Anyone with work starting soon want a chat thread?

[thenewaveragebear1983]

We were quoted in February, and have been patiently waiting… builder is Dh’s mate so worth waiting for. Finally got the 2-3 weeks call last week, so starting in 2 (ish) and I cannot wait!

we aren’t building any footprint, but are knocking into our garage to make a small living room for the kids/playroom; taking down a stud wall to make a large living room on the back; installing a wall and double doors to split a through room, and having our bathroom split into 2 to make a smaller family bathroom and a separate shower room.

we’ve never done anything like this at all so feel very nervous/excited! I’ve not really allowed myself to get excited yet so as not to be disappointed but it does seem like he’s nearly due to start!

would love a chat thread, estimate our work will take 10-12 weeks.

Good luck! Our loft conversion started on Tuesday, 2 bedrooms and a shower room. There's already accidental holes in the ceiling (they will come out with the stairs though), roof will be coming off soon but they're looking for 4 dry days so who knows. We've been waiting the best part of a year and the council have just got funny about dormers. The architect is twitchy as we're permitted development. Fingers crossed!

Exciting! That sounds like once it’s done you will create a lot of space. Who will have the new bedrooms?

Hopefully there aren't any delays for you! The weather here is terrible as could be predicted. So far it's not as disruptive as I expected but there isn't a break through yet

Although it's a regular 50/70s semi the layout upstairs it's really strange so we have 2 very big double rooms and 2 very little box rooms. This means we'll (hopefully) get 2 more decent bedrooms upstairs, using the box rooms for wfh. I'm in the office ft until it's done since my office is the nursery. We both have family that live away (~5hrs in the UK/abroad) and our little girl is 2, undecided about a sibling yet. Our parents help with childcare alternative weeks (just over an hr) so a different layout might have helped. That said the location is brilliant. Longer term DD and potential sibling will be upstairs so I can get in the bathroom and still have a spare room. Cousins can share for short term visits as they get bigger!

That sounds interesting. We are similar in that our layout was just crap. The previous owner stripped everything out and created this big barn of a place, just one huge living room. Our work is basically to put that all back into smaller rooms. Location and garden are excellent and rare where we live so it’s always been on the cards..

in prep, I allowed myself the briefest foray in b&q, next and homesense today; just a quick look at beautiful wallpapers and soft furnishings. I know they are a long way off.

this week I have stripped and revarnished an original parquet floor which we uncovered from under a carpet, and beneath that a tile floor…

Your floor is gorgeous! We had some lovely finds like that in the old house but sadly this is concrete floors downstairs

We’re hopefully starting a ground floor extension next week! 😬
dreading the mess and not having a kitchen and working out how much we can stretch the credit cards!

Uck! We just by the skin of our teeth got the last of the finance sorted a couple of days before the disaster budget. Very little wriggle room now though.

With the prices going up we thought we better just bite the bullet and go for it. We should be able to get to "shell" before we need to raise some more funds, we can't afford a kitchen unless we buy on finance or credit cards. But we'll manage!
That floor is beautiful! We're looking at a cork floor for our new bit, I'd just love to find someone who actually has a cork floor in the kitchen and small children and see how it is coping!

Yes we were the same, our quote was February and we were worried everything would have escalated hugely, so we had him requote a few weeks ago, no massive changes. We don’t have much in the way of contingency, however we are doing 3 completely separate stages so I suppose if something went horribly wrong we could stop. We’ve never done any major work before so I am a bit worried about the upheaval and having no living space for weeks. Just keep telling yourself it will be so worth it!

my current conundrum is how early to order a sofa- the one I like has a 10-11 week lead time on it, I sincerely hope at least that part of the work will be done in 11 weeks, but then it feels very risky to order it before work has even commenced. for someone like me who likes everything organised in advance (and I get quite anxious about it if it isn’t!) this is going to be an interesting few weeks.

I too hate the unknown! We also have basically no contingency fund... if only we had had a Mystic meg over before covid, then we would have been able to foresee this disaster!
I wouldn't want to risk a new sofa arriving when potentially they are still flinging plaster on walls etc.
We're currently working through a big purge of toys and crap to hopefully allow us enough space while the work is being done. Trying to encourage a 12, 4 and 2 year old to become minimalists is not going down well 😂😂

I think from original quote 12/14 months ago the price has almost doubled now we're here but does include roof and render plus the shower room labour/parts so there are extras. We can't afford the built in wardrobes now but can just furnish as we go. Lots of progress today!

how is everyone getting on?

we found out yesterday we have 2 weeks until he starts! Literally couldn’t be worse timing could it really with Christmas, but if he doesn’t start now, my worry is he starts something else and gets further delayed! At least if he’s here we are starting. We are away at Christmas so even if we are a building site it shouldn’t impact actual Christmas Day.

He’s putting a stud wall and pocket doors in first so that we can limit the dust/ impact of him removing our flat roof ceiling and putting a skylight in… suddenly it all seems very real! I’m sure this happens up everyone but is it totally normal to doubt every decision you’ve made? I’m suddenly thinking a skylight in our living room
is going to make it feel really cold and modern and frantically looking on Pinterest for reassurance that it won’t just look like a conservatory 🤦‍♀️

We started today. Knocking down an old lean to extension and then they’ll get cracking on ground work next week!
what pocket doors are you going with? We were going to do pocket doors initially and have changed to normal double doors and parliament hinges because we heard bad things about pocket doors being bad at sound, heat and smell retention.

He’s doing them to match our other doors, but with glazed panels. I’m not too worried about noise and smell (it’s not a kitchen), I suppose it does make sense though as they slide that they won’t be airtight. I want to be able to draw them totally back if necessary and it’s a huge gap we’re blocking so they will be able to completely slide away.

@LATBOTG How exciting they have finally started! We have a hideous mouldy damp lean too that I would love to see knocked down, but we can’t afford it yet, it’s going to be part of phase 2!

How exciting (and stressful) for you all. My work won't be until next year. I'm still wobbling about the whole thing and waking up in the night wanting to redo the plans. We are having a attic conversion adding 4 bedrooms and two bathrooms. I think ...

We’re trying to find a builder we can proceed with costs-wise at the moment. The prices are eye watering 😩

@mobear it is eye watering isn’t it? We really struggled to find someone who would do what we wanted (which is to redesign all the space inside but not build any footprint) because they insisted on quoting for extensions with big bi-fold doors etc which we just couldn’t afford and didn’t really want. We’ve ended up waiting 9 months for our guy as he is dh’s friend and I reckon by the time he’s finished it will be a year since the quote. I am genuinely worried that our money will be worth significantly less if it drags on much more

@thenewaveragebear1983 We’re trying to do something similar, just modify an existing extension and rebuild a loft (sadly it’s pre-reg and can’t be saved). No footprint increase but still £££! Glad you finally found someone.

I think a lot of builders will start to put clause in to say the price will only hold for so long with the way material is increasing

I think so too, but I also think the danger of that happening mid-build is increasing as well. Or supply issues.
luckily our project is 3 distinct stages and if it looks like costs could skyrocket we could delay any or all (but I don’t want to, I’ve been waiting soooooo long! )

We seem to have had estimates followed by official quote that's valid for 90 days. Also must be ahead of schedule as first fix for plumbing and heating is next week. I haven't ordered the bathroom yet! Considering the weather i think we've been very lucky🤞

Oh, can I join?! We are just in the very early stages of a modular extension - the groundscrew team came out last week and we're just waiting for the 3D rendering to come through. Building regs are coming out in the next week or so.

Most of our work is done off-site, and then in late Dec/early Jan it will be three weeks on site to put the extension up. We're adding 51.4 sqm and knocking through quite a wide space, with an RSJ needed, so it's a fairly decent bit of work. I've never had a single thing ever done to my houses before so it's really jumping into the deep end!!

We've just had to quickly rework the layout for the annexe and move the bathroom due to issues with very old work not meeting current building regs. Been a right headache!

@ExhaustedFlamingo wow that sounds great! We watch a lot of grand designs type programmes and they always seem to do these ‘build off site’ things! What will the new space be used for?

@ExhaustedFlamingo tell us more! Will it all be done in no time at all? I wasn’t brave enough to go with a modular extension but suspect I will end up regretting it.