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...

[TyneFilth]

Yes @UptownFunkYouUp the utility room floor is grey woodeaves tiles from Topps. The orange is the underlay, and the teal walls were mixed to match a little bit of feature wallpaper which is going in the downstairs loo. Not shown in those photos but I've done some large cheap white tiles in downstairs loo/shower, and will use them for the sink splashback too. The upstairs shower is mostly white metro tiles with two 'feature' rows and the grout in grey, and a grey Enhet vanity unit, then the edging, tap, shower fixture, fixed screen, towel radiator and slatted blind will all be black. Hoping it's quite Art Deco all together....

[TyneFilth]

Both pictures are the same room, just one is during and the other is after!

[mothergooseinnorthwest]

Slow progress here. Sliding doors were supposed to be here today but was told on the day that is not ready. We are expecting them next Tuesday now.

Second fix electrical not going smoothly as I don’t think the joiner and the electrician get on well with each other and they need to coordinate. Will need to pay a bit more to get the sockets we want the the builders ‘extra cost’ non white ones still look too shiny and cheap.

Week 3 into kitchen fitting now. Really slow, joiner didn’t show up last week or the first few days this week. Electrician let slip it was because pubs reopened on Monday. Diy kitchen units are nice but it took 2 weeks for them to replace a damaged unit (twice, the first replacement came damaged still). Then today we have to order another door from them to block up a weird void over the fridge as the joiner used the filler panel for somewhere else. God knows how long that will take now.

On a more positive note, We did manage to do some painting and put on some finishing touches. Ufh is now turned on and although we are getting cracks, they are very small and I am not too worried. It is such a lovely heat and I am not regretting the extra cost at all. Put some lights on last night ourselves and it is making the room look nice and warm.

[UptownFunkYouUp]

Ah that looks nice. We decided not to stretch to the UFH, had we had the funds I would definitely have gone for it. I bet it feels gorgeous underfoot.

Frustrating for you about the kitchen but you are so close now. We haven't even ordered our kitchen yet but the bathroom and en-suite are coming together so that's quite exciting. The scaffolding came down completely yesterday as the roof is now completed so there is only a little bit of ground level building around the bifolds aperture to finish off and then we'll have a finished shell. The knock through might be starting next week.

Went sofa shopping yesterday and I have been buying lots of light fittings and paint samples...I'm just itching to get to the point where I can start to make it all look nice!

[mothergooseinnorthwest]

@UptownFunkYouUp It’s exciting picking colours and style, isn’t it? The most visible parts only come after all the other bits are done! I hope you have gone through the knock through now. It’s very dusty work but the transformation is also huge.

We have the worktop installed today. It looks great to be honest(couldn’t post photos today for some bizarre reason) but the kitchen still looks very unfinished.

More bad news than good though, so far this week, we had maybe three hours of our builders on site. They have obviously started another big job at the beginning of this month and can’t spare much time for us. The patio doors are again delayed, as the builder himself is sourcing them, we can only rely on what he says and this time, we don’t even know when exactly we will have them except maybe next week. This will be the third time it’s pushed back and the 8th week of a supposedly 4-5 weeks lead time.

Tried to put a bit of pressure on the builder as he is dragging this out and the conversation basically went like this: me: can you do A(not extra work, normal agreed building work) this week?Builder: okay, but i did so much when I did B so I won’t do C which I said i would do just two days ago. He basically said he has another big job now and is therefore going back on his words. And to begin with, there is a lot of ‘I give you my word’ blah blah going on.
We have learned along the way to let him have the last word and to be honest at this point, we just want him to finish up and be gone ASAP.
To be fair, he does good work but it’s like talking to a child with him.

A bit of a rant sorry. The end is so close and yet so far, frustrating. Trying my best to stay positive, with my helpful friend

Whoever is reading this and doing buidling work, Hope you are having a much better week than us.

[Dindundundundeeer]

We are moving home tomorrow! 14 very long months and we are done.

[UptownFunkYouUp]

@mothergooseinnorthwest oh no, things sound a bit strained with your builder. Its frustrating when you're hanging on day by day not knowing whether they're going to show. We had a lot of that in December and January but to be fair they're here all the time now. He told me the job would be about 18 weeks when he first came out to see it and it's been 6 months now with probably another 6 weeks to go so I am wondering whether he's actually managing to make any profit on this job at all!

We haven't knocked through yet. It always seems to be a couple of weeks away. We nearly have a complete shell now so we are getting there. We have our bifolds-they've been stashed down the side of our house for weeks but they did take a lot longer to arrive than they were supposed to.

If your photos aren't playing up today I'd love to see the pics of your kitchen.

@Dindundundundeeer exciting! Good luck with the move tomorrow.

[mothergooseinnorthwest]

Some pictures of unfinished kitchen with standard issue building site back doors. DIY Luca carbon and white units with dekton worktop.

We have had a meal there last night with the kids on the island with our shoes on. It is definitely a big island. 2.9metres.

Personal favourite part is the utility/pantry cupboards. Ignore the extruding washer, it can be pushed back. The bifold top and bottom doors took a while to figure out. Electrical pretty much done now but we only put on the bulbs in to check. Less dust collecting surfaces to clean when it is all done.

[mothergooseinnorthwest]

Didn’t manage the first time. Second try with pics again.

[UptownFunkYouUp]

Fab-u-lous!

It looks really great, like something out of a magazine. Do you mind telling me where your stools are from, might be after something similar.

[mothergooseinnorthwest]

Thanks. the bar stools are from dunelm. A lot of nice looking ones are quite high and these are okay. Surprisingly comfy too.
www.dunelm.com/product/siena-bar-stool-gold-1000157996?defaultSkuId=30669087
They have them in black too.

[newyorky09]

Hi all, I’m in the middle of an extension and the knock through to the house happened last week. This afternoon I noticed a crack in the upstairs bedroom wall above where the new rsj went in and I’m worrying what it means. It’s about 1-2 mm wide. Will speak to builder tomorrow but wondered if anyone else had had similar issues? Thanks

[mothergooseinnorthwest]

@newyorky09 I have a bigger crack over the door frame on the first floor. Builder said he was happy with that if that’s the biggest crack we have.

[newyorky09]

Thanks @mothergooseinthenorthwest that’s reassuring. It all feels so stressful at the moment! Constant decisions to make and I’m worrying about so many things!

[UptownFunkYouUp]

Things are moving a bit faster here now. We knocked through upstairs this week and we are knocking through downstairs next week. The builder is saying he's confident we'll be ready for kitchen installation on 14th June which is the date the kitchen company want to schedule us in for, so all good at the moment. It's still like living in a pit for now but feels like we might be weeks away from the end rather than months. Here's hoping!

[TyneFilth]

We're getting our upstairs carpets laid tomorrow! Had a bit of a rollercoaster of cancellations and rebookings due to original fitters being pinged by test and trace to isolate.

This prompted us, of course, to decide to make sure all the landing floorboards are nice and securely screwed down. Then the tell tale sound of splashing from downstairs told us we had hit a pipe. Joy. Turned out to be one of the new flexible radiator supply pipes. GAH! Plumber coming first thing (call out charge urgh), hopefully can fix a new section of pipe in there.

And for reference should any of the rest of you be randomly inspired to screw through your pressurised heating system pipes, Gorilla leak fixing tape could cope when it was all switched off but still had water in the system, totally wasn't enough when the radiators were on and the water was on the move.

[mothergooseinnorthwest]

@UptownFunkYouUp @TyneFilth glad to see you two are making progress. We had a whole week of absolutely no building work or any diy.

Patio doors pushed back again to this week(still no exact date) and I will chase the builder if we don’t hear anything tomorrow.

Hopefully will have better things to update next week.

[TyneFilth]

Well I ruined someone's day today. I feel like quite a shit. But also what more/different could I have done? Mini aibu here...

Carpet fitters arrived earlier than expected and plumber was still fixing the leak. They got started at 9.30 as opposed to 9. I said to both different guys that the landing carpet stripes were to go lengthways, the front room was the sandy colour carpet and the back room the blue. Then I left them to it and went to work in the shed office.

My husband made them coffee and expressed an interest in all the prep work with grippers and underlay and stuff. They had the carpets for the bedroom laid out in there loosely. They assumed that was him agreeing the carpets were in the right rooms....

I followed the covid instructions of staying well out of the way and letting them get on with it. But eventually I really needed to pee and we still only have one working loo, upstairs... Stairs and landing are looking lovely I said, then OH NO! You've got the bedroom carpets the wrong way round!

There followed a load of "but your husband never said anything" kind of backpedalling. He said it looked good, after they were fitted, and it does - it's a great job, and they don't clash badly, but it's not what we ordered.

So I've had a painful phone call with the supply company, and they've phoned the fitting company, and it's going to be redone, but not for a few weeks because there's a silly lead time on one of the carpet types. But the fitters have to bear the cost of the mistake and he was furious while he was doing the last of the stair sections. I'm mildly concerned that he'll have punched at it a little too hard. Good job the stairs were brand new and hopefully strong timbers!

I genuinely feel awful that this mistake has happened but they should have had instructions and plans that didn't rely on us being there to say which room was which, right? If this was a few weeks ago we would have been leaving the house for the day so we weren't sharing the airspace with them.

[mothergooseinnorthwest]

@TyneFilth sorry you had a shitty day but don’t feel too bad. I have a similar tale.

The kitchen fitter had to move all top units 5cm to the left after his first day because he read the plan wrong and didn’t leave enough room for the fridge freezer. My husband was there to have a brief chat too and didn’t spot anything. We had a tricky conversation with our main contractor regarding this. The same fitter later on didn’t check with us and used an end panel to fill a gap instead the plinth we planned to use. We ended up ordering more pieces and absorbed the cost ourselves. Like you, I felt bad and guilty after the first incident though it wasn’t our fault.

At the end of the day, we all have to fix it if we make a mistake at work.

Shame about your delay though.

[mothergooseinnorthwest]

The sliding doors are finally in! We only found out yesterday afternoon that they will be installed this morning! Almost thought they would be another week of waiting.
Flooring next Monday to Wednesday. Can’t believe we could do it with such short notice. Will be only the hallway and garden left after this. Home stretch now!

[UptownFunkYouUp]

They look great! You must be so pleased that you can see the finish line.

It's been a transformational week for us, we are now fully knocked through and bifolds are in place so we can finally start to picture the new space. Still lots to do, especially upstairs, with almost every room started but not finished but it has been really exciting seeing things taking shape downstairs.

I have to say my builder has been really good. He's a really nice bloke, a real character, and he was the cheapest by a mile. I posted on here ages ago a bit worried about using him as the accepted wisdom is to never go with the cheapest but we just couldn't afford the others! I did my research on him, even contacting previous clients through Facebook who all said good things about him, so I took what still felt like a gamble and it paid off thankfully.

[UptownFunkYouUp]

Pics!

(Old kitchen left more or less intact pending arrival of new kitchen).

[LittleOverwhelmed]

@mothergooseinnorthwest and @UptownFunkYouUp really great progress and fantastic spaces 💕

We are at similar points in the process and it is exciting (or a blessed relief!) to be getting towards the end... (although there will be bits of finishing off for some time!).

Our decorating is beginning in earnest (lots of preparation already done - repairing existing areas where steels were pushed up etc). Utility room fitted this week (although 2nd fix electrics an plumbing not yet done). Kitchen fittings starts a week on Monday (although quite a prolonged process - worktop template and fitting, 2nd fix plumbing and electrical, kitchen painting...).

Getting there! Decking slipped back to July / August (due to composite decking supply).

[mothergooseinnorthwest]

@UptownFunkYouUp wow! The design is truly beautiful! Love the doors upstairs! You have a good builder and a good architect too!

We are taking a gamble getting the cheapest landscaper we can find. After our builder pulled out on this, all quotes we got were at least twice as expensive, with the highest 4 times as expensive!

@LittleOverwhelmed can I ask if the composite decking choice is for level threshold or other reasons? We were deciding between composite decking and stone and are leaning towards stone at the moment.

[LittleOverwhelmed]

@mothergooseinnorthwest

Composite decking for a variety of reasons. Stone is not really an option: we have a change of level between the back of the house and the garden (300mm). The floors are all suspended (so have air bricks running along the length of the back). We have four sets of bifold doors - so want some sort of level access, rather than lots of wide steps.

Want composite because it should be a lot longer lasting and much lower maintenance than wooden decking (we have wooden decking already - previous owners - but it is a pain).

In an ideal world, would love a professional garden design and pour a lot more money into it, but we don’t have much of a budget for it and - as you have discovered - landscaping is illy money (much more than building work, in my opinion).