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

Cautionary tale from me this morning. Just had a bill from my builder for three and a half thousand pounds for extra work. Admittedly £1200 was for electrics as we've had more than the amount in the original budget. This had been padded further but seeing as the electricians had already told me exactly how much they'd invoiced the builder I haven't fallen for that. Will be having a straightforward conversation this morning to say that not a single nail will be bought that isn't in the existing budget without my prior approval. Just want the whole thing finished as I'm reaching the end of my tether. Need to get DH out of the house before they arrive as I need to be firm but diplomatic- not his skill set!
On the bright side, I've seen a lovely rug in Habitat, I'd kind of forgotten about them when the big stores closed but they still have some lovely things.

Ouch. We have had added some extras but I have signed for them. ( on the back of a fag packet) but yes, I agree that its v easy to run out of control.

Can I join in please? I've just paid the deposit for a single storey extension on the back of the house for a new kitchen diner. The architect is coming out a week tomorrow to draw up plans. I'm expecting DC2 at the end of April and hoping (possibly naively) to have it all done by then. Can't wait to get rid of our current kitchen (put in by previous owners) which is so poorly designed and generally rubbish!

Evening everyone, I'm having a real wobble about part of our design. Would be great to get your views. We've currently got an. L shaped kitchen diner. With the kitchen and dining area at the back of the house and an L shaped sofa towards the front of the house next to the dining table (make sense?).
As part of the rejig part of the extension we are putting a doorway in the wall that the L shape sofa currently sits against, theoretically this doorway can be anywhere on the wall. The current designs says it should be in the middle which is logical to the family room that it leads into. But will mean that we can no longer have the sofa there. We could move the doorway to the left of the sofa, but I'm worried this will cause issues when placing furniture in the family room.
Our kitchen is a pain as it has lots of doors in it, so furniture placement is already tricky, this extra door makes it worse obvs. But my gut feeling is we get the family room right and worry about blocking up some doors in the kitchen if we ever get money to do the kitchen...
I'll add some pictures...

Pictures...

Any chance you could do a sketch of the kitchen, dining room & extension to see the flow through please?

We have a through room: sitting room - kitchen - dining room which we are extending so that the flow changes to become: dining room - kitchen - extension (which will be sitting room)

So I think I understand you quandary

ah ha!

This might be clearer...

The door I'm flapping about is dg02.
The distance as per the plan to the corners are (looking at wall from the kitchen) is (left) 174, but we've a fridge here, so only about 112 of wall, and to the right of the door about 137.

Could you replace the L shaped sofa with a straight one? Does the L shaped sofa currently sit with its back to the utility room?

Probably going to be a daft question but what do you use the L shaped sofa for (please dont say for sitting on!). Is it your main sofa or is it a nice place to sit while chatting with whoever is cooking?

No it currently sits in the opposite corner, long bit backing onto the family room short bit against the top of the diagram.

We could get a smaller sofa but it would only fit against that top wall, but putting the door in the middle of that wall we are making each side too small for a sofa (you could put a chair there ;) )
I'm thinking we maybe move the dining table to this area and put the sofa infront of the French doors (top right in diagram), clearly not idea. Or we just get a two seater sofa. Urgh it's all so tricky...

Sorry for typos. But:buy, idea:ideal...

My feel would be that sofas come and go. I would want to get the door into the family room right as that will be the hardest to change.

I've just swapped where my sofa and kitchen table over, will live for it for a bit...

That is a good idea and if it dosnt work then you could go back to the drawing board (or DFS!)

Haha! I've actually changed it again, I've moved the small sofa from the living room into there and moved the l shape into the living room, which I think works better but hadn't realised how bad it smelt of the dogs :/

ha ha. I know what you mean. Our dog is happily trotting the mud off the sit into the house where he can wipe his feet on the sofa.

Has anyone got any advise regarding external lighting? This is my next challenge...

I'm interested in external lighting too. Have no advice though, just got the electricians to do 2 external lights and i'm looking for modernish brushed steel type carriage lanterns. 2 external covered sockets for garden lights. Feel i haven't put much thought into it now.

It's very dark where we live and the current lighting is non existent. I think I'm going it go for down lighters around the perimeter where the new path is, the builder was tailing about light from within the wall but the electrician said it was cheaper and better to maintain on the building. Some prettier lights on the garage/car port and then a few bollards making out the edge of our property. He is bringing me brochures at some point...

I asked DH (formerly an electrician of this Parish) and he agreed wholeheartedly that having lights external to the wall is better for long term maintenance.

I meant garden wall, just read that and realised it didn't make a huge amount of sense.

Anyway, so on the property wall rather than in the garden wall.

Oh, I see. I thought you meant the inset brick light things. You can take external cable along a garden wall. I think that it needs to be armoured cable and it is not a thing of beauty. DH took power up into my green house using armoured cable.