Extension thread 2022 part II...demolition, delays and decisions, decisions, decisions

[Sewfrickinamazeballs]

Hi! New thread!

Can I recommend CP Hart bathrooms. It's pricey but the quality is so much better and so much more exciting than the regular places.

This week the only progress has been a bit more tiling on the patio. It does look good I have to say. Assume all the other builders have been busy in schools as they do have a lot of contract work in them.

hoping next week sees a return of some of them to start on finishing the last biggish bits and starting on the snagging list.

Thank you but it looks like CP Hart is almost entirely in the south and we're in the north?

I'm also not sure we've got the budget to stretch to a luxury bathroom (not when we need three of them!)

@RidingMyBike we’re getting mostly from Lusso stone and some cabinets our joiner is making. Last house I managed to get what I wanted from The Bathstore (though they have closed down the shop in my city).

Thank you! For some reason I thought Bathstore had gone bust but it looks like they now have their stuff in Homebase. Some of their baths look more like what we're looking for.

Bora hobs - anyone know - is it possible to buy one if you haven't bought your kitchen from a fancy kitchen shop?

You can definitely buy one through a dealer and fit yourself @GardensandGrandDesigns . I was speaking to them at the Ideal Homes before we had chosen our kitchen supplier. (We went for nerf in the end but I can’t remember why! Probably price!)

Thanks @NewHouseNewMe which Neff hob did you go for? I might go to the Bora lab in London.

We went for the “Neff T48CB1AX2 Induction Hob with Extractor” and will recirculate rather than duct out. I can’t tell you how good it is because we haven’t got our kitchen installed yet but we loved our previous neff induction hob so are hopeful!

Thank you. I'm on the search for a vented one and I've narrowed it down to Bora and Neff. Whatever I can get hold of will probably be the decider!

Just coming to join the thread we are just at the very start. Our property was a bungalow that has been badly extended multiple times and is very jumbled.
It needs full redesign to make it a functional family home. We have an amazing architect who specialises in this time of project and are lucky that we live in a location where there is no real road price ceiling ( or if there is we are a long way from it!). Plus the local authority have failed to update their local plan so it is fairly easy to get planning permission.
We are waiting for the initial architects plans ( we have had budget projections which are within what we can afford).
This is my first home with my second husband, he has done work on pervious properties and is an engineer. I have never done work my first husband never wanted to do any work - I had to push hard to even get a room painted!

Very, very excited we bought the house as a long term investment to move elsewhere for retirement, but I have fallen in love with the location so am keen to create something special.

Hi @GardensandGrandDesigns the Neff we bought can be recirculated and vented because we weren’t sure whether we were past the point of choosing back then (we were!). I think they’re all available for both.

@Lonecatwithkitten that sounds amazing and a very special property! I’ve always fancied a bungalow but they literally don’t exist where I am.

Ahh sounds amazing @Lonecatwithkitten good luck with it all and I hope your architect gives a better estimate of cost than ours did. Ours is ending up 70% more than he thought but we haven't been very good at compromising as we want to live here a long time.

So it is glazing week for us this week 😬 Sliding doors, 2 new external doors and replacing all windows with triple glazed. obviously the forecast is torrential rain and thunderstorms 🙈🙈🙈

Inside plasterboarding starts upstairs. 1 week left to go in the Travelodge!

What are everyone else's goals for the week ahead?

Good luck with the glazing @GardensandGrandDesigns

I have a feeling, 2-3 weeks into a 7 months build, that we are already slightly behind. They have identified some stuff they want to fix on the roof before they can begin anything indoors but they are still in demolition phase (whole of the inside being ripped out) and nothing on new extension done yet. I will fish out the schedule when at work tomorrow.

This week's jobs - finding who is ordering what and when, making sure we have the final kitchen quote and getting a sample of wall tiles for the bathrooms. We know what the floor tiles look like but we didn't get the wall tile sample before we had to move out so now I'm concerned that they won't 'match'.

Also builders and architect pushing me to pick the supplier for the patio doors and windows to the extension. I think they have overscoped it as it looks like they've quoted me bifolds but there is only a 2.5 door space and I'm not sure it's big enough. So need to sort that Monday!

@GardensandGrandDesigns , that sounds similar to us! We are expecting plastering this week and fitting of window and doors. But haven’t seen the doors arrive on site yet so am curious as to how this pans out and if it will happen - the Veluxes are in but they arrived maybe a week before they were installed.

It is definitely feeling like the finishing line is in sight! My one niggle is that they need to work out what to do about the condensing pipe for the boiler, which is now inside the extension - and cannot be plastered over, obviously. I’d feel better if this had been resolved at an earlier stage but the builder is waiting for his plumber to come and look at it.🙄

@NewHouseNewMe technical it is now a chalet bungalow, but it has been badly extended on at least 4 occasions, but maybe more. There are crazy electrics, walls no fully plastered after doorways closed up etc.

Just as the foundations are about to be dug, turns out the party wall surveyor has made a fuck up and not done the right agreement with one side. This could set us back weeks and cost a fortune. I am not sure how, as the surveyor, he missed the issue. Seems he did not pick up that the wall that is there already (built by the neighbour) is actually on the boundary. Seems he made a mistake (?) and thought it was on their side. Now it's on the boundary, either we build our side and lose space or we use the wall and pay them (and therefore need an agreement and agree on costs).

The architect recommended this party wall surveyor rather than us using one we've used before so we are even more pissed of! I hope he has insurance as if there's a delay, I can tell you who it will be charged to!

After the initial fast progress in week 1, not much has happened since. There was somebody today digging up concrete floor of demolished garage and utility (1 guy, by hand no machine) for part of day. Bit sluggish progress, foundation supposed to be dug next week.

argh @SpotOnMyBot ! Hope they can come up with as quick and easy a solution as poss.

Oh wow that sounds pretty bad @SpotOnMyBot .
How much would you lose if you build on your side - is it material?

It's a typical London terrace that had an unapproved extension out the back when we bought it. It wasn't full width of the house. We managed to get planning to rebuild the extension (to the same width). Thinking about it logically now, the unapproved one used the wall that was already there so I suspect building inside it we will lose a fair amount given it's probably only 2-3m wide at the back. We're putting the kitchen there so it could be material. I guess we've got to decide now whether we take the delay and use the wall or go ahead and see what we can do building inside it.

Even worse, these neighbours are the super difficult ones who objected to the build in the first place and it turns out they have 'stolen' part of the garden by moving the fence. This isn't governed by the party wall act so if we want to do something about it, we have to get a lawyer involved.

Argh! So annoyed as this is our 3rd building project and we've never had a surveyor fuck up like this. A month's delay is so expensive, we are talking tens of thousands of pounds, that we might have to live with it. Dp will go to the site tomorrow to sort it out hopefully!

@MyBuggyIsOutToGetMe can they vent the pipe out the building? How annoying it's not resolved before the plastering!

@SpotOnMyBot (brilliant user name, by the way), frankly, your situation sounds a lot more annoying! How did a surveyor miss that?! To be fair, our neighbours had an extension built to the boundary which predated ours but they were happy for ours to adjoin theirs and signed a PW agreement with no murmuring.

The plumber seemed very relaxed about the pipe and it just seems to be a question of changing it for an internal one….I will feel better once it’s done but he looked very unruffled.

It's starting to look semi habitable upstairs wooo!
Downstairs is still a building site

Looking good @GardensandGrandDesigns ! Love that you’ve got the light shade on already 😝

A huge sprint has started at mine. Suddenly we are fighting over floor or kitchen first (kitchen company insisting on floor first, flooring say the other way is more normal). Now we are doing 2nd electrics and plumbing within next 2 weeks and have picked carpets. The above floor v kitchen row has upset the apple cart - kitchen co has won - but we’re just obsessed with going home and are taking short cuts to make it happen.