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

What are you left to buy namechanged? Is it mainly the bathroom suite and flooring?

Everything - we haven't started yet!

Long story short but quote has gone up so the money I thought we'd have for "finishing" (just had a ball park figure in reserve) is actually going to be used for the building works themselves so I need to be really clear on what its going to cost to "finish" it once the builder has got to the "all plastered" stage.

I know there will be big spends on the bathroom fittings, carpets for bedrooms and new shaped landing, flooring for bathrooms & kitchen diner, painting, lighting, probably furniture (wardrobes for new bedroom etc) - but its the other less obvious costs that I'm worried I'm missing and will therefore not budget for them.

Plumb world (a MN tip) has some lovely bathroom furniture for not silly money, I think we spent £1900 on bathroom and tiles but easily could have spent less. This included waste, taps, heated towel rail etc.

Painting - depends if you do yourself, I've not allocated much to this as worse case scenario we will cope with just plaster for a little while

All flooring - £2500 I've allocated, based on what we spent flooring our old house top to bottom (and that is for the whole house bar kitchen) but it really depends if you're going tiles/bamboo/karndean/amtico etc. I know we're tiling the bathrooms and the kitchen and bamboo in the hall. I think my budget may be tight but I'm sourcing online.

Lighting - will they be supplying spotlights/pendants? If so then there is no cost, just the cost of the lampshades. If not then you can go anywhere from £25 at B&Q to £100's per light, all depends on your tastes. I've got a very very trustworthy builder who tells me if I can source things cheaper than/at the same cost as him. Where he tells me I can save money getting through him I do double check but he's yet to be lying

We're going for SpaceMaker fitted wardrobes, we have an odd shape for them to go in so its more costly and they are just over £2000 (there is a sale on now though)

Ooh thank you. Thats really helpful.

Can I ask - have you gone massively over what you anticipated spending?

I'm not finished buying yet to be honest, so I can't be sure. Sorry!

The bathroom suite and tiles for there have been bought, and I think I've gone just over £2k all in but I did buy the tiles online.

Wardrobe price is also confirmed

Something I didnt budget for is skip hire. Daft I know but that is another £600 I hadnt even thought of.

Also, we had to pay for building control so that was something like £500.

Paint is remarkably expensive. If you dont need Farrow & Ball paint then look at places like B&M. We have used Johnstones paint and been very impressed by its covering ability.

My experience from a few property renovations is that it is the non-headline price things which really add to the cost. A few pounds here and there and suddenly £1000 has disappeared.

Yes, I've got 5K contingency, I expect half to go (but we've made changes to the builder original plans)

I think thats right - you think that £50 here and there isn't really much but then get a shock when you add it all up. Building control is in the budget, skip isn't so thank you!

we've ended up having to hire our own trades for some jobs - the builders have gone on so long now that they've lost money on the job. In total, I reckon the build itself is probably sitting at around £7k over budget, and we've still got wardrobes to go.

we've technically paid for the stairs twice. Builder took the money and used that to allocate bodies to the job. Then we went and actually bought the bloody thing. It does all add up. I reckon we'll hit £10k over what we thought we would. :(

Blimey Wombat that's awful on their part

Only time our builder has gone over is when things have been discussed and agreed

Skips were included in our builders budget so check if yours is or not. Thankfully on our 3rd skip at £400 a skip.

Also check if it's a fixed price job as we only pay for extra materials like 3 additional steels for not for the extra man hours to fit them.

Dp was talking to our builder this morning and UPSTAIRS WILL BE READY BY XMAS, I am so so happy.

Then the downstairs chaos can begin

Apparently next week our existing steels in the kitchen will be exposed (to ensure they are big enough to support the new structure) that'll be messy!
The brickwork was all supposed to get to scaffolding height by the end of tmr, can't see it happening myself...

Oh great news Madblondedog!

Well, we are already a week behind! Concreting was supposed to be done yesterday. Instead it is now due to happen next week.

Karcheer have you decided on what to do with your dog proof wall?

Gnome what stopped the concreting?

I think it was the usual problem of the last job the builder was working on over-running. Any road up he turned up yesterday to look into the trench and decide how much concrete was needed.

On the plus side the cat sacrificed a mouse and dropped its corpse into the trench. So hopefully now that ceremony is complete the gods will look favourably on our endeavours!

I think the cat is putting a lot of effort into helping there Gnome

The dog spent yesterday "helping" the plumber, he had his head on the poor chaps lap whilst he was sat on the floor doing something. I was told he was fine so just left them to it. I think the dog will miss the builders!

My cat has continued to murder anything that moves at least 3 mice a day and the odd squirrel the builders are very impressed with her.
My dogs will massively miss the builders, they love them.

I think we are going to about a metre, and if I feel it's not high enough I'll add painted trellis.

As suspected they didn't get as high as they'd thought the bricklayer hates stock bricks
But I did clear out the bedroom that'll be out of bounds from next week and our family bathroom. The builder Took loads of junk to the tip for me and I moved a wardrobe and cupboard into our room which now looks like I don't know what... But it's fair to say you can't swing a cat in it.

Same here for room clearing. We are now down to 1 bedroom as other 2 are blocked off. I am trying to keep things clean/tidy but fighting a losing battle. Underwear is now stored in a filing cabinet!

Been a testing week due to the kitchen floor and roof saga. Seems it will cost another 2k for digging out and making good old kitchen part to allow for wet UFH throughout. Bloody builder is really fleecing us for any change/extras. I can see where he gets the money for his car collection now

Also had an issue with a roof joist not being identified until ripped old part off which resulted in having to get the structural engineer to come out and draw a new flitch beam.

Chimney breast now removed in bed 2 and roof ready for tiling next week. Onwards and upwards.

I reckon they are going to start the main 'knock through' Xmas week - deep joy.

Hallloooo. What a week. We had no rooms this week. All clothes in the bathroom, sleeping in a room which was being painted. Both the 1st floor bedrooms are now done! It's going to be a mad few weeks to the end now. Carpets in 2 bedrooms next Sunday, staircase going in on Thursday. Carpenter in for all the doors and frames on Wednesday and Thursday. Painting for hall stairs and landing being done w/c14th and final carpet laying down 19/20th! MIL arrives 21st December for a week. I helped with 2 bottles of wine and the remaining tequila last night. I feel fucking terrible. And I need to paint the dining room and go shop for curtains. Boo.

How's Christmas looking for y'all???

Look at my lovely room!!!

And that pile of clothes on the floor? One of the builders is like having a teenage son

The main chap came today with the chippy to talk about the roof. I think they are going to talk to bc about changing the roof line, just how much flexibility is there for what you've got planning permission for and what you actually build?

K - I've found little to none. But ours is a total bastard to be honest. I think it's a bit like "this is what you've submitted, this is what you must build". Is there much you'd be looking to change? As long as it meets regs I don't suppose it would make much difference to them??

I think he'll say we've got to submit plans again, which we won't do. I think I mentioned this before, basically our current plan show the roof on the ext being slightly lower than the current house, but because we are on a slope this makes building the roof very complex but with no benefit to anyone. We are lower than all the surrounding houses so wouldn't be an issue to anyone. If it was the same height as the current house it would look better and be easy it build...

Can I join you?

We are 2 weeks into an extensive build project. Estimated finish date: end of August next year (don't even want to think about it).

So far we have removed one chimney, all the way down, and ripped out what was ds' bedroom and non-functioning ensuite to create what will be the new family bathroom and utility area.

We have hit issues with neighbours (already not on brilliant terms as they basically object to us doing anything at all and opposed all plans) and are still trying to iron out party wall issues (no work so far is on party wall). Our builders are now nearing a point where they will have to down tools for a bit until the party wall stuff is sorted, which is massively annoying. Fingers crossed that next week sees it sorted out.