Home Extensions 2017 - come along on the journey

[RedRobin1]

Hi just wondered if anyone has recently started or about to start a home extension. Haven’t seen a 2017 thread so starting one here.

Our two-storey extension is due to start on 1st March and we have just started packing boxes. The planning and research has been ongoing for 2-3 years. Had planning permission approved a few years back and completed all the research around what we would like in our new extended and how we would like to design it all - extending the kitchen / dining area downstairs to create an open plan living, dining and kitchen space and an extra bedroom upstairs.

Have two DCs under 4 and need help / advice / tips and general hand holding.

Is anyone else starting theirs soon?

Welcome Kim! Sorry things aren't going to plan! Hope you have access to tonight. That's really shitty of your loft company. Where are you? Sorry if you said in your post- am on my phone so I can't check back. We did a loft conversion and lowered the ceilings in our old terraced house a couple of years ago. It was a ball ache (the dust!) but totally worth it in the end.

Re bifolds- we're going to see the ones that our builder recommends (he's sourcing them from the same supplier we'll get our new windows from). We want to try the mechanism before we agree to them! We tried a few brands out at the Grand Designs show and some of the handles etc. felt and looked a bit flimsy. But interestingly this didn't necessarily correlate with their price.

We hit our first problem today- the builders excavated a trench and found water- looks like the mains supply is leaking underneath the property. I'm tentatively counting myself lucky because a) that part of the house (old utility) is being ripped up anyway and b) I had the foresight to take out 'homeserve' plumbing and drainage cover a month ago which covers repair/replacement to the supply pipe on our side of the boundary, which cost me the princely sum of £6 because a builder who we previously had round to quote tipped me off that leaks are very common in the old lead pipes running up to old houses. So fingers crossed all goes to plan with the insurance (I've checked policy docs and all seems to be watertight, pardon the terrible pun) otherwise it would have been ££££££

Hi Kim we were going to go for origin doors, with supplier to fit,but my builder uses a firm and I believe he would then fit them himself...need to have a look though ....
I have set my heart on a level threshold to patio with same tiles in/ out...

Our builder starts 22nd May. Prior to that the kitchen will be moved to make a makeshift one as old kitchen being demolished to make way for a double storey side extension. Have informed mortgage company & building insurance people. Building insurance have said that for the duration of the work they will not cover accidental damage to buildings or contents, storm damage, or theft unless force/violence is used to enter the property. I'm going to argue the accidental damage in the case of something unrelated to the work. Clearly the builders insurance will cover anything related to that. Same with storm damage, although it's summer so shouldn't be an issue (she says!)

Liz79 how much did your buildings insurance policy go up by, if you don't mind me asking? Ours wanted another £500!!

They haven't mentioned more money but it feels like we're not actually insured for much after they've imposed those exclusions!

Day 1 of our build today! Excited but also scared, especially after hearing a friend's horror story of a build project. Might have a look at the drain and plumbing cover mentioned above. Ours is 1930s so bound to have some issues.

Fourmagpies you might spot my other post in this topic but the plumbing insurance will only patch up any leaks. Our house is late 1920s and we're going to get the whole lead supply pipe replaced at our expense to a)fix the leak, b) prevent further leaks and c) improve water flow. Oh and d) avoid us drinking leaded water!
Prob £1-£1.5K

All going very well indeed over here ! The foundations were straight forward..I heard this is where you can spend some extra money ! So far we have saved some as we didn't need the big goal post steel going right across the back ..builders have also been really great ....all good ...starting to get the sense of space too

Fantastic jigster! Getting exciting then!

Thanks Tatlerer. We have to replace our gas pipe due to age and bits coming off the inside which keep blocking the boiler. I'm not sure what state the water pipes are in, though the drain out the back that we'd been avoiding building over is actually not in use. It was for a toilet which no longer exists.

Still not much further on here.
Builder was off on holiday last week so was very quiet. Tuesday he was meant to back but never turned up. Was here Wed and today but only worked for an hour and disappeared again! We are week 8 now and still waiting for the bifold doors so are not yet water tight. Doors are being fitted now next Thursday which will take it to week 9 of a supposedly 10-12 week build which is never going to happen. Prob looking at the end of July now which will be nearer 5 months!
Breakthrough is looking to be the following Monday which is DD's birthday so extra to sort out there too.

All getting rather stressed and DH and I have been having a few arguments because of it all.

Hope everyone else is going smoothly...I enjoy seeing your progress pictures and hope to be able to add some of my own eventually.

Joining in. We are 7 weeks into a rear extension with new kitchen, shower room and utility. Its all slowed down while the walls are plastered. I'm fed up of having the kitchen in the small living room! Luckily heating went back on last week, along with the Bifolds, which means I dont feel we're living in a cave anymore!

Welcome to derek!
We are months away from requiring new bathrooms but visited a showroom this morning and ended up picking everything, negotiating a final price and paying a £200 deposit to secure the deal. We'll now put our builder in touch with the showroom chap and he can call bits and pieces as/when they're required.
We'd done a lot of research online so knew roughly what we wanted and what we should expect to pay, but we took the layout plans in and the supplier gave us a lot of extra ideas. We didn't expect what we chose when we were gaily tripping round the showroom to come close to our budget but negotiated a 35% discount off the RRP so managed it- just!
We're going for a modern ensuite (the copper effect slipper bath I've chosen is the stuff dreams are made of IMO), a super trad Art Deco style family bathroom, a modern ensuite to my daughter's room and a super-trad downstairs cloakroom. It will hopefully tie together as the trad bathrooms will be in the 1925 part of the house while the new will be in the new extensions.
Went for a mix of Duravit, Heritage, Burlington and Bauhaus (same manufacturer per bathroom) and Burlington/ Vado taps.
Can you tell I'm excited?!?

Tentatively joining in! We are a couple of weeks from conpleting on a house which we had planned a full cosmetic upgrade to but last night decided we should complete a full width extension to the ground floor to give a large oookifchen living dining room! Eek have no idea on costs and process-this thread has already provided me with some insight into how little I know....!

We are ages off starting actual work but we are going to do our long-awaited extension this year. Three bed 1970 townhouse, awkward bloody layout but ideal location.

So, extending downstairs - taking the rear wall back 3m and converting the integral garage. Turning the space into (possibly) an open plan kitchen/diner/living room.

Adding an en suite on the top foor, creating a sliding / folding wall around the stairs in the current first floor sitting room so it can be open as a sitting room or turned into bed 4 if we have guests.

Just talking to architects etc. at the moment...

Joining in - we are finalising the plans with the architect now

Going to be fully refurbing kitchen and bathrooms plus extending out in the roof

Getting excited now but a long way to go

We finally have a date to start our extension so just a couple of weeks to go. Have sorted out building regs, buildings ins etc but we still can't agree on things like the flooring colour or the light fittings!!
Need to get our act together as we have a lot going on for the next few weeks which is not helping.

Surely everyone's living room could benefit from a cement mixer in situ?!?

Steels went in today ....lots of banging and commotion! I was ironing in my tiny partitioned kitchen and soon ran out
I made my excuses and went out for the day ..felt like house falling down !
Has everyone decided where they are getting their kitchens? That has been a real pain ,thought that would be the fun part !

jigster I think we're having an in-frame shaker (solid wood carcasses and doors) from DIY kitchens, with other units they don't sell (like a pantry cupboard with breakfast station) made by a local joiner. My only concern there is the colour-matching, but apparently the DIY colours (any F&B shade) come up true to colour.

We're probably going with Howdens jigster. Easy for our builder to fit and we can change our mind at any point! Howdens distribution centre is down the road. Our existing kitchen is Howdens and still looks okay 14ish years later. We did get a quote from Wickes but wasn't particularly impressed with the designer we dealt with and they don't have a range that we really like so would feel like a compromise.

Our foundations were dug today. Concrete being poured tomorrow. This is our drive at the moment! The bird was happy, he found a juicy worm.

Jigster we've gone with DIY Kitchens, ordered it over the Bank Holiday (while the 10% discount on)with a mid July delivery date.
That may be a tad optimistic though, week 3 here and we seem to be stalling! The hardcore & drainage was supposed to be in this week with the concrete arriving today but now booked for Wednesday.
The builders have only been here one day this week for no apparent reason.
Really annoying!

I was I had the confidence to go diy as they are lovely kitchens ....I think we are getting second nature (I know it's the doors only) but the retailers carcasses are solid and rigid ...I have found it a pain looking around

Jigster if you mean confidence in correctly designing and or/ordering you needn't do this alone- I'm not! We're using an independent kitchen designer to review the design supplied when we were considering a 1909 kitchen (same 'family' as second nature), tweak the design as required, then supply an itemised list of what to buy from DIY. Our builders are then doing the fit. The reviews on DIY on here are brilliant and we were very prepared to consider them in order to chip our £40K quote from 1909 down!!