Renovation Budget - did you go over ?

[chillibeansauce]

My Builders are robbing bastards. Please help me feel better today and tell me how much your renovation budget went over by.

My builder was also a robbing bastard - he walked out in the end and we still had about £20k to finish what he didn't do - it was a massive renovation though and that 20k included far superior quality goods like doors, skirting and making another room which added about £25-50k to our home so we did get it back in value - but I'm never giving any trust to literally anyone ever again - that was about 14 months ago

What happened to you?
What happened to you?

My tradesmen were not robbing bastards but in the process we found that walls and part of a ceiling needed re doing so more money. I went over by about £10k

Ours aren’t robbing bastards either. So far. But a wall unexpectedly needed underpinned, the joists were a different way than expected, more work being done in garden because they are here with a digger.

So far an extra £8k on a 110k build. We have a £25k contingency.

We had a loft conversion followed by an extension to the rear of the house. In the end , the only way we got rid of the builders was by telling them we had run out of money. They kept suggesting other jobs they could do. That said, what they did was fine.

We gave our architects a budget of £100k and I reckon all in we'll be £191k, thats before we've even started.

We have triple glazed alu clad windows and the timber cladding we've selected is not the cheapest. Putting in new boiler, megaflow water tank, cold water tank with whole house pump etc. But kitchen will be Ikea (hopefully with bespoke doors but potentially not cos skint), flooring will probably be quickstep. Husband is doing all the exisiting house conversion (knocking down walls, building new partitions etc).

Its absolutely mental how expensive everything is right now! We are fixed price and now we are out of the ground there is little room left for surprises, plus we agreed to the builder buying up the timber in advance to save on some of the constant price increases. So if they come to me asking for more money I'll lose it. (Especially since they are already about 9 weeks behind, for no good reason except that they've taken on too much).

Both architect and structural engineer asked for more money at the end of fixed price jobs, with no mention of variation whilst doing the work. They were politely told where to stick that!

When I get a quote and timescale from a builder I double it. Partly because time wise they are always far too optimistic about weather, supplies, the pace of work etc, and partly because there's always issues that were unexpected- rotten joists, damp whatever. It also seems to take as much time to finish the last 10% as the first 90%.
My builder hasn't ripped me off, but he has been incredibly slow at times. Having said that I've had a few emergencies and he has always come through (failed flat roof leaking badly four days before completion, broken ground floor window on a Bank holiday etc).
A couple tradesmen have just been incompetent which has cost more in the long run.
It's a big learning curve - and you learn pretty quick that any changes at all add to the bottom line and deadline.