when do you pay for your home extension??

[herladyshiplovesedward]

we live in a 1920's 3 bed semi with very large garden..

to cut a long story short, we are having lots of problems with dh's parents and one possible solution is to extend our home to accomodate them (they will have their own bedroom, wetroom, living room and kitchenette)

have spoken to a local architect and our ideas are technically possible, so he is going to draw us up some plans

pil would be selling their current home to finance this plan..

so my question is, what would be the usual timescale for paying a builder for this work? when project is complete? or would there be 'interim' payments or payment for materials etc?

once we have plans i am going to start getting some quotes, but would appreciate any advice in advance

My Dh runs a building company and they are paid once all work is complete.
He has said in the past to be vert wary of any builder that asks for moneys in advance.

We paid our builder throughout and he was very dodgy! get lots of quotes and references.

We paid our builder at 3 set installments -,the final one being when work was fully completed and to our satisfication.

Depends on what your builder is happy with and how long the project is likely to last & likely costs. E.g. a £20k 4 week project is a different thing to a £80k 4 mth project iywsim. I would generally expect to pay some money up front for materials etc and if it was a long running project (much more than a month) then I would consider interim payments (but only when certain stages had been completed - e.g. all structural work) as obviously the builder has to be able to pay his workmen etc so will need some cashflow. Also quite normal to have a small (e.g. 5% retention) from the final amount for snagging (sorting out minor defects) which isn't paid until all the minor probs have been fixed.

Get at least 3 quotes but get the referrals through recommendation - good builders don't advertise in yellow pages or local papers.

If someone local has had building work and you like the look . knock on their door and see what they say.

Our builder was on recommendation and we had people knocking on pur door as they likeed they way they seemed to work.

Quotes - most expensive is not always best - may want to quote themselves out of the job (i.e job too small or can't be bothered with job)

Recommendation is very important.

We agreed stage payments throughout the build. Our builder offered us the choice of payments at set dates or payments at set build stages. I opted for payments at set build stages. That way I could ensure that work was progressing before I put my hand in my pocket. Also, if there had been any issues with the builder I could always get someone else in to complete without having lost too much money!

As it was he was great! We did have to give a payment to start work. But it was not a huge amount and it was something I was comfortable with.
I wouldn't opt for a builder who didn't offer stage payments to be honest.

Staged % payments at set points during the build, and 10% at the very very end - absolutely vital that you've got some kind of leverage during the de-snagging process.

Staged payments is the norm. But agree with keeping last payment back until snags are sorted. It's only a biggish company that can risk/afford to build without some sort of payment in tranches.

thanks everyone for the advice

we have a few recommendations for local builders, all smallish companies so from the replies here it looks like they may expect some payment prior to completion of the project to keep their business cash flow in order..