Anyone recently started major building work?

[Flockameanie]

How much did you have to either pay more than you were hoping to or compromise on what you’re doing?

We’re trying to do a major extension/renovation. Started working with architects over 2 years ago. After some Covid delays we first went out for quotes about a year ago. They were massive - about 3-4x our budget (to which the architects had allegedly been working). Spent forever scaling back designs with architects (more ££ to them 😢) and are finally ready to go out to builders again.

I’m petrified the quotes are going to be as much as last year, despite the project being much smaller now, due to ever increasing materials, labour, energy, everything, prices. But I also see lots of building work going on in our area, so presumably people are getting quotes that work for them??

My husband is a QS and costed our works up last summer at £150k. The tender we chose in January came in at £206k, we've just agreed final account at £220k. Some of that over spend was unknowns that came up, other stuff we added as we went along. If I were you I'd be expecting it to be higher than you think unfortunately and they also won't fix it due to rising cost I would expect.,

And to get it at £206k we changed window spec and roof spec, it would have been more. We also don't have anything fancy like underfloor heating, lantern light, kitchen was diy kitchens.

Argh. Not what I want to hear! (Although much as I expected)

You won't know until you get the prices back. Hope it works out for you!

not major works - but I just had a small kitchen extension costed. £60k!!!

I had a rough quote from a builder a year ago when I bought the house and it has doubled. My architect estimated £50k three months ago which was a shock! Now the quote from the builder is £60k!!

Yeowch @Mellowyellow222 ! I think I’m in for a similar shock…

Architects are notoriously crap at estimating costs. I'd take whatever one says and double it.

The thing is if prices continue like this it will get to the point that it’s just not feasible to have building work done for lots of people.

I am spending nearly £100k on a kitchen extension one you factor in a new kitchen, utility room and flooring. That’s more than my first house cost!!!

Yup, I guess building work will be another casualty of the economic downturn/ recession that we’re barrelling into…

I’m not sure what we’ll do if the quotes come back too high again. Our project includes lots of boring stuff that has to be done (heating, extra support in the roof, etc) and I fear all that will eat up the budget, before we even get to the extension/ rejigging the layout bit.

Ours is costing about 40% more than we thought it would when we bought the house last year. We've decided to go ahead with the first phase of work, to make the house comfortable, and then do the rest once we've either saved up enough, or it makes sense to use existing savings / borrow more (it doesn't at the moment).

That sounds very sensible. Some things we have done so far since we bought this place have come out more expensive than our estimates when we bought nearly three years ago. Others were the same or close to the same, or actually cheaper. We estimated what we thought we'd neeed to spend prior to buying, and doubled it to allow for contingencies. Which has turned out, thanks to covid etc., and a few things turning up, as they do with doer-uppers, to be about right. Without covid we'd have had a bit left over, and things would have been done a lot sooner; there's still a good few things left to do, but mostly by us now, and though the materials we're using have gone up, the matericals cost isn't great from most of the jobs. e.g., I reckon paint has gone up by about 15%, mortar by about the same or a little more, wood by more like 100%, but wood seems to have stabilised at this point - at least the sort of wood we're using.