Extension 2020 part 2: pandemics, plaster & plumbing

[birdbrained]

Original thread: Extension / loft conversion thread 2020 www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/3783237-extension-loft-conversion-thread-2020

Hopefully during the course of this thread the plaster will be in abundance, the windows will arrive and houses will be put back together...

Does anyone have positive stories of securing workmen for a knock through/extension/bathroom refit or frankly any house Reno project whilst in the midst of the pandemic? The lead times I'm hearing about are frankly depressing, we were hoping to get things done within 6 months but that sounds unlikely?

Hello all! @Earlybird00 I love your splashback tiles!

Going ok here. No supply delays - we chose fairly big standard windows and main roof - but weather is our current hold up, sort of. We have a flat extension roof that now needs its GRP top layer - it is currently made of OSB with a glued fibreglass layer on it, but will end up a dark grey plastic surface with slate chippings. This needs a dry day. Those are in short supply, even in the south!

Inside, we have two plastered new bedrooms, and a refinished bathroom ceiling, and a plastered utility room. All our plumbing is new, except that bathroom, which might be a little troublesome if the old fittings can't cope with the new pressurised system (it was gravity fed before). We even have our new boiler in place, and the little stage that the hot water tank will sit on! Those are on track to be commissioned at the end of this week, and we move back in on Saturday.

This week's main activity is damp lining and celotex laying about 60 square metres, and fixing all the UFH pipes in place and connecting the manifold. Then we are ready for the screed the week after. Some sort of miscalculation has meant that there is an extra 30mm of height to make up between the block and beam and finished floor level, but this has worked in our favour as we are being given 130mm of insulation! I presume that this is cheaper for the builder than a thicker screed instead, but also you wouldn't want more screed as it would take longer to dry out, and take more energy to heat it up by the UFH pipes (but it would also then store more of that heat longer).

I have also successfully done Dry January, and as we have been lodging with friends and formed a large household as a bubble for over two months (homeschooled each others children and cooked each other meals to share the load) I am going to end my DJ whenever that roof goes on and we shall burst our Corona bubble with some deliciously expensive fizz when we successfully move back into the weathertight and heat-able house!

@TyneFilth wow that looks good. Our roof looks similar. On Friday, our builders did the upstand for the lantern, (one, instead of your two).Are you having a cold roof? We have the OSB board now and a black vapour proof layer on top and insulation will go on top of that and then the final layer.

Monday looks dry so far so I am hoping that our roof will be done soon.

Inside, we were nowhere close. We still live in the house so haven’t given up the back room and kitchen yet. We are also having UFH and will need to lift up old floor boards and back fill the old back room and kitchen. We were told early feb will be the time they will be in the house. Looks like we have another week to get it sorted.

I did the opposite of dry jan.

Nice to see your progress. When did you start?

We've got the same roof layers as you, @mothergooseinnorthwest, in fact our flat rooflights are also on, but I don't have a picture from that angle. We started at the end of Sept, and have had about 80 days of work so far! Yes I've counted - I have also taken a photo every single day but most of them are much more boring.

Three to four more weeks of builders, and then it's down to us to DIY the kitchen, tiling, flooring, then get builders back in to fit our bathroom and kitchen appliances, and we have a decorator friend ready to do all our painting.

We will also have a phase 2, but maybe not for a year or so. The two original bedrooms will just need redecorating and replacement windows (they're double glazed but not as good as we could have now). The living room and front hall currently have a suspended floor which is "well ventilated" i.e. draughty because that's how period house fireplaces work. We know from the rooms at the back that the floorboards won't be anything special and the joists are probably in poor condition, so when we've built up the money, we plan to take the floor up and screed/UFH it. We've put in the boiler, tank and manifold with the plan to serve that extra capacity in one more UFH zone. Because of that, we aren't having the radiator put back in to the living room, so it will probably barely get used.

Sounds like good progress @TyneFilth, bet it's exciting knowing you'll be able to move back in soon and put your stamp on it doing some of the more 'fun' parts.

The weather is still getting in the way here, the builders come a few days per week but I just feel like we're moving forward so slowly instead of the big push I was hoping for.

However, this week has been unexpectedly fun because following a conversation with the builder about doing some inside work while we wait for the weather to improve I have had to order my bathroom and en suite fittings. So I've had to stop umming and ahhing and bite the bullet and actually make some decisions on colours, finishes, hardware, tiles etc - I've been in online shopping heaven!

Well, disaster has struck here. My husband, who's a paramedic, has tested positive for covid today. Which is bad enough on its own, but it also adds another delay into the build. The builder is going to do what he can outside but with the freezing overnight temperatures it's not ideal bricklaying weather and so they were planning to focus on fitting out the bathrooms over the next week or two. Not sure where all my fixtures and fittings are going to go when they turn up tomorrow!!

@UptownFunkYouUp so sorry to hear that. I had COVID last October, it was the fatigue that really sucked for me. A build is never straightforward and definitely won’t be during a pandemic!

Our roof is still not finished due to lack of consecutive dry days. Builders will be in the house tomorrow instead to do as much as internal work as possible. It is going to be a chaotic day with a toddler at home and two of us wfh and an eight years to homeschool. we will get there!

So, how is everyone getting on? Would be really nice to see some more progress pics of where everyone is up to.

We've had ups and downs this week. We've all ended up with Covid which was not unexpected after my husband tested positive, and all our bathroom fittings are still on the driveway, but in the other hand the builders have been able to make a bit more progress outside so I'm happy.

This is where we are up to at close of play today ...

So the last week was probably the first one the builders worked five full days as the work is internal and not weather dependant.

We had some good progress too. Knock through is now complete with all steels in, only two strong boys left in place. One door way blocked, hardcore in the whole area, plumbing first fix done and we saw they even marked the spots for some lights and sockets.

Concrete coming on Monday, and UFH booked in two weeks to give builders enough time to do other jobs internally and the last layer of the roof, last week was too cold for fibreglass application.

We bought the kitchen and booked the worktop templating date. Builders are also ready to order external doors. All goes well, we are looking at doing finishing touches end of March and early April.

Ah that's fab, the end is firmly in sight then!

Hello everyone, sorry for long silence. @UptownFunkYouUp hope you are all recovered and back to full strength!

We have just reached the end of week 19! We have a fully plastered upstairs and almost all of downstairs (there's just some making good to do in a room otherwise unimproved). Our decorator friend started on the upstairs bathrooms and one of my children's bedrooms (they're currently sharing the other room). We've got all our tiles ready to go (DIY!), and I learned how to use a mitre chop saw this week, on skirting boards.

The builders have removed all their stuff and the skip and outside loo have gone. All that's left is a few doors to hang, the second fix electrics, second fix plumbing (once we've tiled) and connecting kitchen appliances (once we've selected and installed a kitchen - DH is being very cautious about this for some reason, so we will be minimalist cooking for a long while yet.

Picture is pre-plastering of our kitchen.

Marking my place

@TyneFilth sounds like you'll have some new skills as well as a lovely new house to enjoy! We are rubbish at anything DIY unfortunately but I do like a bit of painting and wallpapering though that stage still seems a way off.

Some good news here though...our doors, bifolds and windows are all arriving next week nearly 3 months after being ordered, and the roof is arriving next week too! Really looking forward to becoming watertight sometime in March all being well, and then the big knock through!

My boys are sharing a bedroom too...the sooner I can get them back into separate rooms the better.

Finally feels like things are coming to an end now.

Kitchen coming next week.

Can’t wait.

@mothergooseinnorthwest you must be finished now? Amazing! We still have another couple of months to go. Would love to see pics of end result.

@UptownFunkYouUp ah we wish that was true!

We are still in the middle of putting the kitchen in. There are tons of pipes they need to sort out and hide.

We are waiting for the patios doors to come in before we can do flooring or external landscaping. At the moment, it is arriving mid April. So I don’t think we will be able to use the new area till end of April at the earliest.
In a way building work is pretty much done but there are still sooooo much left.
How are you getting on? Water tight now? Your extension is much bigger and has two floors. Feels your builders are progressing well. My husband’s workmate started calling ours world’s longest kitchen extension...

Will post some pics when the kitchen is done. Happy Easter!

Ah it just goes on for ever doesn't it? I'll post a pic if I can manage, but we are still far from watertight. Hoping to get to that stage in the next 2-3 weeks. All our doors and windows are here but just not quite ready to fit them yet. I've started ordering flooring and carpets just to feel like I'm doing something. Hopefully kitchen company can come out to measure sometime this month. We have two bathrooms half finished and no shower in the house 😩. Builders are fab and really lovely but I just want to see it taking shape now!

I think I feel the same as some of you - these last bits are really dragging and it's not fun.

We are doing our own tiling which has been quite an education. I have given myself a fair old strain in the wrist from holding up relatively large pieces of ceramic to slap the adhesive onto, and grouting involves slightly unnatural hand and wrist movements which is risking a bit of RSI-like pain. I'm only doing it every other day (or less) though.

We got a decorator friend to do our walls and woodwork, which has been great except that I am rubbish at being clear about what I want when there isn't 'distance' between me and the tradesperson. I have been all "oooh, you just do whichever bits you think need doing" rather than "I don't need a perfect finish there, I do want this part finished sooner." So we have one room complete, three not being done at all, but all the rest of the house is somewhere between 40-70% done. This means that none of the furniture can go in, more dust will be created before rubbing down for the top coats, argh.

We have finally ordered the kitchen carcasses (IKEA) and one door front to see if we like the colour. If we aren't wowed by it, we might look at the various bespoke cupboard front companies who make swanky doors for ikea bases. Three to four times the price, but the units and an induction hob have come in at less than £2k for a normal sized kitchen so I feel like there is still scope there.

Our next drama is choosing a floor for our big open space - the extension is 8X4m and the flooring will continue in the kitchen in the old part of the house, so it is overall about 50sqm. We were all set on a floating quickstep click system, then we realised how much work it would be. We got a flooring company to quote and they strongly recommended glued LVT, but then as the screed has dried some more there are a lot of 1mm cracks and I'm worried that there will be more shrinkage/shifting and it will ruin the newly laid floor. So we're holding off a bit more, although both flooring companies are telling us glued is the right solution and they will guarantee it.

I may be overanalysing but my builder is getting a little arsey about the last few things which need doing. This is probably the point in his business where there are the most mismatched expectations between us, and an extra day of a 'proper' trade would wipe out profits. But I'm reminding him of a lot of non-specialist things which could be done by almost any labourer, and I'm getting a bit of push back. It would probably be better as a face to face conversation but we will only get them back at all I think when there are a decent few things to do.

Tynefifth, reading your post and nodding away. It’s nice to know we are not the only ones going though similar things and having similar thoughts.

We need to tile the hallway. Can I ask if you are tiling over concrete or original floor boards? Our hallway still has original floor boards and I am not sure how challenging it will be for DIY. It’s not urgent and we can get trades in when we have more money.

I almost went down the route the IKEA kitchen and custom fronts. I have samples from Plykea. They are okay but didn’t wow me. Lol.

We just had 50m2 LVT delivered yesterday. We are having glue down amtico parquet ones.

We are lucky not to have any cracks yet but we are turning ufh on tomorrow and who knows what will happen. Builder says we can fix hair fractures with levelling screed before flooring, which they will need to do anyway. Read a few advice webpages about the glue down and floating system and decided to go for glue down in the end.

I also think our builder is being very short with us now that things are almost done. We have just been billed for another instalment, leaving only 10 percent to pay at singing off. This is with the patio doors worth 6.5k still to come and installed next week. Two recent conversations are both about whose responsibility it is to fix something. Don’t want to sour things this close to finish now. Every time a conversation gets a bit difficult, he brings up all the ‘extra’ bits he has done for us from the very beginning and says he keeps a list. We have also done things he should have just to speed things up but I bit my tongue and never mentioned them to him. I just want to found solutions and get this done!

@mothergooseinnorthwest so far I have tiled the utility on screed (with UFH under) - pictures! However I spanked some extra money on Schluter Ditra 25 (the orange stuff in pic 1) and stuck it to the screed with Schluter Kerdi Coll-A. This may not have been strictly necessary on fresh screed but it would help if the floor was at all flexible. When we eventually come to do the hall, it will be half new screed and half suspended floorboards. We will lift the original floorboards first, insulate under, then probably put down new Caberdek so it is a really flat surface and even as it joins the screed. Ditra over that will hopefully make the join imperceptible even if there was movement in the joists.

Thanks for the second opinion on the glued LVT. I'm increasingly content, the only thing is I'm not really wowed by the actual patterns we've seen! For the IKEA fronts we were looking at a really vivid blue from Custom Fronts. We can wait for that though, nothing depends on them.

Huh, the pictures swopped round. And those cupboards aren't baby blue, they're white gloss but I'm leaving on the protective film until we've done the worktop...

I really like your wall colour @TyneFilth. And the floor in your utility looks good! Thanks for the tips on tiling. I think I will give it a go. Will trial with the four tiles for the fireplace first over screed. I did lay some paving slabs in the garden last summer and DH tiled the old kitchen splash back. Hopefully we have good enough diy skills between the two of us. I couldn’t get any upholstery firm to do made to measure seating bench cushions and back, so have looked up videos on YouTube and Pinterest. Let’s see if I can pull that one off. Or we can just sit on hard surfaces!

I like your flooring @TyneFilth - are they both tiles?

Unlike both of you we've plumped for the click LVT in the extension and most of the rest of downstairs rather than glue down, bit worried now as I haven't really found any unfavourable views for the click vs glue down but that might just be me seeing what I've wanted to see! We've had glue down Karndean in the hallway for a few years now and it's been really great but I was thinking the cost to install the click version was much less so we now have 90sqm of Polyflor Encore Rigid Loc arriving next week after much umming and ahhing over which one to go for.

I got a bit giddy at the same time and ordered some grey zebra print (quite muted, but still..!) carpet for the stairs and landing. Bit of a gamble but really hoping we can pull it off.

@mothergooseinnorthwest I know of someone local to me (friend of a friend) who reupholsters seating cushions, no idea if she does made to measure but I can always ask if you're desperate.

@UptownFunkYouUp click is absolutely fine! We have underfloor heating and prefer the thinner profile of glue down. We almost went for click as it’s cheaper and easier to install but they do very limited patterns for parquet and there is that one article on pros and cons of the two systems saying floating is more likely to move.
My last house had floating laminate and one tile became loose after a few sessions of Joe wicks. But it had been there years even before we moved in and technology must have moved on now.

We had tartan carpet in our old house going upstairs and landing. Loved it. Ordering a rose gold radiator for the hallway to go with blue tiles soon. We are in need of some colour after realising the kitchen is going to be very 50 shades of grey.

I have bought the material for the cushion and back now. If it doesn’t work out, I will definitely be asking for that contact. Thanks!