If you were building a new house, what would you put in it? Please recommend anything from boilers to lights to appliances.

[Apatite1]

The title says it all. Looks like we are building from scratch. House will be about 2500 sq ft. I now need to make a zillion decisions.

If anyone can recommend anything from their insulation to their furniture, I'm all ears.

In particular, we really need guidance on:

Underfloor heating
Engineered wood flooring
Carpets
Ventilation systems
Lighting plans
Joinery for dressing room and library
Stair makers
Kitchen companies and fitters
Bathroom companies and fitters
Landscapers
Paint
Granite suppliers
Tiles
Aluminium window suppliers
Sliding door suppliers
Burglar alarm systems
Fire alarms

Really, any tips are very welcome. There are so many companies, I've no clue who is good and who isn't. I don't mind expensive services, as long they are worth it, we will try to budget them in.

Thank you all!

MrsFlorrick, that's very very useful thank you, I'm busy taking copious notes. I'm in London, will google your granite supplier.

In my fantasy house I have a kitchen with two walk-in cupboards/pantries side by side, shelved out from floor to ceiling. They would have normal doors on them just like a door to a room, not a fitted kitchen cupboard door.

One is for all the store cupboard food, tins and dry ingredients etc., and the other is for larger items of kitchen equipment or gadgets that you wouldn't put in a drawer but you don't want on permanent display on the worktops and you don't want to have to get down on your hands and knees and rummage to the back of base units to find, either.

Things like salad spinners, ice cream makers, saucepans, cake tins etc., even your crockery and glasses if you wanted to. So everything is grouped together, easily accessible and can be seen and located with ease, and replaced with ease.

And it means that you can save on the costs of your fitted kitchen because you can minimise the number of units to be fitted in the actual kitchen and go for a more streamlined uncluttered look.

Daily, what an awesome idea! Stealing it

Hire an interior designer. I do this for a living and it's still a lot to think about! Some interior designers will work on a flat fee and some as a percentage of the spend. A good designer will help you create a wonderful living space that you love and help you get it all in on time and budget when you have so many other things to think about.

We often meet clients at the beg of a job and bring architects in where needed. We also work with clients who want to source products themselves but want to pay for consultations on colours and fabrics. We are an extra pair of eyes (or 2 pairs in my case with my business partner) and we do everything from layouts, kitchens, hand built furniture, decor, unique accessories to dress the room... the lot! Not plugging for work for myself but just a plug for interior designers in general!!

Chocolate, I need help on paint colours, flooring at the very least. We won't have the budget for full interior design, but need help with colour and pointing in the right direction. Please PM me with details, yourself or whomever you recommend.

Daily, that's a great idea but alas we won't have the depth for walk ins but I'll get big pantry style double doors put in and deep pan drawers instead of lots of small drawers.

Certainly outdoor sockets and taps . We have 5 taps dotted around the garden.

Megaflo hot water system so you have mains water pressure for both hot and cold water. Large is good. Everyone who uses our shower loves it.

I love my larder , all shelved out and room for rarely used appliances.

Heated mirrors in bathrooms , ours are 20 years old and I still love them.

More sockets than you think you need .

I know lots of pps have added more "big" things ( and I love the side by side pantry idea) but my waste disposal was the best thing I put in my new kitchen.

Thanks trumpton, megaflo, heated mirrors tick tick.

Blue, who did your waste disposal please?

What type of kitchen are you after?

If you're unsure buy some of those magazines like Beautiful Kitchens etc and have a look to help you decide on a direction.

Also decide on location of lights asap. Saves heart ache later and digging in walls....

It's all about practicalities initially. Later on about colours. Don't divert too much of your focus away from the hard architectural and construction aspects in favour of looking at colours and wallpaper. You need to decide on a lot of those things long before colour schemes.

I do some interior design work. Here is a recent project of mine on a walk thru on House to Home: www.housetohome.co.uk/videos/open-house-an-open-plan-taupe-coloured-kitchen-in-a-former-chapel-in-kent/3887341384001?utm_campaign=bk-newsletter-17-march-2015-17-03-2015&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=20150317_XKB-X_NWL_EC&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua

Link fail. www.housetohome.co.uk/videos/open-house-an-open-plan-taupe-coloured-kitchen-in-a-former-chapel-in-kent/3887341384001?utm_campaign=bk-newsletter-17-march-2015-17-03-2015&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=20150317_XKB-X_NWL_EC&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua

Beautiful kitchen Mrs F! My favourte kitchen is the seimatic beaux arts, with a marble roundhouse one second. Both too expensive. I'm also looking into ex display.

If you're looking at ex display, I assume you have looked at The Used Kitchen Company?

They do a lot of ex display so not just used kitchens. Well worth a look.

You could save a lot but you must be prepared to store the kitchen for a while when the right one comes along.

Also look at sales.

Yes, I've mainly looked at used kitchen company, but we've got a local company who may knock it up instead if we can't get the right one.

We built from scratch (and mostly designed the house ourselves as well).

Agree with lots of sockets.

Flooring - we have polished concrete throughout the middle and bottom floors as it's as solar passive house and it was easier to have the thermal mass as flooring rather than walls. Carpets - whichever you like the look of, but go for the thickest underlay you can afford.

Lighting - find a good electrician that you like and discuss it with them. It's one of the biggest areas for overspend! We went with LED phosphor downlights in the end (they're called Ominus, imagine there's a UK distributor) because we could put them in and insulate around them.

Kitchen - love my walk in pantry. It's not that big, but fully shelved out for dry grocery storage (stacks of neatly labelled tupperwares, was one of the happiest weekends of my life sorting it all out) and with sockets for the food mixer, bread maker and slow cooker on the worktop. In the kitchen itself, we put sockets into the island (2 doubles at each end) which are really useful. We also put light switches on the island which I use more than I thought I would. In terms of appliances, there are lots of places who will give you a great discount on a "package" if you tell them it's for a house build. Same with plumbing - there are lots of places who will offer you the same rates as the wholesale plumbers get if you say you will get everything from the one place.

One of the most important things to think about with this is budget. Everyone I know (including us) who built new without going through a developer type fixed price build had budget overruns, some more than others. Use a quantity surveyor and get the whole project QSed. Depending on how you're financing it (ours was part cash savings and mostly mortgage), you may need a valuation off plans to start with and then regular valuations throughout the build to release funds for the next project. Foundations and getting out of the ground tend to be very expensive, things should catch up again as you progress through the build. If you have monthly bills from your builder (we did - had to apply for a new mortgage drawdown each month) then make sure you get from them exactly which part of the estimate and QS report they apply to so that you can keep track of where your spending is going. This will also give you an early warning if you start to veer off budget.

Planning it is the cheap bit. Get the project QSed, get at least 3 different quotes from reliable contractors (although I don't know anyone who built through a company who is totally happy; we used an independent builder and we had issues with that too). Most importantly - get everything finalised before you start building. Once you make changes on the fly, you start to rack up the costs.

It's lots of fun, I'd definitely do it again if the situation arose - that said, this is our "forever home" so hopefully I won't need to :)

We built our own home.

Our laundry room is upstairs and has a balcony to dry from as well as a drying cupboard that things can be hung in.

We have a lot of sockets.

We have a dressing room which acts as a buffer between all of our bedrooms and ensuites.

We also have a library

Storage, storage and more storage!!

Thank you Hic, I hear what you are saying about planning ahead. I want to get all the details sorted before we start rather than as we go along (although I realise I won't get it 100% right at planning stage)

Philo, I think I might have the smallest library in the world though: 2 by 4.5 metres!

Trixy, storage, got it! Will do storage under stairs, in boot room, in guest bedroom and shed. Thankfully we don't hoard possessions so I'm hoping that will continue.

Ooh just read through this, loads of good ideas :) We're starting to plan our build now, there so much to think about!

hicdraconis
Who did your polished concrete floors? Are you happy with the look of them? We are considering this for our house (not yet built) as we are having UFH and it would be practical. I'm just worried I'll get bored of the look of it. Also seems to be very expensive from what I've read. Any feedback on what it's like to live with would be brilliant!

I'm taking notes here too!
We are having a ground source heat pump, ufh throughout house and solar panels on South facing side of roof. We have loads of storage planned including upstairs walk in cupboard for linen and towels, and downstairs boot room plus utility room which will hopefully have space for a big pulley so it will be like a laundry room

By pipe runs I mean the length of the pipes taking hot water to your bathroom and kitchen. Make sure they are as short as possible by placing your bathrooms and kitchen in such a way that the pipes don't have to go through the whole house to get from the boiler to the bathroom/kitchen.

For the ventilation system, I'm in France, so don't know what they are called in the UK. Here they are called VMC double flux, there are different types including some which turn themselves on and off according to the ambient humidity, but I would just go for a simple very low consumption one.

Ok thanks Liara! That makes a lot of sense. Right now the kitchen and utility are on one end of the house and the bathrooms on the other.....

I would definitely have Plantation Shutters. I have lived with mine for a few years now. Fantastic way to control light and privacy and they have great insulation properties. No more dusty curtains!!!!!

Thanks Sue, I am definitely leaning towards plantation shutters. Would you recommend the company who did yours perchance?

hi, we have renovated a couple of houses and are on our 3rd. before the last one we took a look at bedzed near croydon. it's (quite old) but they used to do tours for 25 quid. zero energy development with lots of idea. the architect used to have some plans for larger houses which he would supply much cheaper than a complete plan. can't remember his name but worth a poke just for some ideas if they still do tours.