Home Extension thread 2018

[Baxdream]

Thought we should get the new thread ready!
Our front door is in. Long story but it arrived damaged 😫 it's in and lovely but it's going to be replaced!
Our fencing has started today, the short ones are new, the others are getting ripped out

Brilliant news! May is not long at all!

My kitchen is being fitted and it is beautiful !

We are going to need pictures ponzu!

We most definitely need photos!

There are builders and tools everywhere today I'll take one later. Need to order wall lights. Can't decide whether to get directional ones or not!

Sounds like the good weather is brining good building news from everyone!!
I look forward to seeing photos of all the progress x

Bifold company are coming on Monday to measure up. Impressive speed!

Here's another asking for pictures. :-)

Our external doors are all fitted. I read a lot of great reviews on Mumsnet about Solidor... well.. I'm not too happy. Our front door looks the worst. We had a proper wooden door we wanted to get installed but we didn't store it properly and it's bent now. We have kept it and I'm hoping we'll be able to re-align it by weighing it the other way around and might fit it one day to replace the ugly new one. In reality it might be one of those projects that never get done.

Our staircase is in, didn't come with the right spindles. We wanted slimmer painted one as the guy supplied oak. Which is an upgrade I guess but they're very square. I already told my husband how I can't wait to just round them a bit ... he's not too keen.

Kindergarten here again... decorator turned up, had a bit of a quarrel with one of the workmen within the first hour, both walked off the job in a huff. I've never seen anything like this, lost count of the amount of trades/workmen that have just had enough and went home.

We had to switch our ufh off as they were worried it would set the plaster too quickly in the heat.

I'll try and post some pictures today, I haven't taken any at all and now it's starting to look like a house.

Looking forward to the kitchen pictures ponzu I'm still dithering between shaker in either light grey/navy or light grey/charcoal or handleless. I can't help thinking that the shaker style would be more suited to our house, plus the benefit that we could repaint the doors to change the look in the future should we want to change it up a bit.
2 of the many steels turned up finally today! Currently living on the front drive. Pot and Beam floor is almost completed.
Our caravan is on the drive ready for us to decamp to when the dust gets too much and they need to knock walls down.
The poor dogs are really miserable. No garden to potter about in and relegated to the front room to keep them safe and out the way.

Oh no Tika what's wrong with the door? We love our Solidor. Sounds like you're all making great progress (apart from tradesmen falling out 🤦🏽‍♀️🙄)

Can I jump in? I've been stalking this thread for a few weeks now.

We're in the design stage of an extension, so I suspect most of you will be finished before we start, but maybe a few others will be at the same stage as us by then.

We're in a slightly unusual house - a terraced dormer bungalow, with front dormer windows and bedrooms upstairs already, but no dormer at the back and a big unused void in the back eaves. We've had to do a total about face on our original planned design once it became clear it was going to come in £20-40k over budget, so the current plan is to do a large rear dormer and a full width single storey extension - 7m wide by 3-4m out from the back of the house.

The architect has done some sketches, but we need to get confirmation on the situation with a sewer running parallel to the back of the house before we know what our next steps are - no point designing something fancy if it turns out we can't build over the sewer at all, so I think we're on hold until we have more clarity on that, but hopefully that will come quite quickly. The architect is happy to breeze on regardless, but google is not reassuring me in the least, so I think we need to sort it before going too far down a design path.

Welcome @Hopefully. I hope you get your sewer stuff sorted ok. We also had a sewer running parallel to the back of the house which turned out to be closer than we thought. Thankfully it worked ok, but for a while we thought we might have to make the extension massively bigger or much smaller.

Thanks Dust! Our architect has been supremely unconcerned, which makes me think either (a) it's no issue and we're worrying over nothing or (b) our architect hasn't actually considered the drain. I'm not 100% confident it's (a), TBH . Anyway, I've sent off the form to the water company to request permission to build over, and we'll see what they come back with. At least we'll get a definitive answer sooner than later.

Our water company was pretty relaxed about it. As long as you support it properly, building over should be fine. We had to build closer to ours than the officially permitted distance and they waved it through happily.

Hi Hopefully we are also doing a similar size extension (9x3m). We are just waiting on planning decision which should be about 2 weeks away hopefully and then onto the building warrant. Look forward to sharing our experiences!

Electricians began this week, the last coupe of nights they've been working until 9pm! Although they did leave a bathroom light on the last 2 days and I can't access it as that part of the house is boarded up.

Not sure why to expect this week, really hope the sun tunnel is fitted to the stairwell so we can see the impact on an otherwise dark and gloomy part of the house.

Has anyone had to wait a long time for bifolds? We're quoted 10 weeks for ours, up from 5 weeks originally and our build is only supposed to last another 9 weeks. Something has to give here.

Hi Pootle40! We're a little behind you (hoping to apply for planning in a couple of months once the drain issue is resolved and I have beaten the architect into submission over his beautiful, practical, flowing, but over budget designs).

Humptynumpty please share how the sun tunnels are when they're in - we have two or three planned (two over dark stairwell and one coming down through a cupboard in the first floor to bring light into a north facing downstairs room). I'm currently thinking we could get the stairwell sorted with small velux windows, which I think are cheaper(?), and maybe we should ditch the sun tunnel to downstairs completely, as due to location it means sacrificing a lot of cupboard space in our already cramped upstairs. Our house is miniscule, so every decision needs to be thought of in terms of space as well as design, as we have 3 DC in (currently) a 2 bed house, to be turned into a 4 bed with the rear dormer. Lots of pinning of tiny house movement pics on Pinterest.

Our extension was due to start at the end of May..... Builders came today to say that they could start in just over a week as previous job completed early 😱😁 !! So whilst we are ecstatic, I am thinking 'what haven't we done in preparation?'

One storey on back of house; 5m x 4m and some internal works to rest of downstairs. Can't believe we are finally starting!

NB. Been following extension threads for the last 10 months whilst planning ours but posted very little along the way.

Ooh! We are still in the planning stage, but glad to have found this thread!

We have had to start taking out an old bath and tiles due to a leak - can anyone tell me if this is all safe and normal plaster in the picture?

I am not an expert, but that looks like filler added in. Just because of the different colour.

Thank you - it does look like a terrible job, whatever it is. Always have a fear of asbestos (mainly as I don't know where it could be or what it looks like 🙈)
Have added some more pictures 😬

I'd say that's filler too

We've gone bold in our family bathroom 😱. It still needs boxing in etc

Kissing how exciting to be starting sooner! Fingers crossed that means you'll be well sealed in before cold weather later in the year.

Bax wowsers! We had a rental with a super bright bathroom and it was lovely, really fresh and cheery.

Ugh, I need to get a better handle on estimated build figures. Am slightly in denial about costs, and I know the work we want to do is pushing our budget. Am burying my head in the sand until we have more info from the water company about the drain, as that could just kill the entire thing, so seems pointless to get too carried away until that's sorted. I slightly think our architect forgot about this issue, as it was mentioned early on then never again, and it's completely possible that the sketch work so far is meaningless if there is some huge sewer issue. Obviously this isn't stopping me browsing out of budget bespoke kitchens and the like .

I've essentially got my own way the whole way through so I've let hubby choose this colour. I was very apprehensive but I have to say I like it!

Good luck with the water board. We built over a drain but it didn't cause any issues