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?

Sleeves I did worry about security last week when the labourer was being an arse. I took to shutting all the doors that I could and sort of setting traps to see if he'd been in them! Glad you have some heat now, it must have been absolutely freezing.

The sparky turned up at last at 5 and stayed until 8. He's coming again on Wednesday apparently. He'd better turn up, building inspector is coming on Thursday morning to sign it all off and he won't be signing it off as it is with the electrics.

Meanwhile we've tiled more of the kitchen this evening and I'm really now very tired and hurting but we've not finished and have more long evenings ahead of us. Tiling is quite easy really as long as you have a wet, electric tile cutter. I won't use the tile cutter because it scares me silly but dh uses it OK. Its really a case of the right tools for the job. Brick laying, that was a different story and I can't say that either dh or I will be giving up our day jobs anytime soon to do that!!

How did you learn to tile? Did you read up on it or go on a course or something?

Neither, just did it! I guess we might have read a couple of pages in our DIY book at some point a long time ago. We tiled our kitchen at our old house years ago. That was harder because we didn't have the tile cutter. This time we've borrowed a tile cutter and its really quite easy. Mixing the adhesive is easy as well. The key seems to be lying the tiles out before you start to make sure you don't have silly slithers at edges. We generally try and start in a corner with a whole tile unless its going to lead to a slither somewhere visable.

Seems a few of you getting close to 'the end' now!

Since my last post we've had all quotes (last one finally happened last night) and everything has been turned on its head as Spouse now favouring one of the plan&build companies.

Before their quote came in (and he hasn't gone for it due to the money, more their ideas and how he felt they worked with our ideas) he was sold on the other plan&build company (recommended by a local Mumsnetter) and I was leaning architect-direction (as I personally can get on with him best out of the four and feel this is VIP for stress-levels).

However, the company Spouse is now keen on were recommended to us by three local friends. So I'm confused as this is clearly A Good Thing.

He wants to engage them tomorrow; I've asked him for a few days to sort my head out!

Hello all. I feel a bit bad coming back in as I haven't been on for ages and now I've come back when I have a question

Does anyone have bifolding doors, wooden ones? Where did you get them and are they nice? we are thinking of oak ones BUT the problem is that no-where around here has anywhere you can look at them, and we're understandably nervous about buying £000s of doors sight unseen.

Any help at all would be appreciated. We have got the catalogues for wickes and jeld-wen and they look nice, but who knows what they're like in real life

Will catch up on thread now

ISNT we have bifolding doors but have metal ones. They are beautiful. I love them. Worth every penny and have made the room perfect. I could ask the builder where they came from and if they do wooden ones. What area are you?

We're in North London REBL

Hey ISNT
How's it all going? I was wondering how you were getting on as I think you're doing a similar build to us. Afraid I can't help you with bifold doors. All I can say is we looked at jeld-wen wooden windows and didn't really like them. They were very chunky and clunky in our opinion but DH is quite a perfectionist. Our budget is suffering as a result

News here is decorators came to do the kitchen before the fitters arrive. Having seen the finished paint on a full sized room I decided it was wrong , it sort of looked green in the shade. So we're back to square one on the paint selections

Also I have a trip to Ikea planned on Tuesday. Any recommendations for good buys?

Hi ISNT, sorry I know nothing about bifolding doors, we have bog standard French doors.

FMAO, that's too bad about the colour you chose. It's so hard to try to imagine what a whole room will look like when you just have a tiny sample. We are in the same boat re carpets, I have a tiny square of sample and I just can't think what a whole room will look like. What you getting in Ikea? I got some lights from there- check out the one that looks like a big dandilion flower, I think we are putting that over the dining table! Not quite sure how it will look though. I think I'll get some storage bits n bobs from Ikea too for our utility room.

Re progress here.... we have a tiler booked for Wednesday to do the ensuite. In the end I chose black floor tiles, white wall tiles and a nice glass and stone border. The upstairs is pretty much done other that painting and the downstairs is coming together. The internal walls are up and just need plastered, the spark needs to come back to do 2nd fix and the plumber needs to fit the radiators etc. Joiners neeed to do skirtings, windowsills, doors etc. It's getting there though :o

Sounds like you're nearly finished freezing We're nowhere near! Mind you the builder still says he expects to be finished by christmas, I must admit I've added a month or two onto that in my head for sanity since the beginning!

The foundations etc took quite a while as they had to move all of the drains, but it's good as we won't have a manhole in the house like all the neighbours. The kitchen and dining room are boarded off and then the whole back of the house has been knocked out and the steels are in. Also brickwork up to floor level and 3/4 of the floor base in - we are on a steep hill and have a little hatch in the side so you can put stuff under the house! We've got to choose the doors quick as they want to build the walls around the frames so they fit exactly. The big room out the back looks really big when you stand in it! Very exciting. Worried about the weather though... Builder is lovely bloke, all going very well with everyone still friendly etc. Wonder if that will last when they start knocking through...

Really exciting reading all of your updates, as have a long way to go yet!

I've had this thread on watch for aaaaaaaaaaaaaages but now am able to post on it. We have builders coming to the house tomorrow to start work on a small (3m x 3m) extension. They estimate that it will take 4 weeks.

Oooooooh how exciting dailywail

Welcome. 4 weeks eh?

Hiya DailyWail, good luck for your extension! Here's hoping we are all finished by Christmas...

I just bought a new tumble dryer online as we can't use one with a vent any more. Ah well, it was on its last legs anyway so we will soon be getting a nice sensor condensing one :o

And here's a money saving tip for anyone who collects Tesco clubcard vouchers- they are doing a double up on points promotion just now which means in certain depts £5 worth of Clubcard Vouchers = £10 to spend. I have £60 worth of vouchers ie, now worth £120 so I am going to buy all our paint from Tesco!!! We are going to do the whole extension in pure brilliant white just now as a base before we decide on any colours. I worked out we will be painting at least 190m2 (OMG) so need a ton of paint (Tesco are doing 20% off paint just now too and a 5 litre tin is only £11.60). So I'll be heading over to my local massssive Tesco to buy the paint this week and it will have essentially cost us nowt! :o

Oh and BTW on the subject of money saving, if anyone is buying from Wickes use this discount MAIL4W43AKR3UY and you will get 15% off your order. I've used it twice now and saved loads as we got our flooring and tiles from there.

sleeves Good luck with the painting. I've painted ALOT more than that and I hated every minute of it! The brilliant white is cheaper in B&Q where its 10l for something like £15. We did 2 coats of cheap and 1 coat of once. We tried 2 coats of once, didn't work and the cheap white would have needed 5 coats so this was definately the best way to do it.

Building inspector has been and signed the build off .

All the kitchen wall tiles are now on the walls, just got to clean and grout them. Most of the kitchen floor tiles are now down, just got all the cutting, fiddly ones left to do.

Laminate flooring is being delivered on Wednesday along with a little outside store which I'm keeping the tumble drier in as we didn't build our utility room in this phase of the building works and it will be 18 months before we do build it and I need a home other than my living room for the tumble drier.

I'm totally fed up with DIY now but I know we're nearing the end. Can't wait to get all our stuff out of storage. Will be lovely .

Hi all sorry not been about for ages, am so excited and a bit jealous of all of you at the painting/choosing stages, seems we will never get there.

We are at the quote stage, first one has come back too high 71k & vat! Architect had said 42k we thought about 50k. If we can't get anything cheaper it will be plan b - move house. Bit depressed about it, but have another builder coming tomorrow.

Don't worry yet Sweetkitty, our architect reckoned ours would be about £80k plus VAT and we found a builder who charged £63 plus VAT (I think). There seems to be quite a difference in what people quote for anything. We just had some quotes for tiling and one was £700 and another was £300!

Just as I thought I was doing well with our budget I realised we hadn't taken the cost of laying the floor into consideration. Argh. That's about another £500. Feck. Do you think we would be mad to lay the laminate ourselves?

sleeves We're laying laminate ourselves. We're doing a lot ourselves tbh. We've tiled walls and floor. We're doing skirtings and coving. And 50m2 of laminate is being delivered on Wednesday for us to lay ourselves. Its not that hard but its worth getting hold of the right tools otherwise it will be difficult. The edges don't have to be terribly neat because you put the beading on top as you have to have a 5mm gap all around the edges to allow for expantion.

sweetkitty We got widely varying prices.

Thanks ladies was just a bit sad and also annoyed. Have had 2 builders round ourselves now so will see what they come back with.

The house we are selling to fund it hasn't sold we have reduced the price now though.

We are both rubbish at DIY so won't be doing much ourselves, my dad is a plumber but is also very good at all things building wise but he's an hour away and is very unreliable, pity though.

sweetkitty the thing I never realised is that if people don't want to do the job, for whatever reason (too big, too small, got a lot else on) apparently rather than saying that, they just give you a sky-high quote.

[confusing] to me as I'm very straightforward but there you go.

Our place... Well I was sure it wouldn't be done by xmas and today was confirmed. He now reckons the structure will be done by xmas. Aha and righty-ho that sounds a bit more like it...

Fortunately I have never had xmas in my mind as the time they would finish, I've added a couple of months on all along, so I'm about it TBH.

It'd better be pretty bloody good when it's done, I'll say that!

isnt at least you hadn't got Christmas in your mind for being finished by. You were sensible to add a couple of months on.

We've reached the end of our tether with the DIY. We've decided to pay someone to lay our laminate floor. We can't cope anymore. I'm done for, too many midnights and later.

I don't blame you for getting someone in to do the floor considering all the diy you have done so far! Just out of interest, what are you paying if you don't mind me asking? We are paying £ 450 for someone to lay 50m2 tho I don't know if that'd good or not!

sleeves We're paying £400 for 40m2, 18m skirting boards and all the plinths in the kitchen (about 4m).

Just finished grouting the kitchen floor .

Well we chose some doors, oak la porte ones, please no-one tell me they are rubbish!

Now rethinking kitchesn. We keep thinking we have it all sussed with everything and then changing our minds! We had a plan to get an oak ikea one but are now wibbling. What kitchens have you all gone for / are going for? If they're in yet are you happy?

rebl I don't blame you for getting someone in to do the flooring, you have been working so hard

ISNT One more decision ticked off the list! I have to say the kitchen decision was the hardest for us and it was such a relief when we had ordered it, not possible to change our minds again!

I just need to say (or shout even) WE'VE FINISHED THE KITCHEN FLOOR . We've laid the whole floor. We've then grouted it and then cleaned it til the water has come up clean, which has been hours on my hands and knees scrubbing with a scrubbing brush and tile cleaner. It looks wonderful . I need to put the stain guard on tomorrow but that is a 15mins easy job. That floor has taken 2 weeks and has been shear hardwork. I never ever will lay a natural stone floor ever again, I will pay someone! It does look beautiful though, worth every bit of agony I've been through .