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.

Almost there with kitchen…

Bhorta - the kitchen is looking great and nearly finished, lucky you! We have quite a few similar bits of layout to yours, so I hope it works!

I’m sure our loft work moved quicker than the rear extension, maybe the not needing to spend 9 weeks digging holes in the ground only to fill them with concrete helped?!!

A few guys on site here today, good buildy noises coming from outside.

I keep thinking how on earth we’ll cope when they’re inside though?
Eg I drop kids at school, come home and make tea and toast and sit down with my iPad (for too longer normally!).

They’ll be in the kitchen/back of the house making a mess by that point. May have to get up earlier!

Or move more of the kitchen into the front room. Already have table, chairs, fridge & freezer in here. If I move the kettle, toaster and maybe the microwave I could avoid a lot of time in the back.

Despite plenty of work being done today, and having up to 4 people working at one point, I’m a bit fed up.

The roofer guy sort of suggested I won’t be getting the kitchen in this side of Christmas. Just in a casual way, like that would be normal.

They started in April, I’ve had a temporary wall across the back for 2.5yrs and progress has been as a snails pace for weeks.I think we’re officially at week 19 out of a suggested 20… I asked them if they thought we looked a week off finishing?!!

I am patient, but the thought of this all dragging into next year, whilst maybe realistic, is vvvv depressing.

Will it ever end? And will it really be worth it? Someone else cheer me up with your progress today!

Hi @LivingOnABuildingSite I think someone
(anyone!) needs to assume stroppy customer stance. Ask them what would it take to be done by Christmas - do they need supplies, more people, something from you/the architect? If you can pin them down to a week by week plan, that would be useful to track progress.. They will respond to the squeaky wheel sadly.

@Callmejudith it sounds like you're having a very stressful time! Your builders sound hard work!

@BhortaBhorta I ADORE your kitchen. May I ask who supplied it? I want the same..

We've bottled doing the tendering ourselves and have pulled in the professionals - our architect. When we've done this in previous houses we either blindly trusted the builder (bad) or winged it (sort of worked). But this is a bigger job and we can't leave it to chance.

@BhortaBhorta that looks fab!

@LivingOnABuildingSite argh! Why do they think it’s ok to drop a bomb like that so casually??

Loads going on at our place. Toilet wall is in and luckily the joiner guy asked my opinion and we made a quick decision and got it up quickly. Electricians have been amazing and worked so hard (apart from water leak but they fixed that)

Foreman came and I basically tied him down to a plan for the next two weeks. We may just may be ok to move back.

Oh and my favourite builder is back from Albania so that’s making me feel more confident. He’s in charge of the plaster board and boxing and I know he’ll do a decent job

Oh and sliding door people coming tomorrow to remeasure the roof light

@Callmejudith so glad you're making progress with your build team! I've no idea how you've kept your calm based on your previous posts, just hope it continues that way and they noticed the rod stuck up their arse lol! I totally winged it with my builders and put my trust in them and I was very, very lucky as he was quite young and starting out and we may have been one of the biggest jobs he'd done but we worked quite well together. A few minor hiccups but between us we managed to sort it out quickly and bring things back on track, plus we were very lucky that our BCO had a soft spot for him and his uncle. All very different now we're taking reigns on rest of project (internals) and doing a lot of DIY, my OH is a perfectionist, sometimes it's a great thing but sometimes I'm like FFS!

@BhortaBhorta your kitchen looks fab, looks very similar colour scheme to ours.

@LivingOnABuildingSite I really feel for you, I'm distraught thinking we still won't be finished by Oct which was our original plan. I definitely think a weekly plan would help trying to coax them to make up for lost time. What stage are you at now and what needs to be done before kitchen can be fitted?

We had our first fix electrics sorted end of last week and it's great to finally have some power downstairs as we've been without since day 5 of build and had some dodgy extension leads setup which luckily hadn't overloaded! OH has made amazing progress plasterboarding ceilings last 2 nights and will hopefully finish wall boards by Thursday. I've asked nursery if its OK to pick up DD a little later on Thurs so we can tackle self-levelling .

I'll admit fitting extension work around looking after 2 yo DD is quite challenging. Normally there's loads of stuff I'd do myself and she's usually pretty chilled and has been totally unphased by all the chaos around her so far and happy to play independently but lately she seems to be a little more clingy. Any more of you doing your renos with very young children/babies and have any advice/useful tips?

Howdens chilcomb in cream and dusky blue. Silestone worktop.

@RebelGeek76 when we did our loft our youngest was about 3 and he definitely got more clingy, I think it's just the change and they don't understand what the house will be like afterwards. I tried to make it as exciting as possible for him and talked about the new bits and pieces he'd benefit from.

Surveyor came out this morning to measure the rooflight space, would any of you like to hazard a guess whether I was right or the builder? So that means a whole new rooflight will need to be ordered. God knows how long that'll take.

Callmejudith- my money’s on you! Hope you’re not paying for any shortfall.

Roofer guy must have passed on my less than impressed reaction as boss guy is coming round tomorrow to discuss plans going forward.

I’m generally a relaxed person - as long as something is happening then it’s moving forwards. But somehow Christmas ends up being this big hurdle in the road ahead.

Some fascia bits arrived today so that’s positive, they’re working on the side getting lintels and top edges (tech term!) finished ready for the roofer to move around there.

It will happen, one day!

Meanwhile I had a positive morning in my Governor role at school as our building project there is nearly done. To time and almost to budget. Impressive. They were apologising to me for the dust on site, I felt like bringing them home 😂

I’ve been procrastinating and not finished the last bits of summerhouse painting so may go and do an hour of that before school run.

No way am I paying anything extra! And it’s also going on the list of reasons why we won’t be paying the builder the full amount

our scaffolding has gone down so finally we can park outside the house again - believe me, where we live, this is a huge bonus

we are still tackling the garden and waiting for the measured survey to come back so we can start looking at plans

we've had to apply for a certificate of lawful development for the shed plus planning for the trees. Planning's target reply date is 25th October fgs. And it's just for pruning the trees that are in a terrible state. The shed has no target date of return but we haven't ordered it yet and it has a 70 (working) day lead time so likely to be the new year now, much to dp's despair.

At this rate, even if we get the survey and agree plans in say 3-4 weeks, I can't see us submitting planning till November time at the earliest if we are lucky, maybe getting responses early in the new year and possibly starting the build middle of next year. So a long path still...

I have got the wallpaper steamer and will start trying to get the woodchip off the walls in the front rooms but I don't want to damage the lime plaster too much underneath them so it's going to be a bit of a chore. Am thinking if we can just redecorate the front rooms that are likely to be untouched by any build work by Xmas, at least it will be a bit more pleasant for everyone. Just means taking the wallpaper off, re plastering maybe, then lifting up the carpets and doing the floorboards. I think that's achievable by xmas along with the garden (fingers crossed!).

I must admit everyone's fantastic lovely back windows/doors and roof lights are making me feel quite optimistic!

I know it doesn't feel like it but you're probably all so much closer to the end than you realise - I know in the last place where we did the side return and redid the back of the house, the last few weeks, a lot more went on and there was so much progress. it's just getting the right people to come at the right time and focus on the job at hand that's the tricky bit!

That's really helpful @StrongArm I'm really trying to remain optimistic. DH was talking about doing another month in the flat but I just want to be back home.

I remembered that one of the school mums does post-build cleaning so we're going to get her in for a quote

@BhortaBhorta

Howdens chilcomb in cream and dusky blue. Silestone worktop.

So beautiful!

So I got a new order confirmation for the lightwell - it's STILL the wrong size. Good lord. The good thing is I also realised that when I had to pay 50% to order the doors and lightwell they'd actually missed the lightwell off the invoice which means I haven't paid a deposit for it.

I replied to the order confirmation and said "This needs to reflect the correct size. I haven't paid a deposit for this and won't be doing so until I'm certain it's the correct size"

Sorry this is so boring to keep going on about

Sounds a real pain @Callmejudith, it's just so frustrating when delays are down to other people's incompetence when you're relying on them getting it right.

I'd posted previously about a 12 week wait for the clay tiles we needed. They arrived 12 weeks later, great. They then sat on the driveway for a week before the roofer turned up, started work, then announced that the builders merchant hadn't ordered enough tiles! Unbelievable! Apparently the roofer gives the measurements to the merchant who calculates quantities, rather than the roofer giving quantities but you'd think they'd have checked.

It's been a four week wait to get more sent. I'm just so annoyed that no-one thought to check the amounts either at order time, any time while waiting for them, or immediately when they arrived.

Ecthelion - that is just soooo annoying!

Just callmejudith- unbelievable! Hope they get back to you ASAP with the right sizes.

4 guys here today (interesting what my little dissatisfied chat seems to have done lol). They warned me it would be very noisy as they need to drill/jackhammer up the old concrete floor that’s under half of the old extension.

Only it turns out that previous builders have screeded, tiled, screeded again and retired over a wooden floor. That had its airbricks blocked up. And is now completely rotten!

It doesn’t matter as the floor was coming up anyway for the UFH but omg the state of it. And the back of the whole house (& loft extension!) was resting on it.

Have tried to take a pic but it won’t load to my iPad yet, will try later.

Also found some lovely old red square tiles under there but not enough to really do anything with.

Also found the base of an old bay window we didn’t know was there. Holding up the floor for half the house. So it’s staying and will be worked around and rehidden.

Random old pipes of course too. I love uncovering the history even if it’s a bit dodgy at times!

@Ecthelion oh my god what is wrong with all these suppliers? Why don't they double check anything? So annoying.

Wow @LivingOnABuildingSite I'd love to see a picture of that!

I'm in the office today but DH has been at the house and said the useless foreman was actually there shock and he went through the plan with DH.

I'm going to get quotes for a roof lantern from some other firms. They have really annoyed me.

@RebelGeek76 can I ask where you got your rooflight from?

Wise ones... when thinking about the cost of a build in m2 is it the internal or external space they refer to?

For example... internal space would be 17.5m2 vs external 24m2, which @ £3K per m2 would be £52,500 vs £72,000... plus vat 😭

[quote Callmejudith]@RebelGeek76 can I ask where you got your rooflight from?[/quote]
We got ours from Roofing Outlet, they sell both standard and made to measure sizes. Ours was a Korniche one. Best price we found at £1328 for a 2.5m x1.5m one. It was a 6 week wait in the end or ours although website says 4 weeks.

Right there is a lot for me to catch up on as I’ve been deliberately staying off here. Too frustrated with our own lack of progress! I’m going to read up on everyone’s activity shortly.

So, we are waiting on our party wall agreement and structural engineer report. Had first builder out to quote but he said he can only quote for the side extension as the loft bit really needs the structural engineer’s stuff to be able to do accurately. So I’m going to be chasing the structural engineer but in the meantime I’ve asked for the side to be priced - because I just need something to be booked in. He’s currently booking jobs 12 months ahead 😳

Have another firm coming who said they’re booked to about May ‘22 - so I’m resigned that even 12 months from now not a lot is likely to have changed.

I can’t wait to reach building stage!!!

Dontrain- that is frustrating. All you can do is keep plodding along through the paperwork hoops and know it’ll happen, one day.

I think our roof lantern might be Korniche can’t remember, the bifolds are Origin I know that.

LATBODG - no idea sorry!

Going to try and add a photo.

So in the photo above the diagonal gap you can see the jagged ends of what should be rectangular planks.
They rest on some floor beams that are also rotten.
Which rest on floor joists that are also rotten. Or at least one of them is rotten anyway.

Much discussion about possible dry rot and what that might mean.

They think from what they could see by the end of the day that it isn’t as bad as they feared.

But the main nightmare is more what could’ve happened.

That floor had slate tiles, on a screed base, on top of red tiles, on more screed, on what should have been a solid base but was wood instead.

When we had up to 16 acrows holding up the back of the house, they were stood on that floor.

We put a large loft extension, changing the roof and all sorts, while the house rested on wood you can crumble with your hands 😱😱😱