What are your top tips or regrets for house renovation and extension?

[CirclesandSpirals]

We’re about to start our house renovation with extension. Our budget is doable, but tight since the cost of everything is spiralling.

What are your best tips, biggest regrets, or things you wish you had known before you started your renovation? Anything that might save us money or time or regret is very welcome.

Not sure if you have an architect but we regretted not using a sizeable extension for a lounge and not a kitchen in hindsight. The lounge was quite small and the kitchen huge. We just fell in love with the kitchen design, an island seating 8 people (which in practice we never utilised fully). In another something small but consider which way the doors hang.

Not using the builder’s sub-contracted plumber and using my own.. The plumber was useless, the two fell out big time and we ended up having serious damage to the finished project. Had we used the plumber’s it would have been on him to resolve.
We also used a different electrician and the builder and electrician got on like a house on fire, and often work together now.
A few minor regrets on choices but nothing major.

Expect it to cost twice the original estimate. Literally....twice as much.

And accept that the previous owners were dangerously incompetent yet enthusiastic at DIY. I've been in my house for 15 years in October I'm still undoing the damage they did.

We’ve done an extension recently and my tips would be:

• Anything you can bear to do yourself, do yourself. If you or your partner are handy picking up odd jobs can help with costs massively and also you probably will be more satisfied with the finish.
• Ditto for the more white collar things, floor plans, liaison with building control/planners, etc. You can still appoint an architect but reduce the fee this way.
• Be wary of overglazing
• Be wary overspecing your drainage
• Choose some cheap finishes that can be changed later. Like say a cheap worktop for now and upgrade just that later.

But my top tip is OBSESS over all the detail ahead of time. You and partner have constant chats about minutiae before involving anyone else. Make sure you’re absolutely thrilled with the plan, you don’t really want to try and vary it as it goes along.

I love home reno stuff so if you posted a floor plan I could give more specific thoughts, but no worries if not!

We chose a builder who was still working on a house, the skip was packed with military precision to fit in as much as possible, the job site was also incredibly tidy.

We paid for everything from the builder's merchant so we owned it all, the builder rang through a list and then passed the phone to me and I paid. He invoiced for his labouring work at the end of each week mid afternoon and I would bank transfer funds into his account, he then gave me a receipt.

I paid all his subcontractors directly, window/door fitter, plasterer, electrician, kitchen fitter. This meant the only money going through the builder was his wage and he was under the VAT threshold (currently £90k) so no VAT charged to me. This made it cheaper and he earned a very good wage from it.

The unknown is the foundations of the extension. I had a full pinterest board of the kitchen extension and then shopped around for the cheapest place to buy this. We were not swayed by high end products, some cheaper items are just as good quality without the branding or marketing.

I agree that if you can do things yourself, definitely do it. We ripped out our old kitchen but left the sink unit in and the builder kept that unit in the middle of the room until it needed to move. It meant they could make cups of tea plus they put a temporary drain in to the outside. Genius.

We also put a vertical steel in the wall so we didn't have to retain a pillar to rest the horizontal steel on.

We had a 1 week break between the room being plastered and before the kitchen fitter, that meant we could paint the empty room rather than trying to paint around kitchen cupboards.

I agree about discussing everything together before it happens as sometimes you need to make a decision immediately by yourself. Decide what your non-negotiables are now, we compromised on the dishwasher but not the hob.

My build was on time and on budget. My builder had 20 years experience and it showed, even down to the number of bricks ordered (10 left over) roof tiles, 2 left over. He was also pristine, took a lot of pride in his work and we had a tidy job site,

Thanks all. We are using an architect because we want to remodel the inside and they’ve come up with some much more clever ways to do that than we could have thought up.

No final design yet, but hopefully soon.

We’ve got a 25% contingency in place, but I will try to up that if we possibly can. I am really worried about costs getting out of control.

I’m handy for some jobs, painting etc, so will take that on myself. Not much use for heavy lifting though.

Wow yes that’s the kind of thing I will need to look out for. Thanks. Sounds expensive

We've finished the structural work renovating a derelict property. We also added a small (4x3m, 2 storey extension) to square off a corner. We'd never lived in the house beforehand- due to it being SO derelict.

Do you already have architectural plans? My terminology might be wrong, but if you know your design and don't need an actual architect to help, a draftsman or junior architect can draw them up.

Speak to neighbours beforehand, so you can get a feel if you might get any planning concerns raised by them.

We have 2 sets of bifolds and the patio is the same height as inside- so pretty seamless which I love. I love the doors being open in summer. In hingsight, large sliding doors would have been better. We have a dog and with a slider, could leave it just open enough to let herself in/out. Out bifold entrance doors can be folded back and clipped, but, any strong gust of wind and they come off the clip and slam shut. Also, when you open them, you MUST keep hold, because they are like sails and will blow out of your hand. DH and I are used to them, but have to instruct guests all the time.

I wish we'd extended to the back, not just squared off the corner. Although we have other rooms we could use, our lounge area is smaller than I expected. Perfectly fine for DH and myself, but the house is quite large and it could have been bigger. I did ask the builder about extending out further at the time, but he said it would be FAR too big!

Did it end up being twice because something unforeseen happened? Like subsidence? Or because materials suddenly escalated? Any particular reason? Or an unrealistic budget?

Can you explain what you mean with the glazing and drainage?

What kind of jobs can you do as normal person with average DIY skills beyond painting and maybe tiling?

A dream build! If your builder is in London please DM me his details!

Even though we had a big kitchen room, I regret the size of the island we put in when we renovated.
We ended up replacing it with a island much narrower and not as long.
The old island just looked too heavy & took over the space. Now with the small island there is a much better flow in the room.

Everytime someone suggests a change to the plan, drill down into the nitty gritty. Why do they want to do that? What will it cost (it always costs more)? What if they don’t do it? Will that increase costs another way?

Everyone will come at you with changes, mostly to make their job easier in some way. You cannot afford to be a people pleaser. Cultivate an air of being a bit thick so you can ask all the awkward questions!

I’ve renovated 5 houses, the most recent being the worst, and by some bloody miracle they’ve all come in within 5% of budget (this one only just).

Agree on getting the smallest detail hammered out before you start. Changing your mind/plans is incredibly expensive, stressful and causes lots of rows.

Also agree on doing whatever you can yourself.

Get one room sorted quickly so you have a refuge from the chaos. I’ve normally opted for our bedroom.

Have clear and agreed timeframes, keep on top of that, but don’t stress overmuch about small unavoidable delays (unless they keep happening)

Double the amount of sockets you think you need.

go through the electrical points in huge detail! For us a friend recommended adding electric sockets onto the Island, we did …but only on one end. I already think that we should have done either end 😬
good luck and it will 100% take longer than you think

Expect random things to cost money at the end, eg putting the aerial back properly as they can shift during works, paying to move back in, random utilities connections, new furniture, reconnecting alarms, bespoke cupboards.. We didn’t see those coming and it was a bit of a cash flow shock when we thought we’d be done!

All I can advice is ask builders to fit heavy clear sheets to stop some of the dust getting into the rest of the house. Put masking tape over key holes. Plaster dust gets everywhere. You clean one day then later in day it has settled again on surfaces and it looks like you have not cleaned. I went out for whole day on worst days and left them to it.

I already posted about our whole house renovation, but thought of other things.

-We took set up an account with the local builders merchants and for most trades, just paid a day rate. The builders merchants sold wood, bricks, soil, nails, pipes etc but could get some good deals on things they didn't normally sell. They were able to source our velux windows and oak flooring cheaper than we were quoted when we went directly to the companies!
-We did do bits we could- tore out old carpet etc. Some things though, it would have taken us days to do something, whereas the professional might take only 1 day. In many cases, it better for us to keep working in our job and paid a professional to do their bit.
-We too paid far more than originally planned. Partly because we started at the tail end of covid, but fluctuating prices. The quote for the steels was only valid for 7days due increasing metal prices.
-Our existing house is 100yrs old and sits on less than 1m foundations with no cracks or subsidence etc. Our surveyor wanted a 2.5m deep foundation for our extension! Admittedly its 2 storey, but only 3x4m in size so this was another cost we didn't expect.

Overglazing is based on Building Control can’t remember which one of the regs. The “rule of thumb” I believe is your glazing cannot be more than 25% of floor area. If it’s 25% or less, BC will wave that part of the condition through. If it’s exceeds 25%, you will need SAP calcs doing to secure BC. SAP calcs have to be undertaken by specialists. Your architect would hopefully have told you all of this. It’s an easy one to get caught out with if not because we all love big bifolds/sliding doors/sky lights/large windows as everyone likes that airy feel.

Overspeccing drainage, you will possibly be required to install a new soakaway to your property. It’s worth doing some testing (easy to do yourself, google “BRE365 infiltration testing”) to see how viable it actually is. Huge variation across the country, and if you can prove it is not viable then you may be able to do away with the soak, depending on your extension size. If you get a good rate, you may be able to instruct your engineer to size your soak much smaller.

@CirclesandSpirals Not in London and he took early retirement.

Sockets, plan all the sockets for your appliances to be in the cupboard next to the appliance meaning you can switch off and unplug without pulling the fridge freezer out etc. In fact I saw one renovation where the fused spurs were in the bottom of one cupboard so no big red switch on the wall near the cooker.

Outside sockets too for gardening tools and plugging in your Christmas lights. Same for inside, where is your Christmas tree going? More sockets in all the rooms, might as well be your future friend.

Consider insulating floors under the floorboards and the walls to give you more privacy in the bedrooms. This isn't just about the master bedroom but also when you have a sick child and you are hoping the other one stays asleep through the crying. Think about future things, for us it was an electric cable to the bathroom for an electric shower as the house didn't have a shower in the bathroom just the en-suite. That was being done at a later date.

Brilliant advice

You can probably do quite a lot of “grunt work” yourself. For example if you need new drainage installing you can just dig the trench yourself, as long as you follow the plans which usually would just be being mindful of depth. Of course youll need to be careful and work as a contractor would with regards to H&S - mindful of buried utilities etc.

Things like door architraves, skirting boards, etc are fairly easy to learn and do a decent job on and can save money from using a skilled carpenter for more important/difficult jobs.

When you appoint your builder, particularly with the glazing do a little price check on the price they’re quoting for the units themselves (not the labour, I generally think it’s a bit cheeky to second guess trade rates). For example on our extension our sky lights were a very specific make and model and the builder’s line item for them was double the actual list price. We queried and they brought it down. I wouldn’t be overly worried about doing that for every single thing as you do need a good relationship with your builders but for big ticket items it’s worth price checking.

A big yes to the incompetent previous owners. Our biggest regret was not doing a complete re-wiring and re-plumbing when we bought our current house. It all looked "OK" and nothing flagged up on the survey, so we went ahead to have all kinds of work done on the house, including new flooring (not just carpets, but floor boards too), full redecoration, new windows, etc., i.e. all the "cosmetic" stuff as we believed the infrastructure/fundamentals were sound.

All looked good at first, (moved in during Spring), but come Winter, we noticed some of the radiators were cold/cool, and discovered a previous owner had put a couple of extra radiators in and had bodged the pipework, messing up the "flow and return" as we later became educated in, so the water flow did a "short cut" rather than being forced to go the "long way around" the house. We decided to put up with it as we didn't want the floor ripped up and decoration ruined for a plumber to re-route some piping.

Then when we came to do a little bit of electrical work, i.e. extra sockets, extra wall lights, etc, a few years later, the electrician basically condemned the wiring, saying that a previous bodger had "bridged" the separate circuits, so that isolating one circuit, say lighting, at the board didn't isolate it at all as power was still flowing from other circuits due to some wiring being bridged between circuits. Yes, he "could" switch off the whole house to do the extra work, but it was unsafe as the normal protections weren't there and the lighting circuit had too much power going through it when it should have been lower power than the sockets circuit. He also found the kitchen cooker and electric shower which should have had their own "trip" switches at the Board (and in fact looked as if they did), were likewise "bridged" and he showed us that they didn't "trip" as they should if he caused a short across the cables. We weren't entirely convinced, so we delayed him from doing the work and got a second electrician to do a "safety check" and he said virtually the same thing. That necessitate a lot of work as the electrician needed to find which fixtures/fittings/sockets/switches had been bodged. He eventually gave us a list!! It was a close run thing, but he managed to correct it without a full re-wire, but there was still a fair bit of rechannelling walls and ripping up floor boards to put new wiring in the replace the bodges - at least it wasn't the whole house. But the entire floor in the loft conversion had to be ripped up as virtually everything up there had been bodged and power taken from the separate shower circuit and "returned" via the upstairs lighting circuit! The electrician said he didn't think Mr Bodger had a clue and just randomly connected wires together in different places until whatever he was working on actually worked!

After all that, we were back to squeaky/loose floor boards, badly re-fitted carpets, lots of redecoration to do, etc.

Don’t put too many windows in.

Extensions can often be cold so make sure you think of that.

is there anywhere you could build storage in?

Surprised about this as our new extension is so warm as has great insulation. Any it has lots of windows and large sliders to let in lots of light and sunshine.