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

Peyla, my advice would be to get yourself some graph paper and try drawing out what you want.

Thanks Gnome, good suggestion.

We have plans drawn up for the double storey so will check if there are measurements, there should be!

Hello, can I join?! We're just going into week 6 of a 16-ish week rear single storey extension. All going OK so far although that's probably sounded the death knell, saying that.

Walls are all up, roof ply is on, screed down, partition walls nearly done. Small interval now while windows are manufactured, and meanwhile all those tasks that seem to take ages but shouldn't - plastering, wiring, etc etc etc- are pressing ahead.

Ragusa, we are coming to the end of our ground floor extension. Ours is a new sitting room, what is yours going to be?

Mist coat on the ceiling today. Everything in the house (even the dog) is covered in a fine layer of plaster dust.

Argh I'm so confused! I've been looking at bathrooms all day. I don't know whether to go traditional cottage or modern.
I thought I was sure what I wanted, but then I've fallen in love with modern bathrooms today.

Help!!!!

Karcheer we opted for Art Deco style for bathroom as a compromise but I think you have more than one to do? If so have both!

aesop we've 4 to do :/
I'd really wanted to go down the boutique hotel eg soho house, the pig etc style bathrooms, but I think this is because I really miss my victorian house :/
I'm not sure about mixing styles, I do wonder if, we did this, I'd think it looked like different people had down the rooms.

I was 100% certain and then I went to this gorgeous modern showroom.
And then on return home I'm shown pictures of the two options of vanities and all my friends have preferred the modern.

How old is your house Karcheer?

Absolutely nothing happened here in the past few weeks other than trying to decide on wall colours. We're going to be boring and do either magnolia or white and then use accessories to create a colour scheme so when I get bored then we can change it.

The house is actually late 70s early 80s but it doesn't really look it, it's built in old stocks and is very cottage like. We could go either way.

I know if I was doing the kitchen I'd get painted wood like something from neptune or John Lewis of hungerford. I think my heart is more traditional. Dh is now saying he'd prefer modern although last night he said traditional arghhhh

We've aimed to go timeless, so not modern but not traditional. Our sink is not dissimilar to this

I personally would opt for a traditional suite. Modern doesn't appeal to me and find it dates quickly as there is always a new trend. The roll tops have stood the test of time!!
By using non traditional flooring and tiles can give you the modern twist you're after, similar to the pic attached.

peyia I think you're right! I think I'm might regret not going with my initial gut feeling.

Your house sounds massive btw

You probably already said up thread but I'm on a tiny phone, where abouts in the UK are you?

No it's not, none of the rooms are very large. Ensuites have been put in gaps we couldn't use for anything else, we need a walkin wardrobe as walls are slopes so the walk in wardrobe gives us full height walls iykwim, it prob sounds much larger than it is.

Yes we are building some bedrooms downstairs with a roof terrace above and a two bed annexe at the side of our bungalow. Being married to a builder though is not at great as you may think. When he is building his own he is not earning any money which means mine is done in bits and bobs. Also I get every body's cast offs so far a bath a sink a loo and some radiators. No lovely brochures for me 😂I currently have a bedroom with no window and I can see the the sky through the wall. No Heating It's very cold and he has gone back to work to earn some more money 😊😊😊

When you start to overthink choices it gets so annoying.

We opted for Art Deco style bathroom but with whole walls in Calacata Marble (porcelain) tiles. Also having a bespoke shaker kitchen and bi fold doors and our house is Edwardian

I think it all will suit and if not then we can always change it again in (50yrs time)

karcheer you should trust your instincts

I'm looking at this company who do large scale porcelain marble tiles. I think either way I want to do this somewhere, probably in our ensuite as I suspect it's expensive :/

Hi everyone

We have our new bathroom fitted! it looks great. Tiling being done week after next.

Downstairs room is looking great, all the plastering will be finished next week and ready for UFH to go down week after next.

Appliances are now ordered for kitchen to be delivered to kitchen supplier. Booked decorators to start beginning of March. It looks like we are going to be on schedule.

WFH today and the sun was shining through new room downstairs all day, looks so good now. Neighbour popped round to ask about something and showed her into the new extension for a sneaky peek. Her jaw dropped down and she actually said WOW.

DH is v happy and actually said he was looking forward to no more take-away meals Reality is, the kitchen is not due to be fitted for another 6 weeks so microwave ready meals/sandwiches and curries are still our main evening staple.

Spoil me, post a picture of your bathroom... You know they are my current obsession

Karcheer promise I will BUT not before tiling

just had an eye watering quote for our extension. Worked out over £2200 per sqm without flooring for single storey extension! Feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment like it might not happen...

hope your project goes well!!! will be watching the thread to see if you have any 'lessons learned' or things you wish you had know about before along the way :)

kharvey when we first got quotes they varied by over 200k, it was pretty clear some builders just didn't want to do it! Get more quotes.

Ok today's challenge.

We will have a bit of a flat roof at the back of the house (on top of part of our bedroom, dressing room, ensuite). The builder and architect whilst I was out have been discussing the fact that although there are slots for rain to run off this, and it'll be slanted because we are surrounded by loads of trees it's going to get very dirty, pretty quickly. I'm a bit at the architect as i had said originally I didn't want a flat roof and showed her another option but she felt this was best... Anyway we are where we are, and they couldn't think of a better solution now.
Any my builder just text me and said had we thought of a glass roof. I don't think it would help if we did the whole thing, but I'm thinking one or two that open would mean we could walk on the roof to clean it.

Thoughts? Any idea how much these cost? Same as a velux?

Kharvey12, where are you? We are coming to the end of a ground floor extension - 5m wide by 4m deep. To build a watertight shell (ie all brick/block work plus roof we paid £12,000. We have done a lot of work ourselves.

At the moment the costing is looking something like:

Build works - £12k
Windows/patio doors - £1k
Plasterwork/decorating - £1k
Heating/Electrics - £0.5k
Flooring - £0.6k
Building Control - £0.6k

Total - £15.7k so £785/m2

We used a local builder who was happy for us to do a lot of the work. He was especially happy that DH did the digging out for the foundations as that had to be done by hand. If the builder had had to do this he would have charged an extra £2500.

Kharcheer downsides to a glass roof:

• noisy in the rain
• insulation or lack thereof
• keeping the roof clean

These were the reasons why we decided on an extension rather than a conservatory.

How flat does your roof need to be? We have a pitched roof for our extension and the pitch is fairly shallow. The drop is just over a metre across 4 metres.

Flooring is now down. Skirting is painted. Very pleased with the way the flooring went down. We used a click fit bamboo.

I hate gloss paint. Smears on everything except the thing I am trying to paint it on.

We had. Side return kitchen extension done in my first pregnancy and a loft conversion in my second which was finished last month! Can't have any more babies now as we have no more house to bash down! The kitchen was a really heavy duty project and we brought ds1 back to a building site. Eek. I his upstairs with him til they'd gone! Loft was less heavy but more than I'd been led to believe and led to the whole house pretty much needing repainting becuase of the soot and dust when the ceiling came down. I think that's pretty unusual tho. They told me it was anyway!