Anyone starting an extension imminently?

[Karcheer]

Ours has been a long time coming, planning permission was granted 18months ago, but our builders finally start on Tuesday.
Would be great to have some build buddies

It probably sounds really stupid but I have a wonderful travertine mosaic/huge large travertine tile bathroom with phillipe stark basin and toilet - and i fecking hate the bastard thing. I have a spa bath and i never use it. Thanks to the last guy it has always leaked. I've been told we have to almost start again with the bath area. God knows how we start again with a whole wall and a half of heavy stone mosaics. It will probably bring the wall down. I want to rip it out a just put a shower in. A plain, tiled shower, with no fancy stuff to cause any issues...

We're hoping we won't have to break through into the new extension until they are almost done. That may all be in my head though. Let's see.

And I'm not even going for a modern kitchen so that's going to cause all sorts of issues too. I keep saying to myself "in a year you won't care because you'll have the house you wanted."

Ah, thanks Wombat. It's weird - I almost feel like a recommendation with reservations is better than no recommendation at all . I'll see how we get on and might ask you again.

Your bathroom is lush! I started a thread a while ago about how to do a walk-in shower with a tiled floor like yours - how have you worked around the potential cracking issues?

lucky do you mean the grout? It's got like a PVA I think mixed in so it's flexible. I think we bought 'wet room grout' too but it wasn't enough on its own. It's a pain because it's slightly different in colour to the light grout we have elsewhere but it's not that noticeable- small price to pay for a none leaky shower!

Are you having sloping ceilings in your loft?

That's the only thing that makes ours feel small, it's actually a big room

Deciding what size bed to treat us to when it's all done. I'd like super king but it might be the small super king that Warren Evans do

I think our guys have broken through in some places earlier than planned because of the weather.

Our upstairs will be all sloping ceilings particularly our master suite. But on the upside our master bathroom will have less slopes than it does now.
Our master suite is huge on the floor plan but due to slopes I'm sure will feel much smaller.

Ours is dormer'd and one side sloping ceiling.We're off to Warren Evans today. And Wren to look at some built ins. I'm so excited to be out of scruffy clothes!!! I'm in niceness today ha!

This is the current state of our extension. Apparently some people have walls but those dont seem to feature in our plans at the moment!

It should be a nice straightforward 4m by 5m extension. Nothing complicated. Hopefully we will get the drainage problems sorted and actual building can start.

I love that the dog features in the photo Gnome.

Ooooh, Wombat I am jealous of your shopping trip! I can't wait to start doing things like that

Ya I enjoyed todays shopping. Nice break from building, sanding and painting! OH and I have some lovely disagreements during these outings. Really strengthens my "you was a butthole, you can cook dinner" argument. Here's my two hounds. They feel left out

Here is a floor plan for our side extension... We have decided to make a small laundry room upstairs, which frees up the downstairs to be a large L-shaped kitchen / family room. I'm just working out how to use the space best... particularly the soft seating area in the entrance to the room...

We need to plan for radiators, but they make the room a lot less versatile. Would anyone recommend underfloor heating? Does it work well? The concrete floor is currently flush with the finished floor in the hallway, so I'm not sure if underfloor heating (plus new flooring) would create a big step into the room.

Wombat your two are very cute

I don't know an awful lot about underfloor heating so can't help there I'm afraid. I am a little old fashioned and really like radiators (I like to lean on them when I've just come in from a cold dog walk)

Gnome are you doing the build yourselves?

currer I don't know about underfloor heating either, but we are having it in our bathrooms and possibly our room (due to the sloped ceilings) your space looks lovely.

Today the steels and beams for the floor arrived, we knocked through the kitchen to the family room and the stud wall started to be built between what will be the study and family room. You really do have to keep an eye on the builders though, as you know I've been studying the downstairs shower room all weekend, anyway I realised they'd built the wall between where the shower ends and the window starts, it needed to be about 750, they'd built it half that so the window would've been further over, so I wouldn't have been able to put a mirror over the basin, I'm aware this is a small thing, but just shows you've got to be on top of the design and build, any, all sorted now.

Everyone else had a good day?

Good day here today. Felt gone on the roof, roof tiles arrived velux ordered so we should be all sealed up by the time the cold weather hits!

Evening everyone. Good day here, progressing with brickwork all day.

Wombat those little piggies doggies are just adorable!

Currer we are having UFH in new part of extension as it is easier to fit and having had it in previous property I know it is lovely, want it in existing Dining Room/Living Room but it depends on how deep the concrete is I believe as to if feasible? Builder mentioned something about this and they are going to do a dig test at some point - saying that I think it will be a non option anyway as there is no budget left for this I suspect.

Think it is going to be a wet day tomorrow weather wise...

Our stairs arrived today, yaaaay. Although they're currently lying down in one of our downstairs rooms ready to go in, they go in this week which will feel brill.

We've lived here a month now and I feel we've achieved a lot in the month, but today I had a down day feeling like i just want it all done (its all still in 1950s splendor with artex and wood chip wallpaper). We're not tackling downstairs until the lofts finished as we've just got no space, this place is currently a lot smaller than our old place

karcheer, aesops and mcbaby pleased to hear you've all had good days

Thanks for the comments on underfloor heating! I am edging more towards it now as it makes things much simpler for planning the kitchen / family room. I'm going to start my own thread on that...

Madblondedog the digging out is being done by DH. The builder will build walls and roof. The windows, doors, electrics, plasterboard will all be done by DH. Gas plumber for the radiator, plasterer for the skim.

That is the plan anyway.

Building control will be round tomorrow to decide on the drainage problem. If the answer is 'yes' to the builder's suggestion then we are good to go. If the answer is 'no' then we will be building a conservatory.

Glad to read that others are making progress. I feel that we have been stuck at this stage forever.

Gnome What a handy husband you have

Just discovered our downstairs windows leak in heavy rain, eugh

Yes, DH is definitely on the practical side. Paperwork is my task.

Yuck about leaky windows. Is this something the builders will fix for you?

Unfortunately neither of us is particularly practical, I would love to be but its just not the case at the moment. I've been practicing caulking in a lean to we have that we will be knocking down. That room will be my tester room until its gone I think

We're getting new doors put in around the place so I will ask those people to fix the windows as I know that's their field of expertise

Hi All, wow what was the weather like today! I wonder if any trees near us will be knocked down by the wind tonight.

My dh is not practical at all, I'm ok at DIY I've painted lots of the house, but I'll be leaving this all the the experts ;)

I've no longer got a shower :( the downstairs bathroom has completely gone, it'll be a very long time before we have a shower again (we do have a bath). The door from the garage, to what will be the utility room hallway has been knocked through, and they'll start doing the steps up to the garage from the hallway to the garage tomorrow.

We are still waiting for the car port floor beams to be laid, a crane was supposed to come today, but didn't.

Hope everyone's had productive days.

gnome what did building control say today?
madblonde what sort of doors are you going to get?

We've just been putting new doors on the garage as it leaked badly.

On our rear extension I can't decide what to do with the doors. What I really want is sliding doors with a built in fly net (so the air gets through but bugs cant) like we used to have when we were in Oz for a bit. Not sure you can get them here though.

karcheer a bath is better than nothing