Can I learn from your mistakes/mishaps? House extension

[aniawl]

We live in a 3 bed semi with a tiny kitchen and a separate garage on a side. When we bought the house we always assumed we’d be building an extension to add a bedroom, bathroom and enlarge the kitchen.
But we’re complete building virgins and having got ripped off when doing up our garden and patio before I wondered if I could put it to you - what are the things that you wish you had done differently, that caught you out, that you wish you knew before you started? Can I please learn from your hard won wisdom?

How are your plans going Op?

We have had first couple of quotes and they really differ 😩

We are doing this at the moment. We moved out into a static caravan last August whilst the builders knocked down half of our house, and they are building a double height double width extension out the back, a side extension and then completely refurbing what remains of the original house.

What I can pass on to you...

1. (if you're doing what we're doing) buy a static caravan and live on site (if you can). It will be cheaper and you will be on site to answer builder queries immediately. You can also see what progress they are making each day. You won't sink costs in rental accommodation either.

1. Put everything you can think of into the specification, and get builders to quote for it. You can then compare apples with apples, also use it to beat your chosen builder up later when they say they didn't realise x was included ("well, it was in the specification which you read and quoted against.... " "oh.....")

1. Get your budget and your money sorted. Then add 15% contingency. You will spend your contingency. And it will be on the most boring, unexciting things imaginable. We knocked down the old bit of the house and dug the foundations. We then discovered old underpinning where we wanted to put the new founds. We had to add £10k more concrete into the founds to 'make things safe to build on' (I'm not technical, sorry). There was nothing we could do about this, and no one could have predicted the old underpinning being precisely in the wrong place, but it was £10k out of the contingency.

1. It will cost £k's to move gas / electricity meters if moving over 1m. Again - nothing you can do about this except say 'here's my credit card details, please carry on!'

1. Get recommended builders. Make sure they are recommended. And just before you sign the contract, go back to their old clients to make sure that they are recommended still, once their work has had a chance to settle. Our friends have just kicked their builder off site, mid project, as his references changed their minds after a year once all of the faults showed up, and the friends' house was also showing signs of the same faults.

1. Draw up plans for electrics, plumbing etc. You will be asked to do this on a Friday for the trades to start on a Monday, so it's a good idea to have thought about this beforehand!

1. If doing a big project save some money for landscaping, as your garden will be trashed afterwards. Even if this is just for hard landscaping, whilst you do the beds etc afterwards.

1. Work out what you can realistically do yourselves. We are painting (saves us £10k, offset against new concrete founds, see above), and did some manual labour at weekends taking off old plaster and carting to the skip. Not technical, just (wo)man power which meant we didn't have to pay for it.

1. Be realistic in your decorating choices. You aren't going to want to re-lay floors, or re-tile bathrooms at a later date. But you might save money through picking up second hand furniture which you can later replace, rather than going for everything brand new.

10. One of you (assume you are doing this with your partner?) will be the more dominant one in terms of making the decisions on a day to day basis. The least dominant one has to accept this, or at least agree with the dominant one that this is how the end result will look. My OH is on site (works from home) all day and he is the one the builders go to and he is the one who makes the main decisions on the project. I mostly trust him to make the right decisions (apart from when he moved a window, but that's another story....)

I'm sure that there are many other things, we are still part way through our project (3 more months to go...), we are up to first fix now, but we are getting there. Good luck!