Extension thread 2021 - countdown to Christmas

[Callmejudith]

New thread for continued celebrating, moaning and commiserating

I want to live in @wonkylegs studio. Such a wonderful space 🤩

Me too!

Oven gas connected, bit of a mare with the way it needed to fit but will be fine. Electrician now saying he can’t do second fix until Monday but I’ve begged him to at least come and make the cooker and dishwasher live so we can cook over the weekend.

@StrongArm just catching up and saw your post about water / boilers etc.
Our house is a large Victorian house with 3.3m ceiling heights so a lot of height by the time you get to the top.
We have a condensing boiler in the GF kitchen which feeds a large megaflo in the loft and now we have amazing pressure for our showers but this was mainly because we replaced the water main pipe into the house.
It wasn't a horrendous job they used a moleing rig which tunnels and then pulls the new pipe through, they leave the old pipe in place. Ours cost about £500 and they had to replace about 40m of pipe (long driveway).
The old pipe was not only lead but also so furred the pressure was shit, it's now stupendously good and lead free.

It’s raining again and the beams are all flooded with water. The roofers were here again today but god knows what they did. Sent another video to the foreman. He was on about a snagging list today and I said to him “are you joking we don’t even have a watertight roof!”

Thank goodness we didn’t paint as we’d be none the wiser to the the water - at least with the plaster you see it immediately

Oh no Callmejudith!

The rain is sounding terrible here, can’t see into the extension and not braving a soaking to see what’s going on.

Torrential here and we are being flooded, water flowing in

@Callmejudith and @Hothammock I hope the water doesn't do too much damage. Take care.

Oh crap @Hothammock - how are things? Are you OK?

Oh no, hope the rain stops and everything dries out quickly!!

Oh no @Hothammock hope it’s not been too bad overnight

To be fair the builder replied to my what’s app late last night and said he’s send someone in ASAP this morning though it’s still raining so not sure what they can do

It was in our front through the front door and made a river of our hallway. Not near the extension but I suspect a combination of masses of concrete spilt on the gravel drive and compaction from skips,rubbish and vehicles and deliveries has added to the problem. Things have subsided this morning. Feeling quite despondent that I will now need to start thinking about front drive works when I thought all this liaison with trades would soon be over. Not sure this is a job for our current builder team. They are too geriatric for all that digging... I think our extension has finished them off

We made a rudimentary bank outside the door and dig a pit for water to drain into and put down heave blankets to slow the flow. Has made me think we should have a supply of sand bags for this kind of thing!

Ah bugger @Hothammock - sounds like it could have been worse! If you do move onto driveway then you could consider a permeable one, like resin gravel.

Sounds horrendous Hothammock

I need to be brave today and look at my spreadsheet and my bank balance

@Callmejudith any tips please on creating your spreadsheet?

So far I've got a messy spreadsheet with estimates of what I thought I'd spend. I haven't actually written down any actual real numbers yet 🙈

I'll have to print off my bank statements and credit card statements to work out what I've actually spent. Builder payments have been bank transfers and I've put all online purchases (like tiles, taps, fabrics, furniture etc) through my credit card and then paying it off straight away. So far I've got £450 of free Amazon vouchers from MasterCard, so that's Christmas toys paid for 😂

I created it on google sheets so I could easily update from my phone. I've then got folders in google drive where I've saved all the invoices, kitchen charter etc.

Spreadsheet is divided into sections - planning, kitchen, builder, nice-to-haves, utility, WC etc etc.

Then columns for estimate, actual and spent. The idea being that I can see the difference between each though it's not perfect.

Then a column for either cash or credit card

Then a notes column which has been really helpful for instance i put the date I paid each thing, whether I'm waiting an invoice etc etc

@Hothammock @Callmejudith
Hope the water damage isn't too great.
'Luckily' our flood happened when we were digging foundations so we added extra drains relatively easily.

Rain was torrential here last night too. It brought down some of the plastic sheeting covering the roof and tripped out the electrics. DH had to go out and try to sort it out in the dark using his phone torch. It’s dry today so fingers crossed for all of us that it stays that way.

Kind of level floors here now, I can still feel a ridge with my feet so will see what the scary floor lady says next week. We've got sparkies tomorrow and Monday doing second fix. Flooring starting next Weds and will take a week. I was planning on starting on the mist coat tomorrow, but it was still quite patchy this morning, looks better now, but it's given me some doubt.

Still waiting on the roof lantern, keep putting the roof garden company off until its here.

@Indecisivelurcher unless it's tiny don't let scary floor lady convince you a ridge is okay. We laid our vinyl floor with a small ridge and over time the vinyl cracked where people were walking across the ridge.

Thanks @NewHouseNewMe, expect that the scary floor lady will go the other way and not allow even the slightest imperfection.

The plasterers are working really well and have completed half of the first floor extension. All the ensuite fittings arrived today, ready for the plumber to fit the wet room system tomorrow prior to the tiler coming on Wednesday.
One of the really big steels went in today (there was a lot of swearing!!) only 1 remaining. I seem to be haemorrhaging money having ordered all the kitchen appliances plus the now normal weekly payment to the builders. Hope everyone else is ok and the flooding issues have been too problematic.

Thanks @Callmejudith!! Your spreadsheet sounds amazing. I like the estimate and actual, as I could use those to see where we've gone over...

So I'm currently contemplating door handles for my new French doors. The window company lady just replied that they allow a budget of £15 inc VAT for 1 crappy handle per set of French doors!!! This is for a job costing around £55k!!!!!

The ones I like are £174 each and I'd want 2 sets on each set of French doors. Is £1.4K a lot for door handles??! 😂 FFS I think she's trying to pull a fast one.