Home extensions 2017 - Christmas is coming

[Believeitornot]

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Whisky I'm sorry you're out of love with your tiles. D'ya think you might feel differently when the whole floor is laid? (Desperately tries to find glimmer of hope...)

Thanks glorious.

whisky how disappointing Hopefully you’ll get used to them. They sound fairly neutral at least so they shouldn’t be too noticable and I bet nobody but you will really see them. It’s so tough though when you’ve been through all the stress and expense of the whole thing and it’s not how you wanted it.

I’m feeling very very wobbly today. We are way over budget and running out of cash. A quote just came in for our newel posts, spindles and handrails which is approx 3 times more than we expected based on what it cost our neighbours using an online firm. The stairs aren’t quite the same as we originally thought and therefore different to next door so we can’t have the same as them. We were going to reuse all their drawings etc so we could use the cheaper firm. Now my alternatives seem to be:

1. somehow cobble together technical drawings (quite complicated)
2. find another grand to go with the local guy
3. just shove some plywood on for now and deal with it once we’ve calmed down.

You know when you just completely lose it over something small? That’s me this evening.

I know many of you have it worse

Sad about the tiles Whisky, hopefully you'll learn to love them.

Glorious- it sounds like you're having a nightmare with the stairs. It might be worth speaking to a few more companies? I know when looking at flooring my quotes varied between £3,500-£6000 for the same product.

I'm having a headache with builders. My favourite has given me his quote and it's £6k over budget & leaves us nothing in the contingency pot. However he has been the most thorough, got detailed quotes for the plumbing and electrics. He has said we could pay the difference in installments once the build is finished and I do feel that so far he's the most thorough and least likely to go over his quote. He's also tidy, meticulous and comes highly recommended. Thoughts? One other guy that was a recommendation has come in at £10k less but hasn't visited the site since he gave us a guestimate when we were looking at how much we need and I feel there would be additional costs if we go with him.....

Oh whisky I'm sorry you're not loving your tiles 😢 hopefully you'll grow to love them!

Thanks guys. I was kind of hoping I'd feel better about the tiles this morning but no, I still hate them. I'm so lacking in energy, though, that I can't even get upset about this. I'll swap them out in a couple of years time. Right now, it's a floor, and that means I can get appliances on soon, which I am absolutely desperate to do.

glorious - I'm so sorry you're having a down day. It's rotten (and anxiety-bordering-on-panic inducing when you suddenly realise a job is a load more expensive than you realised). I bet there is a way around it. Why do you need technical drawings - are your stairs very unusual? It sounds from what you have said as though you're just replacing the upper parts, which shouldn't require loads of technical drawings - you only tend to need those if you're doing the whole staircase?? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

What lines are you looking at? I found that there was a big cost difference between the parts that were standard (basically square and slightly champfered lines) and ones that had to be special ordered in. I went with a local shop round the corner from me, and newel posts, spindles, handrails, baserail and linings for the side of the stairs, all in oak, came in at around £450 + VAT. Fitting was £300. I was highly limited in what I could choose because our stairs are very raked, and this basically ruled out anything in metal or glass.

4years - Hmmm, you do need to be able to trust your builder. You really do; it's the most vital relationship. And I would always want a quote that was carefully itemised before starting, definitely NOT a guesstimate as that isn't really worth the paper it's written on. But you do need a contingency too. Is there any way that you could cut back on one or two elements of the design to give you that 10% leeway?

That's such a shame about the tiles Whisky.

We don't have an elaborate design, so there's not really anywhere to cut. We could not replace the internal doors and do that later, but that's about it. We could save on not using granite, but that would ruin the look really. I've worked hard to get costs down as much as possible and haven't specified any fancy glass etc. We're saving £800 a month & could stretch to maybe £1000 if I shave off the food budget. I'm also selling everything possible! We can fit only one oven rather than two until we have the budget. But it's only little savings.

I was planning on getting F&B colour matched at Johnstones and it's more expensive than F&B....

I think building work is a bit like Donald Rumsfeld's idea of foreign policy. There are four categories:

known knowns - stuff you want that is clear and transparent and can be costed precisely (e.g. "You will need a sink fitting here, and that will cost £x")
known unknowns - stuff you are aware of but don't fully understand, because you need more information (e.g. "We think there might be a drain under your house, but we'll only know for sure when we dig down")
unknown knowns - things we kind of know unconsciously, but haven't already made conscious (e.g. The builders can use the dining room to store materials... three months later you realise this means you will have to redecorate and refinish the floor in there as a result. You could have anticipated this, but you didn't).

unknown unknowns - problems you hit that you just didn't anticipate.

The last three of these can cost you. Sometimes big style.

To give you an idea, I've run through about £5k of a £10k contingency. A big chunk of that was for a soakaway that none of us realised we would need and some garden landscaping, part of it was to sort out a problem with underfloor joists affected by wet rot. I imagine others on here have similar stories??

Oops posted too soon. Just meant to add that, in our case, the soakaway and landscaping were unknown knowns - we should have figured that we'd need drainage, but we didn't. The wet rot was an unknown unknown.

Our extra costs are things we've added on the way. For example, rather than just render the extension we're now rendering the whole house to make it look lovely and sleek. We also upgraded our ceiling joists to floor joists and boarded the loft (it's a useable room now). We also got a new boiler as it had to be moved anyway so an extra £1000 to upgrade the boiler seemed like money well spent

Ooh we had quite a few 'unknown unknowns' - once the demolition started, the builders found several bodge jobs in the original structure that needed fixing, otherwise we'd have been left with uneven floors and ceilings. We also found out that our stairs were made out of concrete and not timber for some reason, so they needed to be rebuilt otherwise we'd have been left with either a huge column in the middle of the room, or very low ceilings.

We also had to reconfigure our utility due to drainage issues, which left us with a bigger WC - we opted to turn it into a shower room, which in hindsight was one of the best decisions we made, as we just have the one bathroom upstairs. But of course that was extra for fitting and tiling a larger room, and the shower fixtures themselves.

Luckily, this was all within our contingency and our builder did appear to be doing his best to keep the extra costs to a minimum.

And never ever go with a builder who hasn't even bothered to visit the site before quoting, that is a surefire recipe for disaster!

Hmmmm

The quote includes a pc sum for unknown knowns: drain moving, connecting a previous steel to the new steel if it's too short

Reinsulating a previous garage conversion where no insulation was used at all (he drilled some holes to check)

I'm still here as we have a while to go before we're officially finished, if it's even possible to get to that stage!? We had contemplated DIY'ing as some of it is quite straightforward decorating, but have quickly realised how bad an idea that would be. We now have to start the whole process of getting quotes again, which I'm not looking forward to at all!

At least we have a finished kitchen - which is so much nicer to cook in! Having thought through the minute details during the design stage makes a big difference.

whisky I'm sure your tiles look great - you may grow to love them once everything's in place, and nice and clean too!?

Believe I'm looking forward to seeing your finished pics. Our builder is keen to do our garden as well and has put in a quote but I'd like to see a few other people before deciding, particularly specialist landscapers. It would be lovely to have it all done by summer so we can properly enjoy the new space.

Fourmagpies I know what you mean about having your home back, I found that so hard - no matter how well you get on with your builders, they're still invading your private space daily! Hope he's able to get the last few bits done quickly...

Has anyone else completely forgotten you’ve chosen stuff? I asked our builder to save any offcuts from the walnut worktop for the island as if I can I’d like to use it for new chopping boards. He replied there ought to be plenty because of the walnut going down the two short sides of the island. I had completely forgotten we were doing that! I had to go back and check with the kitchen designer.

dust - hahaha! It's hard to hold everything in your head, isn't it? I haven't totally forgotten anything yet, but I've had to go over the decision-making process umpteen times to remember the decisions I have made!

4years - it's good that the quote has some leeway already built in. Your problem sounds like it will be the unknown unknowns. Unfortunately you do still need to budget for them . As namedy says, some of them turn out to be bad luck and others turn out to be serendipitous. But both of them require one thing - more bloody money!!

I just spent 2 hours (2 HOURS!) cleaning up the pipework for the boiler, electrics, and underfloor heating. They're all in a boot and coat cupboard under the stairs, and they're being boxed in this afternoon. I can't believe how much mess plastering makes! The tiler is cracking on in the utility - builder has put a section of ply on the wonky wall to straighten it up. I'm really hoping this will look OK or I will cry.

glorious I wish I never found out about those doors, I'm totally jealous. :-))

4years The more details you can get the better. And still add 10 percent or more. (We were quite thorough... or so we thought and now way over the 10 %. We specified the number of downlights for example but totally forgot about outside lights and lots of other things. )

Forgot to add : try to negotiate on the price, he might go down. After all it's better to get a job with a bit less money than no job.

Thanks guys. I’m a little better today.

whisky I was monumentally unclear! They are new stairs but the actual stair bits are all there and installed. So the bit I’m sorting now is the newel posts, spindles and handrail. The house is Victorian and the new stairs are straight above the old stairs. The joinery is all quite ornate in the house and the existing spindles, newels and handrails are lovely and very close to where the new ones will be. We therefore wanted them to match and budgeted about £500 for it as that is what we’d spend with the company the neighbours used. But to use that company we need to specify exactly what we want and it’s now a bit complicated with the main newel which needs three flat bits for the string and handrails coming and going at different heights, plus the turning to coordinate with the original one. Also a bit tricky with the handrail which needs to turn a corner.

Yes, more quotes are in order.

tika sorry! I’m sure yours will be great and it is so nice when they go in as it feels like an actual room

4yearsnosleep
I would def go with your favourite and most detailed quote. We went for the same - and it’s all come in except for the extras we’ve added and the fact we didn’t budget for landscaping. Pretty much screwing us now as we don’t have enough funds! We are looking at getting the patio done only and then building our own retaining wall using gabions. We ended up spending more than £8k over budget and will need to save quite a bit to finish the garden.

whisky, sorry about the tiles. Hopefully once everything is in, it’ll be ok. And as you say you can change them.

I’ve attached a picture of the utility. It has flooring! Painting is all done and electrician is finishing tomorrow. We could be all done this week

Once the builders are gone, I’ll tidy up and post pictures!!!

believe - that looks great! And so clean! And it's huge! You must be so pleased. Can't wait to see more pictures of Believe House.

glorious - I'm glad you're feeling a bit better. I've been thrown so many times by things going a bit wrong. That makes a lot of sense regarding the joinery, and I can totally see how it would cost well over a grand to get special spindles and a complicated newel. I wonder if there is a half-way house, where you can buy flat parts from the cheaper company and then get a joiner onsite to do the work of making the holes in them at the right heights? Victorian staircases can be breathtaking, so it WILL be worth it in the end. Hang in there, chicka!

After hours of sanding, last night I put a coat of Danish oil on my indoor cedar in the study, ready to do a second coat today. It really brings out the colour of the wood, though it smells absolutely horrible. I'll be painting the room over the next few days. I hate decorating, so I'm just going to do a wall or two at a time.

I've been feeling very stressed and shaky the last few weeks, but it's actually subsiding a bit now. I think we maybe have 3 weeks of intensive work left, and then quite a few big jobs to do sporadically after that, including hall flooring and stair joinery and all the cupboards and bookcases. But I can actually envisage a time this month where I can get some stuff put into cupboards in the kitchen. And that feels like SUCH a major win.

I have my first builder coming on Monday to look at my job.
What do I ask?
I have liter never employed a builder before

whisky what danish oil is it? We had a big tin of it but I stopped using it on the kitchen worktops because of the smell. Went for one from WOCA instead (for our flooring) and it was much nicer on the nose. (This was in our last home)

Yes the utility is our old kitchen!! It’ll be the place we come in from the garden - which gets a lot of use and the dcs get muddy. So the space will be great. I’m going to put loads of pictures up to bring in colour.

redjelly - ask for a detailed quote, with breakdowns of costs to second fix. You're looking for a lot more than one side of A4.

believe - it's just the ordinary clear oil. I've used it on my upstairs doors before (I had them stripped), so I know the smell will subside after a bit. Totally with you on not using it in the kitchen, though - not only does it honk, I am not sure it'd be great around food either. I use the Woca oil on my engineered floor - it's great stuff. I am going to have to refinish them again once the builders have cleared out, and I'm considering buying one of those car buffer machines to rub it in, as it takes some working!!

That is a lovely big utility room I'm a bit jealous!

We have carpets going in today. Carpets! That's serious stuff! On in the master bedroom, lounge and snug but still, I'm very excited! The rest goes in on the 1st so not long!