to properly price a job. Obviously if he spends that time and then people turn him down he's lost 2 weeks earnings. His estimate was way off (originally £100 000 worst case, but turned out to be £147 000 ).

We haven't got quotes from anyone else. He did our neighbour's extension and they are very happy. He has done other work in the village and everyone is happy with his work. He doesn't add anything on to cost of materials as we pay each supplier ourselves as we go along.

Anyway, 3 of the 4 dc offloaded to my parents this week. Kitchen moved to temporary position. Bathroom being partitioned off and new toilet position put in place - some of old bathroom is being nicked for the ensuite. The old kitchen extension will start coming down at the end of next week. So we've had a few days of either no hot water, no gas, no upstairs loo. It's been fine, but would have been hell if the younger ones were here!

Sorry that was an essay.

Oh Schilke that's a HUGE difference! I think we're planning similar to you and were hoping to bring it in around the £90,000 mark, but doing a lot ourselves.
Meeting our PM next week so big talks must be had to ensure we don't go over too much, we simply will not be able to go ahead.
Anyway continued good luck to your build, I suppose at this stage you'll not have any unconsidered expenses. After our bat saga I'm a bit worried they'll unearth a nest of Dodo's or something equally rare in our garden :)

Hi there, never posted on MN before but have found it so useful as we're planning a kitchen/diner knock-through and a loft conv on our 1930s semi. Just wondering whether anyone else has done the same and if so - did you block up the existing kitchen door or dining room door to make it into one big room? Going round in circles with two sets of great plans and I'm being uncharacteristically indecisive! Thanks for any advice...

Hi everyone, ours has well and truly started. The builders have partitioned off our kitchen and lounge, and used the old doors to give us light and access to our garden. They've also demolished and removed the old extension and conservatory. The worst part so far for me has been the grab lorry, which is huge, very,very noisy, and blocks access for our neighbours, when it's here.
This week the footings have been dug, concrete poured and the 1st blocks were laid yesterday. Now it feels that it will happen :)
Builders and PM have been great and the neighbours have been pretty good too. Keeping fingers tightly crossed this will continue.
How's everyone else getting on?

We are pretty much there - for those of you thinking about budgets, assuming building control sign us off without any major work, we will have spent £145k or thereabouts, and gone £30k or so over budget. Some of that is because I never actually costed the kitchen/utility/bathrooms/carpets/floor as part of the build and because we ended up completely rewiring the old part of the house as well as the new extension. Some of it was just mission creep as I kept wanting to buy new furniture to go in my pretty new house. And the 60sqm deck. And the reclaimed front doors. And the forty tins of paint we've gone through. Not to mention the twenty rolls of wallpaper.

Similarly, I think if we had a better idea of the costs to begin with (our original pricing for the extension was £65k rather than the £80k it ended up being) we might have built smaller.

Having recently extended a 1930s semi, I appreciate the time/investment required in planning a project. In particular, the time taken to find the fitting/finish such as;taps, light fittings, doors, handles, tiles, flooring, kitchens, sinks etc.

I thought it would be helpful to put a website together with the plans, images and links - to help others doing similar extensions. Have a look and see what you think.

www.extendingmyhome.co.uk/

If anyone on this thread wants to send me some before/after shots of their projects I would consider adding to the site - potentially with additional links to recommenced suppliers.

Hi again everyone!

It's good to check in and see how everyone is getting on. Our has been a major stress and we have gone way over budget. We budgeted £40k (excluding kitchen) and build is looking like it will come in at £58k. Half the overspendof which can be accounted for with mission creep (although we did cut out some things to try to reign in costs and I have no idea where those savings are reflected). Some of the overspend I attribute to inefficiencies andor unrealistic costing on the part of the builder.

The project management aspect has gone well in places, at other times it was horrendous.

The only real disaster was a debarcle with a plumber who behaved very unethically and invoiced us nearly £5k for work we believed would cost FAR less. With hindsight I can't believe I was so naive and he was so unscrupulous. After some hysterics and wailing I have now chosen to move on.

I had a miscarriage (number 4) and was signed off work with anxiety the week the build started (timing) and ended up being off for 7 weeks. The ongoing building work was a major obstacle to getting better. Feeling much better now but still some way to go.

DH and I have both been left some money by relatives this year, and as a result we decided 'what the heck' and ordered a beautiful (I hope) Schuller kitchen. We also upgraded to aluminium patio doors. This was a little reckless as I predict we'll still have about £10k credit card debt to shoulder by the end. (Couldn't extend the mortgage- those rule changes mean they wouldn't lend us now what they would a year ago)

Build should be finished in a week. Kitchen fitter is booked for 10 Nov. I'mlooking forward to having a lovely home in which to relax and recuperate. I'll post photos.

All the best to you all. This too will pass.