About to start a 6-month extension build...

[AppropriateAdult]

... and moving in with the in-laws for the duration. Come join me on this wild ride!

Hey everyone great to see everyone's updates and love & patience to those dealing with difficult neighbours 💐 We finally have the shed complete so now we can start clearing the house out . Looking forward to having a massive clear out I plan to be ruthless as we've accumulated so much crap over the last few years. Waiting for the gas heating to be sorted in the mobile and then we can move into that. Will be a pain in the ass living in it for a few months but I know it will all be worth it in the end

We are a month in - steels going in at the moment and the foundations are done! Utilities all now located which is handy! I am not on site and they have set up their own tea station so I have supplied a load of Jaffa cakes to keep them sweet! It's really exciting seeing the space we will get now all the walls are down!

Good luck to all those recently starting. Agreed it all looks huge at the start. The trenches are massive and you're thinking what is going on!

We broke out the attic this week, dormer being constructed in the attic and next door have sent a message to not get any saw dust in the garden. I said builder would do their best and would go in and clean up any mess after, apparently that's not necessary though. The sooner all the external work is complete the better. Think we are mostly onto the internal from next and I couldn't be happier. Just the external rendering to do then.

Have a meeting with builder and architect tomorrow to see where we are and estimate how long left and what final decisions are to be made. So im looking forward to that.

I'm just hoping we can get the party wall certificate in place before build is supposed to start.

Our PWA was late, but one neighbour was happy to waive the waiting period. The other one took the letter/forms and hasn’t returned them yet, but dh had a chat an gave them to him personally so as far as we know he doesn’t seem to have a problem with the start date, he’s just a bit swamped with work at the moment. I’m not going to fret about it if he isn’t.

When the previous neighbour in his house built their 2-storey extension he didn’t bother with a PWA and neither did our attached neighbour when they were doing work on the party wall. We only found out it was a thing when we started planning our extension.

First Building Control Inspection to check the inspection trench for foundations/drains has been booked for Monday. Should have been today, but we have had our first delay, because the water company hadn’t sent them a copy of our build-over agreement.

What has everyone done about insurance? We’ve asked our Buildings Insurance broker to look into renovation insurance for us, but not sure whether to just go direct to Renovation Plan. Our broker checked the Building Insurance company is ok to continue that policy, which they are for now, but that may change if/when we have no-one living in the house for longer than 30 days. We have a project manager managing individual trades and they all have their own insurance, including the necessary public liability, but there’s no ‘project insurance’ so we need that in place sharpish.

We’re off to the Home Building and Renovation Exhibition at the NEC tomorrow. I have no idea how useful it will be, but the tickets were free, so we might as well go.

@Driverpicksthemusic my next door neighbour works in planning and is awkward so we will end up going down the party wall surveyor route I imagine.

We don't have any @Driverpicksthemusic our builder will have it

We have house insurance must actually look into what we need to do insurance wise as dh and fil are the builders / foremen so will have to check how it will work

@Driverpicksthemusic We had to inform our home insurers of the works, they requested a lot of detail on the build, the builders' insurance etc. They switched our policy to fire only for the duration of the build, with a reduced premium.

Urgh! First BCO site visit and we already have a problem. Builder wanted to connect surface water to the foul drain, as we have heavy clay soil and our garden slopes slightly upwards away from the house. A soakaway would be required across the full width of our garden 5m out from the rear of the extension and would need to be extra deep with careful planning to attempt to get an incline from the house to it.

Our BCO was far from helpful, just kept saying ‘not my area’ to every question the builder asked him, even suggesting the drainage issue is a planning issue not building control, which is ridiculous.

Dh now has to contact our water supplier and see whether there is any point in putting in an application for surface to foul water connection. A quick look at their website suggests you have to prove a soakaway is not viable and I suspect for that it will mean £££s on soili samples and surveys.

What a farce! The house is 100 years old and has always been set up for surface and foul water to enter the same drain.

We had a similar issue and my architect has sorted this out with the water company on the basis that it's how it has always been - he emailed them explaining the situation and it's all now agreed - the alternative was digging up a significant amount of finished driveway etc - I am sure it will be fine if you or the contractor or architect do the same.

Thank you @pashmina696. Amazingly the water company actually responded really quickly. We had to supply them with our drainage maps (ridiculous considering the maps are of their drains) but they got back to us today approving connection to the foul water system on the basis that we have always had a combined foul/surface water connection and a soak-away wouldn’t be effective.

So relieved, as the builder was saying it was going to be quite expensive, due to extra digger hire and the cost of the drainage cage, plus it was going to be exactly where we’re hoping to build dh’s new home office, which we plan to store some of our furniture in.

Dh signed the paperwork for the storage unit this afternoon, so we can finally start to get things packed and out.

We've had concrete poured in the footings this morning so block work will start tomorrow eek

Fantastic! Exciting to see real signs of progress.

@Driverpicksthemusic that's the first steps done now. Get packed away and it begins in earnest.

How is everyone else going?

Our dormer is up and entire roof has been taken off and felt replaced and put back together. Slabbing is starting tomorrow, then plastering and then put the house back together. Very exciting times now. Kitchen due to go in in 5 weeks time which makes me feel we will be in fairly soon after that. Hopefully in by end of May 🤞

Haven't heard anything from the neighbours in a few days now so no news is good news on that front. Once we are done outside and they move inside I'm hoping that'll be the last of it.

@Jesusmaryjosephandtheweedon Yep, we have booked a regular weekend slot at the tip for the next month. Ds1 is moving out at the start of month one, dc2 either then or at knock through and dh, dd, the dog and I are staying put till June, setting up a temporary sitting room/kitchenette in their bedroom. So you will be moving back in just before we move out.

How long has yours taken overall? It’s all sounding very efficient and on-track.
Fingers crossed your neighbours will stay away and you can focus on getting back in and settled.

I’m still going round in circles with deciding on a kitchen. We thought we were set on freestanding in-frame, but having been to the national reno and homebuilding show at the weekend and looked at the convenience and options available with fitted kitchens, we’ve been tempted. Builder can get a decent discount off Howden’s so now considering Chilcomb in-frame.

Btw if you can get to one of the shows you can get really good discounts from the exhibitors. Dh and I managed to get 30% off our dining room roof-light, which is much cheaper than the price our builder got from his trusted trade supplier and my dsis got some great deals/offers for various bits for her build.

@Driverpicksthemusic it really is but bloody pouring down today so doubt they'll be coming to lay blocks

@Jesusmaryjosephandtheweedon that sounds really exciting I'm excited for blocks to go up then visually see it actually going back up.

What was everyone's reason for extension vs moving ? Presuming cost ?

@Driverpicksthemusic we are now 9 weeks in.and I'd say maybe 8 from moving back but builder is hesitant to give a time.frame at the moment.

They said 16 weeks at start so seem very on track for that.

We didn't even think to move, we love where we live and it took us months to find it when we moved there 6 years ago. It's perfect location for us and in quite a settled area so there wouldn't be many houses that are bigger. Extension was the only way for us.

@mrssunshinexxx We need an extra bedroom and some other improvements (extra shower room, bigger kitchen diner etc) and had the equity to build and still retain significant equity.

To move in our area would take every penny we have and then some and we would still end up with a fourth bedroom that’s only really big enough for an office.

Also, dd has a four more years at school/6th form, can walk to school and meet friends locally easily, so we didn’t want to move away to get a bigger house only for her to have to travel over here daily.

We could have done a bigger build (up as well as out) which would have been a better design, but it would have taken most of our equity. We’re not getting any younger and want to focus on paying off the mortgage and building pension funds when the build is over.

The plan is to stay here now. We’ve been here over 20 years already.

@Jesusmaryjosephandtheweedon Good to hear that your build is on track to finish on time. I’m fretting slightly, as so many seem to overrun significantly and ideally we would like to be settled back in before the September term starts, which gives us the builders estimate plus a few extra weeks.

@Driverpicksthemusic that's great news!

My footings are all in, but as we are reducing our floor level that's the next job before they can start building - though steel is in which is great. Seems to be on track!

We love where we live and we always knew the house would benefit from a bit of a re-jig when we bought it - but we have been there for years and felt we weren't using our space well and so bit like that Sarah Beeny show or your home made perfect- we are making some (major) changes to make it work better - the stamp duty cost of moving alone justifies the cost of renovation.

We're doing work rather than moving because we love the area and wouldn't be able to get the room we need for the same price by moving. Also dd2 has a physical disability that means she'll benefit from a ground floor bedroom and our house has the potential to facilitate that.

I think we might be on for some kind of record. The groundworks started at 8am on Tuesday and by 1pm on Wednesday the concrete was in! Our builders really aren't hanging around. I realise it will slow down a bit from here but it's exciting to see visible progress so quickly.