Is there a 2021 extension thread?

[Yellownotblue]

Just that really, I found it very informative (and exhilarating and at times heart breaking!) to read the 2020 extension threads. I couldn’t find a 2021 extension thread. Please can you direct me, or if there isn’t one, let’s start it! All welcome.

As for us - we’re awaiting PP for our extension and our architect said the work might start as early as March (ha! I’ll believe it when I see it). It’s a large extension and we will need to move out for about 9 months so I’m a bit flustered at the thought of moving out in 7 weeks’ time. We’re extending over the garage, in the garden and in the loft, and doing a shedload of other stuff from electrics to roofing and redecorating everything. We’re in SW London.

@iceandindigo Spunds like your at the same point as me. I’m about to go out to builders to try to get quotes. I thought our budget was healthy but really questioning this now after hearing some huge numbers banded about.

We have a cat so I am looking at caravans for the driveway to live in. No room in the house will be untouched so bedding down in one room might not be an option. I did read that some air bnb places can rent for a few weeks at a time so that might be an option.

@Sewfrickinamazeballs good luck! It took us months to get our quote from our builder! It was sooo slow. We have also been chasing separate quotes for some of the trades and not one has taken less than a month! So frustrating.

We also gave our architect a budget of 100k, I reckon we'll spend £191k all in and we're just starting (and trust me, that is not me specifying high spec anything)!

Best advice I can give is to make as many decisions as you can before builder quotes, speak to a few trades independently if there are complicated complications. Put together a really detailed brief and send that to 3 (or more) builders up front. But the detailed brief is critical (unless your architect has done construction drawings with all the details specified) or they will all guess and comparison will be tricky.

We only got one quote for the build because our architect (a friend, albeit an expensive friend) recommended him heartily (although I used to be a Cost Engineer so I did extensive research and comparison and my estimates were very close). We had the idea that if he came out as too much (which really he did) we would go out elsewhere. I just didnt want to waste anyone elses time because putting together a quote like that is a big job. It took so long to come through, by which point we'd discovered we were expecting a whoops a daisy baby, that we just had to proceed.

That being said, I do like him (even if he is slow) and I do trust him and he is VERY highly recommended so fingers crossed it will all be worth it!

@Sewfrickinamazeballs we paid £600 + VAT for our structural engineer- that is Bristol, knocking through four walls (three rooms plus one wall into our old downstairs loo for a cupboard). Your quote sounds crazy!

We are not moving out at all. Our builder said that, whilst it can be challenging working around people, he prefers it when people are still living at home as they are on hand for any questions that come up in the course of the build. Plus your home insurance isn't keen on moving out!

We are having a double storey side extension and staying in the house the whole time. Luckily it can mostly be sealed up and we just live in half the house (plus we chose not to have the kitchen done at the same time, that will be phase two). He's even planning to leave a hole between the floors to take the rubbish out when they knock through so that they don't have to bring it all through the rest of the house- helps to keep the dust down!

@HouseyHouse21, just be open and honest and assure them that you will do whatever you can to minimise disruption.

Bungalows are less needed these days- my parents have decided that when their mobility is such that they can't do stairs then they will have a lift fitted. Not a stair lift but a proper lift! There are some great options these days and my friend's parents just had one fitted. Bungalows are a really inefficient use of space.

We felt bad for our new neighbours- they've only just moved in (they moved in two weeks after our build started, the house was eye wateringly expensive too!) and we were asking to put scaffolding on their garden - luckily they are very chilled and said yes. They are even find about pruning one of the trees to fit the scaffolding! Once it's up I'll take a nice bottle of wine and some flowers round!

@Sewfrickinamazeballs

Can someone talk to me about structural engineer costs. We have a quote back for one to do the calculations for our extension. We are extending an existing single storey out by a metre, building on top of this and extending to the side by a couple of metres.

First quote back is £3600+Vat so £4320 all in. This is for one site visit and the calculations. I’ve queries with our architect but this seems so expensive to me, but haven’t got any experience to know if it is or not? Anyone have similar?

Ours was £1250 for a site visit and liaison with the architect. Foundations for extension, cantilever balcony, steel work removal of supporting wall, retaining wall in the garden (steps down) and loft conversion. She had already undertaken a full structural survey on purchase though which was £750 so reduced some of the cost. se London.

@IceandIndigo

Glad to have found this thread! We've recently got planning permission for a full remodel of our Victorian terraced house - ground floor wrap around extension, loft conversion and changes to internal layout. We're speaking to a couple of potential builders next week and I'm really worried they're going to tell us we can't afford what we want within our budget.

We are planning to move out for at least the first part of the build but not really sure where we'll go. I've seen a few people mentioning AirB&Bs, don't you have to rent those by the night?

Ours projects sound the same - we also need a full rewire, new plumbing and to rebuild retaining garden walls - out quotes have ranged from £210k - £315k all in.... that means us not going crazy on fittings though! We had started with £150k budget 😬

Does anyone have recommendations on kitchen suppliers, sash windows and bifold door suppliers? And bathroom, floor and tiles would also be appreciated!

@emeraldcity2000 our initial budget is £150k too. God I hope the quotes aren’t £300k!

@emeraldcity2000 when we get to do our downstairs, we plan to get our kitchen from DIY kitchens. Lots good things have been said about them on here and other chats.

£300k! Those quotes are staggering. And I thought our 50k quote for the loft conversion was high. We don't have much of a contingency so we shall have to make sure our brief is as detailed as possible with everything accounted for to ensure no surprises.

When we started out talking to our architect about extending, she asked what we thought our budget might be. We said at that time, around £80k, she said we were mad, and it could be as little as £50k. It has taken a couple of years to get permission, and we are now looking at around £200k. It is terrifying!

Oh my goodness, some of these quotes!

When we got the drawings three years ago we were told maybe about £50k to plaster finish. But then quotes came back at more like £70k+ VAT for plaster finish plus fitting bathrooms and kitchens. We removed a bit of the building work (we aren't knocking through the kitchen and we're going to arrange the cloakroom and ensuite ourselves) and the cost is £73K + VAT. I'm sure there will be extra costs popping up ( we've already decided to render an extra bit of existing wall and put timber cladding on the edge of the balcony) plus all the internal fittings, furniture etc. Hoping we can do all that for under £120k!

@Notyetthere and @emeraldcity2000 we are going to get DIY Kitchens units for our utility, then if we like them we'll use them when we do the kitchen (when we can get the money!).

Hi, I've been reading this with interest over the past few months as we are considering a loft conversion. We have had plans done and are currently waiting for quotes to come back from contractors. It seems to be taking so long. I am really nervous at this stage as I am worried that the quotes will come back too high and that will be the end of that!

We have just moved back in after a tricky 7 months (including homeschooling) in a tiny AirBnB. The relief!

Double storey extension, kitchen extension and significant internal work, full rewire, new heating system and new drainage.

We are 50k over budget (all poured into the ground to shore up foundations - we took a punt and got unlucky) and still have half an unfitted kitchen, one unpainted room and one room that needs replastering.

Things I would say:

• high stress at the start, when they start knocking stuff down and you find unexpected problems / newts / roman burial ground etc
• quiet in the middle while they crack on and build
• high stress in the last third, when we had to force down costs which meant compromising on windows/kitchen etc - all the replanning and remaking of decisions

Beautiful, old garden has been totally destroyed - far worse than I hoped .

Lots of holding your nerve and pushing on.

Silly mistakes - like getting a radiator in the wrong place, and one set of lights that are on the wrong track - feel inordinately annoying.

The massive plus for us was that we could totally trust our builder. He was brilliant. We communicated well and could disagree without rancour. I can't imagine how awful it would be to have to work with someone you don't have faith in.

We tried to cut costs by buying an IKEA kitchen - found them unbelievably useless. Avoid. Their supply chains are all messed up at the moment.

In Jan/Feb/March lots of supply chain issues generally - might be resolved now.

Choosing stuff without seeing it over lockdown was really, really hard.

There were some things we really stretched the budget for that I do not regret at all - lightwell, for example. You need to know what you cannot compromise on.

Gosh that was a long vent. We are really happy with what we've done.

Good luck to you all!

[quote Sewfrickinamazeballs]@emeraldcity2000 our initial budget is £150k too. God I hope the quotes aren’t £300k![/quote]
I know, it was the first one we got back and I was so upset! The others are much better although it will be more than we thought... we do need to do everything though and there are still some places we might be able to pull back - our sash window quotes are very high and our builder thinks we can reduce that if we source the windows and he fits for example... 🤞🤞

In case it helps...

Alu clad windows are about 10-15% more expensive than straight timber (provided you are having same colour inside and out).

Triple glazing is 10-15% more expensive than double glazing and is not always necessary.

PVC windows are considerably cheaper again though I don't know how much as that was not something we were willing to consider.

You can get quotes for Velux online where you can specify all the details of your velux (rooflight configurator)... very helpful. Velux themselves told me that it would be cheaper from a local supplier/partner and it is, by quite a bit. Don't underestimate framing and fitting though... even the cheaper velux will probably cost you £1k each when you consider fitting.

Windows were the area we were absolutely unwilling to compromise on (we have a lot of them).

Our main contractors quotes for plastering/taping and painting were considerably more than we were quoted by individuals. This will of course be the case for most things as he marks up sub contractors but the saving on paint in particular was so considerable that we can now afford to have it done (which is great as we'll have a brand new baby (3rd DC) when it needs to be done). I am also comfortable outsourcing this as it is the end of the chain so no chance of delaying builder if scheduling isn't perfectly aligned.

The only other thing we are outsourcing is the plumbing of the existing house because it is complicated. We've found the quotes for the new boiler and water tank are quite comparable but there was a massive difference in the quote for water treatment/pump/tank where the private water specialist was half the price of the plumber.

Flooring (supply only) is anything from £10 sqm (cheap cheap laminate) to £75 sqm (top range Amtico LVT) and you can still go +++ over that. Fitting will normally be at least £15 sqm.

Choice of worktops will make a massive difference to cost of kitchen. Laminate approx £40 per m, wood £100-£200 per m, Quartz £400 per m.

Internal fittings (i.e. drawers) cost more than the units themselves. Though I personally think this is worth it and will have almost exclusively pan drawers.

You can posh up an ikea kitchen with 'bespoke' doors... superfronts, naked kitchens and foxstow seem to be main companies in UK. Though I think Ikea may have serious supply issues at the moment.

I think the biggest 'extra' cost is always changes. Our build has been delayed by covid (planning took ages and now every trades person is insanely busy) but it has meant I have made nearly all the decisions up front which will hopefully allow me to avoid expensive changes during the build itself.

I'm sure most of this is bleedingly obvious to most of you who are already neck deep in all of this, but just in case.

Hi we are thinking about offering on this house but I can only do it if there is a realistic prospect of building a downstairs toilet. Could anyone give me a ball park idea for the following:

1 storey extension to build a downstairs toilet with sink
2 storey extension which will expand the upstairs bedroom.

I have attached plans with my ideas in blue.

Any help greatly appreciated.

[quote Notyetthere]@emeraldcity2000 when we get to do our downstairs, we plan to get our kitchen from DIY kitchens. Lots good things have been said about them on here and other chats.

£300k! Those quotes are staggering. And I thought our 50k quote for the loft conversion was high. We don't have much of a contingency so we shall have to make sure our brief is as detailed as possible with everything accounted for to ensure no surprises.[/quote]
Thanks, will take a look!!

@Muststopeating very helpful, thank you! Some of that was not obvious to me at least!!!

As an aside, I found my first grey hair this morning. I'm attributing it to the thought of at least 6 months in a 1 bed flat with a 1 and 5 year old, whilst trying to work and sort the house out. 😱

@Ginflinger @Muststopeating thank you for sharing your experience of your builds. We have all of this to come; we can't say we weren't warned!

We definitely can't go over our budget by £50k. We simply can't borrow cheaply beyond what we have now from maxing out the mortgage and savings. Any extra beyond that would then go into credits cards, unsecured loans and possibly and my worst to anticipate, 2nd charge mortgage which I think will complicate things when it comes to remortgage in a couple of year's time.

In lieu of the above, we shall need to have made as many decisions upfront as possible. Our brief to be added to the BR drawings for quoting will need to have as much as possible. We can then only worry about the surprises we find when we break into the loft that might increase the cost. Anybody have a brief they have prepared beforehand for quoting please share. I will start on ours tomorrow.

Re. borrowing... if you have an excellent credit score an unsecured loan may be very close in interest rate to a mortgage. We have extended our mortgage (which is expensive at 3.19% interest as an additional element) but we are limited by the current value of our house rather than affordability to how much more we can borrow on the mortgage. Consequently we will also be taking an unsecured loan at 2.8%, so obviously works out cheaper (especially as it is taken over a much shorter period).

If you are changing boilers/heating systems or upgrading from single glazing look out for government backed loans. in Scotland it is Home Energy Scotland (and again we will be utilising a 0% loan over 12 years for the boiler). Some kitchen/bathroom companies etc will also offer 0% loan offers. A lot of loans will also allow you to pay make the majority early without any penalties.

In Scotland there may be council grants for upgrading private water supplies, if applicable.

A top up/extension to mortgage does make things more complicated. You can't just merge them even when your main mortgage comes to an end, they both have their own fixed term and never shall the two meet... so you essentially have 2 mortgages on the same house.

We will be putting any spare income after the extension to pay off the extended mortgage first, then the unsecured loan and then potentially the 0% finance loans. Obviously, I'm not advocating borrowing any more than you can afford and affordability should be a much bigger consideration than what you are able to borrow. We are fortunate enough to have other options that we could cash in if push came to shove and one or even both of us lost our jobs so that we should never be in a position where we have debt that we can't afford to pay back.

I have considered moving so many times as we would probably spend less and be able to finance it with a single mortgage instead of all these bits and pieces which is frustrating but just can't find anything with a similar location/outlook to ours (arse end of nowhere, lovely views, rural country road) and even I did we would still end up doing work to make it as perfect as our ground floor will be when we've finished. (I can't quite say the same about the upstairs or the fact that there is a surprise baby en route which makes the upstairs tighter still).

We have also planned our build in a way that will allow us to stop at various points as we have 0 contingency due to the quotes being so much higher than expected. Fortunately foundations are in (that was the riskiest part of our build) and husband has ripped down walls and ceilings in prep for the internal restructure so the few surprises that were to be found have been and dealt with without additional expense. Any additional costs (not as a result of change) at this point should be the builders issue since we are on a fixed price quote. Fingers crossed!

For our last extension we remortgaged to obtain the extra funds. We went with nationwide who did a no early penalty mortgage. Then when the extension itself was finished and we were nearly done, we remortgaged again, borrowed a bit more as the value had gone up, and finished everything.
This time we have taken out a sum when we moved here so it's sat ready to do the work.

Our architect has got our structural plans wrong. Our house is timber framed which she didn't realise so she has had to redo everything! Very frustrating

We will be putting anything we can for the build (utility room units, new carpets, wardrobes, new furniture) on a 0% credit card so we can keep the cash in the bank in case we need any contingency. Build will total £95k, plus extra for fittings, flooring etc and we had just under £130k combined savings and mortgage additional borrowing.

Luckily our foundations are all sorted with no surprises and the builder said asbestos soffits will only add a few hundred, so we should be good. Husband just got a small pay rise too so we can pop an extra bit in our savings.

The more we manage to keep back from this build the quicker I can get my new kitchen!

Scaffolding is going up at the moment, walls going up quickly!

@Muststopeating I was actually talking to dh earlier today about the advance we shall be getting from our bank and it never matching with our current mortgage. We shall always have a 6 month gap between the two mortgages and we agreed with you that we shall attack that one first to clear it unless when it comes it, we shall do the maths of whether it might save us in the long run to remortgage the lot and pay the ERC on the extra borrowing. It will be a slightly higher interest rate of 1.65% for a 2 yr fix at 70% LTV. Our current mortgage is at 1.19% for a 2 yr fix at 60% LTV. Basically these two mortgages aren't too bad at the moment and we are happy with these.

We have considered unsecured loan and that will be a 2nd option that we are most definitely going to use too. We checked and interest rates at the moment are best at 2.8%. Hopefully they are still this good come late summer. We intend to apply for this after we have finished the mortgage application so that the loan doesn't impact our affordability checks.

@Baxdream we have recently moved and ported our mortgage so we shall borrowing to the maximum LTI value of what our bank offers of 4.85 which is why I think we probably won't be able to remortgage for extra funds. It will be back to saving as much as possible for the next stage which will be the downstairs hence the gap of 3 to 5 years.

That is frustrating with the structural drawings. Does that mean that SE has to do a whole bunch of other calculations again for the beam/foundation sizes?

@perenniallymessy Looks like you have the finances sorted and the riskiest parts of the build are done. If you don't add to or change anything then I'm sure you won't go over by much.

When we got out additional mortgage borrowing we got one with no early redemption penalty. Then when our mortgage came up for renewal we managed to do both at exactly the same time on the same rate and with only one product fee. We were really pleased with that as it makes life easier. We are lucky as even with the additional borrowing our LTV is under 50% so we get good rates.