Support thread for those crazy enough to be extending their homes this year!

[ilikeyoursleeves]

Hiya, after hijacking another thread about massive extensions (not massive erections LOL) there seems to be a few of us who are about to embark on building projects this year. So if you are one of them come join in so we can share all the excitement, nervousness and bewilderment at everything that needs done!

We are currently awaiting quotes from builders for a two storey side extension plus a single storey at the rear. We had our first quote in today which is £64k. Not sure if this is good or bad, it will be interesting to compare the quotes when they are all in. We are also awaiting planning permission but should get it fine as our house already has planning for the extension that came with the sale of the house (but we had to resubmit as we have changed it a bit). Awaiting a building warrant too.

I'm very excited but frankly crapping it re the costs as we are going to have to remortgage plus DS2 will start nursery so we will have 2 lots of chilcare costs too.

ARGH!!!

So I for one need my hand held throughout all this process I just keep thinking of the end product and hoping it will all be fine.

What's everyone else doing and when?

sorry not saying all "normal" builders are scary rip off merchants I didn't put that very well! just most of the intimidate me for some reason. same as mechanics

ISNT yes we're having a little balcony.It'll be too small to sit out on, it's purely for show! I think they're called Juliette balconies.
Sleeves so far it's not been messy at all inside the house. I've been told that when they put the stairs in is when the mayhem starts!

Oooooooooooh @ little balcony - very nice, very nice indeed

littlepushka my architect said that the party wall thing doesn't apply to us and we have just got planning permission with no problems so I assume it's fine? We are 25cm from the neighbours fence, not their actual house, maybe that made a difference? The neighbours have no problems re us doing the extension, they have only done theirs in the last few years so can't really complain! And it was me going on about the VAT thing, our builder is legit but as he knows DH he has been going on about saving us VAT. I realise he would be fiddling his paperwork though. We still have to agree on how he is going to be paid as I am not 100% happy with it, it just feels a bit fishy TBH! He has also said we can have it all above board too so he doesn't usually operate like that... We will def be having staged payments anyway in line with the building control inspections and won't be paying a penny up front.

ISNT I've ruled patio doors out just because I want to open the doors completely wide in summer (rather than just being able to only open half of them IYSWIM). I had anothet look at the plans and I think it would be OK for them to open inwards actually as our dining table will be moving into the extension (it's currently opposite where the doors will be), so giving us more space in front of the doors.

Right, I'm off out to the dump to dump another car load of shite unused items from the garage....

Oh goodoh glad you have sorted the doors quandry.

Today we are mulling electric or manual velux windows.

And I am feeing a bit tense about teh party wall thing - I gave them to the neighbours on sunday, haven't had them back yet. Going to pop round tomorrow early evening and check all is well. I can't see any reason it wouldn't be (they both know all about it and are happy) but I just get a bit twitchy. I don;t want to be "deemed" to be having a dispute and have to spend £££ because they don't get round to signing it IYSWIM.

ISNT, I know exactly, but exactly, what you mean re party walls and twitching They have 14 days, so probaby fine, but if you're on chatty terms with the neighbours you could always ask them if they'd had time to look at the papers yet?

VOnny, sounds great....I don't suppose you get a Romeo with it? How lovely to be able to throw open doors and gaze at the sunset/rise!

Sleeves, glad the door issue is resolved! I went to the house and had a look at ours today, they're meant to fold back, I think.

The damp course is in....breeze blocks have started going up...most startling, the bay window ie half the back of our house is OFF and boarded up for security over the long weekend.

And I was wrong about the neighbour saga being over: the head of planning rang today, and said he'd been peppered with emails from her and in the name of peace he was declaring we could build the end wall in any material we wanted...so poor dh had to go back in there, and tell her. We won't be able to see it anyway, from our garden, it doesn't cost more, and most importantly (from dh's point of view) it means we never have to set foot in her garden, or do anything to her fence, ever.

She nearly finished dh off by then smiling sweetly and asking if he'd mind if she chose which bricks.... The answer was 'yes I would, and no you can't'. Poor man.

.

LP, we had a similar delay - worth it, because now we know our builder has cleared the decks for us. Much better than them jumping shiftily back and forth between jobs!

ISNT, did you decide manual or electric? Had similar dilemma, went for electric in the end, but I can't remember why

Re manual V electric velux- if you get manual how do you then open it? With ladders? And is there a big price difference? We are getting a velux but I haven't thought as far as opening them yet. And how do you clean them?!

Elibean- forgot you were moving out during the build, it sounds like it's coming along nicely! Maybe you should grab the opportunity to bury the neighbour under the breeze blocks while you still can?

Love reading all the daily updates it seems like we are miles away from anything happening but al taking on board all the advice.

re french doors - we are having 2 sets, one internal to block up the living/dining room so the living room will be a seperate room and then we can open up the kitchen/dining room and another external set at the side of the playroom which are going to open onto decking.

The architect was round yesterday with some final plans and we are submitting them to the council next week. The elevations looks good, the house is being extended a third at the side and it really balances it up, on the downside because the house sits right over to one side on it's plot it will look squashed up against the neighbours as we are wanting to build 500mm from their fence whereas we have oh about 10 metres to the other neighbours house but don't own all the land on the front IYSWIM? So I think the time has come to broach the E word with our neighbours, they are not that friendly nice enough though.

We are also going out the back 3m architect had originally wanted 4m but we pulled it back in a bit. It will impact on neighbours sunlight at certain parts of the day but the thing is they cut their back grass about once a year and are never out in their garden. We will also have to take down their fence to allow for building, I was thinking of offering to pay for monoblocking or something or their drive when we get ours done as a sweetener???

Can I also ask a nosy question? DP and I are a bit in the dark about finance, for instance if you have a mortgage of 100K and want to borrow an extra say 30K for house improvements how do you do it, do you borrow on a separate secured loan then once the work is complete remortgage for 130K? or can you remortgage with the estimated new value of the house in mind, does that make sense?

Sounds like you are making good progress Sweetkitty,good luck with the neighbours! Yours sounds like ours, we are adding about another third to the side of our house (our plans are on my profile, albeit a bit tiny!) plus going out 3x3m at the back. We are going up to 25cm of neighbours fence and have about 3m at the other side.

I would just see what their reactions are like when you tell them about the extension, before you offer any monoblocking etc (as that could be £££!). Just say you will take care not to damage anything like their fence and you will rebuild / replace it in the build?

Re financing, we have just remortgaged- we took out a second mortgage (has to be with the same lender I think ie, can't have two mortgages in two diff places) so we now have original mortgage A plus new mortgage B. Mortgage B is for the extension and we will be getting it as a lump sum in our account to do as we please with (ie bank isn't controlling our withdrawals from it). Does that make sense?

sweetkitty re the mortgage

two ways

borrow more on your existing mortgage and it will be added as an additional loan like sleeves says

or remortgage the whole lot ie move the outstanding loan and borrow more on top, then it will all be as one loan

first thing is to approach your existing lenders
also we used london and country mortgage brokers - they are free and whole of market, and the ones recommended by moneysavingexpert. they take all the details and see what the best deal on the market for you is and yuo can compare it to what your existing lender says. Don't forget to take any redemption fees/booking fees/application fees into account when comparing.

HTH!

re the windows. we have said we will either have manual ones or solar electric. that way we don't need to decide just yet, as they won't need to be wired into the mains...

with the manual ones you have a long stick thing that you open them with.

something to take into account - there are electric and solar electric blinds as well. the solar electric ones are nearly 3x the price of the manual and its hundreds

but then I had an idea that if we do go down the non-manual route for the windows but needed to keep costs down for the blinds, we could have one solar electric blind and the other 2 manual, something like that to mix and match.

we're going here in a bit. it's a huge blue warehouse thing - i've never been there before - but it is really enormous, think 3 times bigger than ikea.

bathrooms are the mission...

will be a lot of fun with 2 small children on a sat afternoon

Good luck, ISNT, hope you come back with bathroom, and sanity intact

Good move re window mix/match.

Sweetkitty, it does sound as though y'ure moving ahead - there are SO many decisions to make, you sort of don't realize how much yo'uve already got done till you're further down the line (and cant' remember how you made half those decisions, in my case!).

Sleeves, we've not moved out - just never moved in. We sold, moved into a rental, then bought - and decided not to actually move into the bought house till the kitchen was functional. Should be August, I hope. Good idea re neighbour

We've now got some initial sketches from one of the kitchen designers (we haven't heard anything from the Howdens guy).

The doors will be cream Shaker-style, and the worktop will probably be beech. No idea on what to put on the floor or what colour to paint the walls.

I've put a photograph of the current situation plus two of the sketches on my profile. They won't be there for long, so any comments in the next few days would be very welcome.

ilikeyoursleeves - our plans do look a bit similar, ours is a new l-shaped extension as well side and back. Upstairs we are dividing our box room to create a corridor through to the bedroom at the back but stealing a bit of it for our master bedroom. The master bedroom will be in the middle and we already have an en-suite so it's staying where it is. Will have another 2 bedrooms at the side and back. Downstairs a small study to front and the back opened up so a large kitchen/diner with utilty and playroom at the back.

Thanks for the mortgage advice, we really don't have a clue despite DP working for erm one of the high street banks but head office not branch.

Just keep thinking about how bad it will be with all the work going on, on a better note am about 4 days away from having DC4.

Gosh uglymugly - is big! And v nice. Where do you access it from - the utility end? Loads of storage in there... Very nice

We saw a range of bathroom stuff in the big blue place... i didn't realise that bathroom stuff was now available in all the finishes that they have for kitchens IYSWIM, am beginning to sink under all the choice.

Also we had an amtico crisis - they had large samples out for all of it and we weren't keen on what we had chosen (spacia) en masse, preferring an amtico one instead (= £££).

Then when we got in I rang my mum and she started talking about wood and I had to say "stop! we are having amtico - undefloor heating - please don't make me go back to the beginning and start all over again AAARRRRGHHHHH!"

What's amtico? Is that the rubber flooring you were talking about or have I just made that up? That bathroom range looks lovely, I thought it was bedroom furniture at first! I am looking forward to picking out our bathroom, not thought that far yet though. I'll need to ask BIL (plumber) for some brochures.

uglymugly wow nice kitchen, loadsa space. If I had a new kitchen I'd be getting it in cream with wooden worktops too, not sure of what floor or colour walls though sorry! I am liking green at the moment though, would that work? We will have to refloor our kitchen and I want to get a real wooden floor as it will be a seamless space from kitchen into diner / living area. But if it was a kitchen alone I might get some sort of floor tiles? No idea though really, just thinking aloud just now!

Re velux windows, what is the price difference then between manual V electric? And how much for blinds? If it's ££££££ difference I think we will be getting a big stick to open them LOL.

News from me, we got a letter from the builder, complete with about 5 spelling mistakes (come on, who doesn't know how to use spell check at least?!). I still don't think it's detailed enough as he just said something along the lines of 'includes everything in the plans apart from sanitryware (that's how he spelled it), ceramics (not quite sure what that is) and decorating'. DH thinks I am being anal about it and we ended up having an argument over it- he thinks you can't expect a perfectly worded letter from him whereas I think we can / should. He keeps saying that he knows the builder will do a good job, he has had good references, has a good reputation etc but I like folk who are highly organised etc and he is starting to strike me as not very like this... I am going to visit the neighbour he just did work for again and speak to her about how he was on the job re organisation etc, I also asked SIL but she said she can barely remember as he worked for them about 7 years ago. She still recommended him though.

It's a difficult situation as DH 100% wants to use this builder as he goes back a long way with him, he is trustworthy and because he did SIL's extension etc. But his paperwork side of things / spelling mistakes etc are starting to put me off. But should that be a reason for me to be put off? Should I just focus on the actual building work he has done and not whether his spelling & grammar is correct?

TBH I'm with your DH that spelling is not the main thing you're looking for in a builder!

Plus some people who go into the "trades" do so as they're not very academic - if he is honest and can lay bricks in a straight line then that is far more important than spelling IMO.

Organisation is different though - I think you need to check that. I am also v organised and it would do my head in to have to have someone who was vague/imprecise/said "a week or two" etc and was slow. Still also would be prepared to have someone who was not super organised and super speedy if they were good value and excellent references.

That's my POV anyway!

amtico is this its posh vinyl. sorry have been nattering about it on other threads, tought I'd mentioned it on this one. it's v expensive but my mum loves it (!) and its hardwearing, idiotproof, and will work well with the underfloor heating.

Thanks ISNT, I think I am just getting a bit worried as he is the opposite of me, I have a folder with labelled sections for all aspects of the extension (OK,OK it is a bit anal) and I also got a detailed letter from another builder, but this builder is just being so vague on paper (but I believe deliberately so too because of the whole VAT issue). He also wrote on the letter it is an estimate when he said verbally it is a firm quote, so I want him to score out estimate, replace with 'quote' and sign it. I don't want him to turn round later and say it was just an estimate and we owe him an extra £20k or something!!!

Am I getting my knickers in a twist over nowt? I have read so many 'how to' articles re contracts & builders that his vagueness is putting me off. I just need to remember that he has a great reputation (repeat 100 times...). I'll still go visit the neighbour tomorrow. There is another house in the next town he has just finished so I think I'll pop in there too.

I know what you mean.

I have read all the guides too but it's never quite how it works in real life. I am often rather intimidated by builder types and too embarassed to ask for/say what i want/talk about money in detail and I know it's silly.

The bloke we have chosen this time, I feel that I can talk to him and I'm not intimidated and he's not dismissive/offhand so I'm keen.

I really do think that solid references are more important than snazzy folders, I really do.

I think you need to get him to confirm that that quote is a quote though, i think you are right there for definite.

Are you doing the whole staged payments thing?

The thing in the guides that sounds right to me is that you pay in arrears at pre-defined points of the build - when building inspector as looked or they are completed to your satiffaction or whatever. If it's all agreed upfrint then there is less room for surprises/things going wrong I reckon.

Oh. My. God.

I have just gone to see the neighbour to ask more details on the builder and I got a totally different report! She was the one who previously said he was great apart from his joiner (who he isn't using anymore) but apparantly they have totally changed their minds now as a number of things have happened since I spoke on the phone to her:

-the roof is leaking
-the guttering has broken
-their £30k wall (yes I know, who pays 30k for a wall) is chipping and breaking already
-builder still isn't finished and he was meant to finish in September
-they used the womans handbag as a platform to lay the skirting boards on to saw them (!!!)
-they didn't use a portaloo so walked through the house and ruined brand new carpets
-they stood on top of newly fitted kitchen worktops to reach ceiling and ruined them, the owners have had to replace at their won expense
-owners have been chasing up the builder for weeks to finish and he isn't returning calls

x 100000000000

It's such a different report to what the woman previously said so I was gobsmacked. Her DH was there and he satring swearing he was that angry and said he wouldn't recommend them. I also asked SIL again what she thought and she said it was so long ago she can't really remember but he probably used different guys then. To be fair, the builder himself is apparantly good at his own work (bricky) but it's the guys he employs who are crap, but then he isn't doing anything about that. eg, the neighbour said that they need the roofer back to fix leaky roof but builder said it's not his problem since he isn't the roofer!

Needless to say we have changed our minds now and won't be using that builder. I had a funny feeling about him with the whole VAT issue plus the atrocious 'letter' we got from him yesterday (which we waited 2 weeks for and it was about 50 words long). I will be calling him later to tell him about my conversation with the neighbour so that should be interesting.

We have another quote from a builder only £1k more so we will go with them. They are currently doing a friends extension and she is really happy with them, and checked them out etc, I just hope they will be available fairly soon!

ARGH.

Good grief!

Well it just goes to show. So lucky that you went back to them and found all that out. You are deffo doing the right thing. If it were me I don't think I'd even bother ringing him up - what will you achieve apart from maybe getting in a row? i am a wuss though

Plus yuor concerns over spelling and folders have been vindicated!

Hope the other builder is available.