The builders are in.....share the ups and downs here.....

[nappyzonecantrunfortoffee]

Been as though a few of us have the builders in i thought we could share our fun and try and get through the mire together (even though pavlos stories scared me half to shit).

SO were getting an extension built and they started Wednesday - they seem canny and we have a digger in our garden, guinea pigs at the back of the garedn i have to risk life and limb for to get too to feed and mud - loads of mud - my wellies are caked in the stuff from my guinea pig feeding missions!

Our foundations are all dug out now and most excitingly a mixy truck load of cement was barrowed round the back in to them. Wheres everyone else at?

I wish I had known of this thread when we had our work going on..............it looks great.

We had a big refurb last year - took 10 months, we moved out for 7 months. I would never, ever do it again! But really, really pleased with the results. Thought it would be a breeze once we moved back in, but that was the hardest 3 months, not so much the builder's presence, more DHs obsession with it when he came in from work so the DC got ignored. Put a lot of pressure on our marriage, has now thankfully recovered....

Anyway, having been through it, would be happy to chip in with any answers to things I've had done and may have a little experience of. I was a real novice and still am really but know the basics.Haven't read all of it - did anyone answer the screed question? Screed is the concrete stuff they put down on the floor before they lay the flooring. It takes ages to dry, esp in the winter - I think it is 1 month per inch or something. Our floor took over 2 months in the summer with ventilation.

Good luck to you all.

Yya Dilemma, that is really good news. Your pics look a little scary tho. But I love the fireplace.
I'm totally feeling like it's all monopoly money. We are paying the builder a fair amount of cash , and I've got incredibly blase about withdrawing £1000 at a time from the bank and wandering through town with it in my bag. Ho hum!
Hi Taffetacat, good to hear from someone that has been through a build and survived. How long did it take after the builders left to get straight and feel like you were 'home' again? How old are/were your DCs? Did the build affect them? DS1 (3) is having nightmares and attachment anxiety which I am certain is due to the build, I'm hoping that when the builders leave he will be happier even if the house is a bit mad for a while.

Hiya Rupert! i remember ya! Great your nearly done - i thik were kind of finishing off - tomorow eleccy coming to finish off apart from he coming monday when boiler going in. Only bit left internally is kitchen which now needs plastering - we have no idea what we are going to do with our new bigger kitchen as at the moment we keep looking at it and arguing over a peninsula or not and really as much as id love a small bistro table init it wont fit. We now also must have the smallest downstairs loo inhistory - its a good job we are thin but then im not planning on using it much other than for the kids and less mobile visitors like my mum who cant climb the stairs.

Yey dilemma for finding the leak! Leaks seem to be the theme of our works.... we have a ceiling to replace too though our tight arse money conscious builder is just cutting out the effected square and clearly has issues about plastering ceilings ass again we are at iscussions over the kitchen one where artex of kitchen and utility was differernt - he asked me today what the plan was and i thought jeez here we go again - i just told him he was doing it end off .

Bloody monopoly money yes! I have a sexy little excel spreadsheet going with all my outlas etc and now have panics that im right at the bottom of my pot now.

Screeds hmmm - still not sure if im missing out on one of those...... apparently the levels same as floor and im not gettign one. Are they essential?

Cake whats your lot up to now?

An extension survivor taffetacat - congratulations

jeeez my typing really is crap

cakeforbrains - I would say it took a good 3 months after the builders had gone for it to feel like home ( this coincided with Xmas which probably helped ). DS was 5 ( now 6 ) and DD 2 ( now 3 ). We lived in rented accom for 7 months in the next village which was fine, I think the stresses for them were only that Mummy and Daddy were stressed, iyswim. We lived upstairs for a few months when we moved back, with only a microwave for a kitchen, I did the washing up in the bath. No carpet upstairs so the DC playing in ducsty rooms which made my heart sink every time I saw it, but hinestly, I don't think they were bothered.

They were bothered I was stressed, that's what made it difficult. I now, however, have never been happier, DC too. I think sometimes you have to go through the bad times to appreciate the good. I am sure they won't be scarred for life by it. And they have a really cool playroom and funky bedrooms too....

Our levels were all over the shop which is poss why we had all the screed business.

Builders did all the painting and ecortaing but DH still has baout 5 yrs worth of DIY to keep him busy................I have done all the twiddly bitys I'm interested in so am off into the garden now, which has been trashed.........

can I ask?

we are about to get the builders in doing a loft conversion and demolishing a bit of the house at the back (that was never properly built!)

sadly we can't stretch to extending the house over the passage (at the back...standard london terraced house so sort of L shaped with kitchen and downstairs bathroom - we are demolishing downstairs bathroom and putting it upstairs along with loft conversion)

what did you do about moving your stuff out? we have a storage unit anyway that can take most of our stuff but did you employ proper movers to do it? I'm just aware of how much that is going to add to the cost of the building?

(we are getting the ceilings lowered on the 1st floor so the loft can fit in hence having to move most things out)

bumping for you . We have not moved out just had everything in our bedroom and we could only enter our bed via a 60cm gap as it was surrounded by random wood and wardrobes .

ah thanks nappy

I think we will have to move out sadly - I don't really want to but we are getting a new staircase (which will mean moving a wall downstairs and then rebuilding another wall) so there really isn't a patch they aren't messing with!

one room will remain the same size (our bedroom, soon to be dd's bedroom!) but the ceiling will be lowered which we've been told is incredibly messy and just not worth being in the house for

(dh and I both work but it's more for the children who are at school but would still be around in the afternoon iyswim!)

I am hoping it's just for a few weeks - neigbours are having the same thing done and they have been told to move out for 3 weeks eek!

fosinsocks - we moved a lot of our stuff to a storage unit. Being cheapskate on a budget we did the moving ourselves. We hired a van with a tail lift for the day and roped in DH's brother and my sister to help, but it was really hard work. If you need boxes and bubblewrap try ebay - we got 100m of bubblewrap for £10 and removal companies sell off boxes which have been used for one or two moves for a fraction of the cost charged by safestore.

thanks cakeforbrains

it's the one part I'm really not looking forward to

dh works part of the weekend so we have v little time to organise. It's something I loathe - the packing and unpacking though I am trying to tell myself it's a good time to get rid of stuff we don't need

DH and I are both hoarders . I tried to pack everything chanting 'ruthless, ruthless' the whole time. I'm hoping that when we unpack into our shiney new space the clutter will look out of place and I will get rid of some more.

We fully moved out with all our stuff ( except the spare bed mattress and the piano )as our work involved the whole house, so we needed a proper removal co.

We however tried to save costs by moving all the small stuff ourself. So it was £400 each time.

I shudder when I think back to the moves. The day we moved out last year - 2 Feb, was the day of the massive snow dump. The removal van got stuck turning round outside our house, took 1 and a half hours to turn round. It was all a massive rush as the builders suddenly brought forward their plans by 3 weeks as they couldn't continue work outside because of the weather. So the next two days I was scrabbling round trying to collect last minute bits with both DC as DH had only taken the one day off work and MIL who had offered to have the kids couldn't get to us as she was snowed in.

Moving back was actually much, much worse. The week before,I was packing and not watching DD properly and she fell off the sofa badly and went all funny, long story but 3 months worth of EEG, ECG and worry but all fine, thank goodness. Then the day before a giant toy cupboard of ours ( which wasn't secured to the wall as it was rented accom ) and was empty as we were moving, fell on DS. Amazingly it didn't touch him, he was kind of sheltered inside a shelf.

We didn't have the choice to move out or not because of the scale of the work, and we were unlucky.

BUT.............it was worth it. Keep saying this. Our architect and builders were brilliant. But I would still never do it again!

taffetacat - do you have before and after pics?

cake - sorry completely hopeless at photos. We haven't even printed any off. Had all these grand plans of doing an album with Day 1 etc in.

Here's what we had done:

• Conservatory at back demolished
• House was on 3 levels - all levelled to one
• Hall enlarged
• Internal walls removed inside downstairs to create open plan living/kitchen/dining space
• Garage turned into playroom
• Downstairs loo moved
• Stairs moved
• Extra bedroom added above porch
• Bathroom swapped and enlarged with windows put in
• Ensuite added to master bedroom
• Walk in wardrobe added to master bed
• 2 level terrace added accessed from kitchen

The house was 1950's timber fronted. The timber had to come off and we rendered and painted brick. The timber turned out to be elm, well seasoned after 50 years on the front of the property. We got a local joiner to make a large kitchen table and coffee table out of it.

It was also an excellent opportunity to declutter and get rid of loads of crap we've been carrying around for years. ( eg. the sofas DH has had for 20 years, mates of his weeed on them years ago, and yes, they had washable covers but the memory lived on....)

The other nice thing about the elm that I didn't mention is that the house used to belong to DH's grandparents. So there's lots of history in it for him, and esp as we had so much changed to modernise the house, its nice there are parts of it we kept, albeit in a slightly different format!

ELEC, PLUMBER and builder on site, kids are off and dh is too - its bedlam here! Dh has been in the loft and discovered they have piled all our stuff up and snaped end of my lovely mamas and papas cot (not that im planning on using it again but still it was sellable), he has queried different floor heights downstairs and found some bodgey hole in the hall ceiling which someoen has made then bodged with sillicone ceiler and plaster board - not good today!

Taffetacat - that all sounds amazing. I love the idea of you adapting the grandparents house for another generation.
Nappyzone - I feel your pain about the loft. The electrician went in the loft yesterday and has just heaped everything in a big heap. The loft is DH's favorite place in the whole house, even I'm not allowed up there unsupervised. There has been a lot of swearing...
On the positive side, the builders should be finished upstairs by the end of the week, just need the plumber in then to do the bathroom and the ensuite. DH is away for the rest of the week so I will be trying to empty out the kitchen myself. The new kitchen is due to arrive on Feb 26th. Maybe it will all be done by DS2's 1st bday on March 15th?

Dilemma - are things progressing now they've found the source of the leak?

Had to put this notice on the toilet door earlier 'WILL WHOEVER LEFT SKID MARKS IN THE TOILET PLEASE SORT IT OUT. THANKS'. It was disgusting, like the scene from Trainspotting [vom emoticon]. Went out for a couple of hours and the toilet is reasonably clean.
However come back to find water and mud/cement/plaster all over the kitchen floor - apparently there was 'a bit of a leak' when they removed the shower, but they've cleaned it up .

cake - am in awe of your skidders confrontation.

lol i am loving your note! A few weeks back i left one on the bottom of the plumbers list detailing he left it stenching and could he make use of this in future - arrow to domestos .

Cake seems like things have really moved on your end sicne snow has gone and roof went on - our upstairs is ours as of today - - ds is in his new bedroom, dd is in hers and my bathroom is in good order to look at but again drain to bath still not hooked up but that went on hold today as up till 6pm it looked like todays newly fitted boiler was poorly but then it all came right (phew!). Plumber finishing on friday, sparky gone skiing for 6 days but allbut done and sending some blokey to fin off and my builder needs to just finish off plasterboarding kitchen and again has jibbed over plastering my kitchen ceiling as part of the deal even though artex in utility and kitchen was different and there are holes all over it- dh did a bit of a cross face then builder said he would do it if my dh pva'd it tonight!!! Cheeky bugger! Still were all smiling and were warm if unbathed (but are showered honestly) . I think they will all have gone by end next week (crosses everything).

Kitchen wont be complete as we need to save 2 months for the kitchen and downstairs new flooring so work inprogress for a while there....

Cake what kitchen are you geting?

Wow Nappyzone, it must feel amazing having the upstairs back!!
We are getting a Magnet kitchen, it's a shaker style oak one with black granite worktops. Our current kitchen is a sad pathetic thing, so it wll be amazing to have a proper kitchen at last.

cake - kitchen sounds great

It is bliss having a workable kitchen. Since we had ours done, I have never had so much help. We had a family get together with 16 of us last Sunday and I didn't do a scrap of washing up. Just the way I like it.

< slattern >

cake it feels amazing - the carpets still up on the landing awaiting plumber on friday to finish off and i have just spent a good hr programming in my new digital boiler timer gizmo. I am back in my office mumsnettign loudly without worry of waking up people.

Your kitchen - is it the cream shaker with the oaky wooden knobs?

I am eyeing up a high gloss white affair from b and q - i have been online and spent many hours playing with their design package . The magnet shaker one was the only one i liked when we went in yesterday but our current one is a pine affair and i wanted to go v different and dont have the £££££ for a magnet jobby!

It will be a long time till our kitchen is perfect but dh is doing a bodgey cabinet move so we can still have afairly working current kitchen till such time.