Construction in Cornwall

Very impressive for the price, especially considering timescales.  Well done.

Very very good - you seem to have hit a sweet spot with nearly everything (more detailed comment tomorrow).

 

I love the anti-gravity dog and beer (last 2 pics click-thru) .

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2017 by Ferdinand

8 hours ago, TerryE said:

You two must have boundless energy, so congrats and well done.  But what next??

 

Deal with the half acre of wasteland the surrounds my nice new house ? 

 

And start planning my outdoor kitchen!

 

We have enough land to build a second house, which we won’t do to sell but a garden room / log cabin may be an option. 

Well done, I can tell you're pleased.

3 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Very very good - you seem to have hit a sweet spot with nearly everything (more detailed comment tomorrow).

 

I love the anti-gravity dog and beer (last 2 pics click-thru) .

 

 

 

 

Thank you, I was trying to think of a way to explain how we’ve gone about budgeting for our finishes. And I think you’ve nailed it with “Sweet Spot”, there is obviously diminishing returns as you go above a certain price point for things, even more so when brand names get thrown in.  @Ferdinand I think you can probably understand what I am getting at and can probably summarise it in to a useful post for others better than I can ?

Stunning work, looks really sharp. 

Still think your dog is the best thing though, so lovely  

 

 

1 hour ago, Barney12 said:

Stunning work, looks really sharp. 

Still think your dog is the best thing though, so lovely  

 

He is a beaut! Currently trotting from spot to spot trying to see where the best place to lay and snooze is. 

 

Basking in the sun from the balcony doors is currently winning...

 

 

Luverlly......A real home, and for £666/m2  your back ought to be sore for all the pats

Well done son looks cracking. ??

I think that a few lessons that i can pick up from this in achieving a lower build cost - but please correct me where I am wrong.

 

1 - I think you have targeted a spec at well-above-average, but not quite as ambitious as some here (ie Very good performance, but not 'the full passive'). I wonder how much is added by the "last mile"? Was there a big saving from going 2G not 3G? (Guessing - 25k) What was the spec of your walls / roof / floor?

 

2 - The build method is quite traditional - block and render / clad, and block and beam floors. Easier to find builders and quotes?

 

3 - There is an absence of specialist envro-hardware - eg solar panels. I think you seem to have just left out a whole lot of things of things that weren't strictly necessary.

 

4 - Careful use of relatively inexpensive materials that look very classy - the Howden's doors are brilliant, and aren't those tiles in the ensuites the Wickes 'slate' and 'grey mist' special offer ones I have been looking at all summer without needing any at present?  I can only see one thing that you have obviously spent a lot of money on in addition to the kitchen, and that is the flooring.

 

5 - Do you have good contacts to get those labour rates for specialists? My labour for a 75-ish point rewire on a 65sqm bungalow came to about £1200. And we made it easy for him because everything was exposed with very little chasing.

 

6 - Very impressed with those Eurocell doors. I will remember that. The cladding also looks like quite a find that I for one was not properly aware of.

 

Questions:

 

What did you do with your Jack-and-Jill bathroom in the end?

What is that driveside retaining wall made from? Looks interesting.

I would be interested to know how close you could be to the fabled "build two, sell one, become mortgage free" ideal were you to pursue House 2. 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2017 by Ferdinand

Sorry couldn't resist:

 

 

Bloody excellent job, and for a very impressive cost, too.  I can appreciate the amount of effort you must have put in to achieve such a brilliant outcome at such an amazingly low cost, as even with all the work I've put in myself I struggled to get under £1400/m².

Looks fabulous 

@Ferdinand

 

A little history on how we ended up here which may explain the outcome. I’m 31, this is only the 2nd property I’ve ever owned. The first being a shared ownership flat I bought 3 weeks before the recession hit and 8 years later I sold for less than I bought it for.  I had a 5 year sharesave plan with work that was due to pay out in July 2016, I had made a good profit on it and the amount was enough to allow us to leap the property ladder a bit, looking around we couldn’t find anything we wanted to purchase should the money have been in our pocket. Anything we did like was way out of our price range £300k - £350k. We saw this plot of land with planning permission for sale, liked the house and saw enough potential to change things to make it a home we could love. 

 

So the brief was always to get my wife and I a house we simply couldn’t afford, in size and spec. The planning permission was originally submitted in 2000 and was reapplied for several times, so many things were not included that may have been part of it had the design stage actually started from 2010 onwards. 

 

1 - Passive house or any particularly environmental facets were never really considered, MVHR wasn’t part of the design and I wasn’t even that aware of what it was until I was well in to the build. I had brickies on site 3 months after completing the purchase of the land, so there was no dwell time to consider things like that. Remember the brief above, we NEEDED a house! I did quickly look at solar panels, but the capital expenditure just wasn’t an option we had.  Briefly read up on 3G, again was disregarded due to cost, although I can’t remember what that was now. 

 

2 - yes traditional block built house, trussed roof. We did consider block ground floor due to retaining wall and then timber frame on top but due to access issues and overhead HV power cables a crane was unlikely. Plus the 3 little pigs came to mind and I wanted a house made of bricks! I got 3 quotes for the watertight shell and all came in around £75k - and the end my chosen builder did say to me he believes he underquoted by approx £10-13k, so it could be argued that this cost should be factored in. 

 

3 - as above the build is on our absolute limit of affordability of capex, however we do have a reasonable monthly income between us - may sound daft but I can afford a monthly gas bill more easily than I could £10k for a heat pump (this may be an age related perspective ?). If we added in many of the features that people here like to include the house would simply not have been an option to us. Either make it smaller or go back to the drawing board and pick up associated architect and planning fees - none of this was an option. 

 

4 - Doors were Travis Perkins, £90 for a FD30 and £70 for a standard door, this was well under budget and proved to be a big cost saving on what I had expected. Flooring was £42/m2, so a reasonable cost, I think the wide board again makes it look like more than it is, link posted in a previous comment. The grey floor tiles in small en suites are indeed Wickes, the grey wall tiles are from TileMountain.co.uk @ 9/m2 and look much better than that price. The large format 900x450 black tiles were also from tile mountain and were only £25/m2 they don’t photograph well but look great in real life, a kind of rusted iron look to them with a slight sheen/glimmer that really shows off when wet.  The tiler thought they cost me £60m2 upwards and couldn’t believe what I paid for them. 

 

 

5 - Labour. Electrician was £3500 labour only, he used my site as a “hospital job” doing a couple of hours on odd afternoons when other jobs ran shortness or cancelled, or on Fridays when he wanted to finish up close to his home. I pestered him to ensure he always stayed ahead of where I was and his slower progress never ever impacted anything I needed to be doing. He was an acquaintance already and we ended up with a good working relationship. For example it took him about 4 months to complete first fix 100% but as I say this never mattered as any room I needed to board or progress onwards was always completed. 

 

- Plumber - friend did boiler room and snagging of my work for £1000 all in, this figure came about as I told him I only had £1000 for plumbing labour, so that was that. I did all first and second fix myself. 

 

- Plasterer / Renderer - £6000 labour only for external render, internal scratch coat and skim. Cousin of mine so no other quotes were obtained because I know his work his top quality (he works on a lot of the ridiculous houses being build in Rock, Cornwall - Gordon Ramsay’s place included). I probably did get some mates rates here but I don’t actually know to what extent, 4 plasterers on site at one point who I didn’t know so they all had to be paid out of the total. 

 

Tiler - £160 a day, my advice is don’t be afraid to use day rate, if you trust the tradesman you could both end up with a better arrangement. When you ask someone to quote on price you are offloading the risk and paying a premium for this, my advice here would be to de-risk the job as much as possible yourself then get some one in on day rate who will be happy to do a good days work for a days pay. 

 

Joiner - £100 a day, this was a bit of luck on my part. Skilled joiner had some health issues and couldn’t drive at the time I met him, was getting himself back in to work after an extended sick period so was willing to work quite cheap. At first I was picking him up each day but he got his licence back during the build. I’ll agree this probably saved me a fair bit, I’ve had him here working for the final 4 weeks. 

 

 

Ah the jack and Jill bathroom - I think my first post here which I remember your good self replying to offering advice. Well we took it and now have 2 separate bedrooms with 1.8 x 1.5 en suites, 1 with 1500 Bath 1 with 1500 shower. It’s the ones with the light grey tiles. Much better than the jack & Jill so thank you. 

 

The drive retaining wall is just standard blockwork, only completed the day of the photo so still very green. Further down it will transition to Gabions to keep costs down.

 

We we do have space for another property, actually several more but the guy I bought it off, who is now our neighbour placed a covenant on it that a I could only build 2.  Ground is slightly made up at that end of the site so I don’t think footings would be easy. As I said before I think some sort of lodge garden room structure on a slab may be what happens there, and may look at the possibility of Airbnb’ing it. However I liked this plot as it’s private and I don’t think I have any sort of knack for customer service.  

 

I may still build the lodge but use it as a Cigar and Whisky lounge! 

I should perhaps add that I am a qualified project manager, albeit working in Telecoms. The project did run like clockwork and came in on budget. There was never a late delivery and nobody was ever waiting for Materials, with many things sat available 2-3 weeks in advance. 

 

It orobably helped that I have quite a large site with a large workshop area in the basement which meant I could hold large amounts of “stock”. 

 

Not to trying to sound smug on this part but I reallly don’t know how much of a factor this was in keeping costs down, as I don’t know any different. I feel I must have been fairly good at this side of things as there are 4 houses being built nearby and their progress is all over the place, with materials arriving in random orders and service trenches being excavated multiple times. Fallow periods with nobody on site etc. That site is being ran by all accounts an experienced developer but his PM of it is definitely lacking. 

Edited November 12, 2017 by Grosey

@Grosey

 

Thanks fur the details.

 

I came a bit of a cropper price wise on my rads and boiler and did well on the electrics. With the Little Brown Bungalow I decided to put in a floor on top of the existing to give me extra insulation in addition to 100mm between the joists, and left voids to run all the services round the edges of the rooms under the floor. That has created slight complications with needing doors that can be trimmed more than the usual 15mm or so, but has made it easier for the electrician  and gas man.

 

The electrician was on a day rate, which worked out well; I had agreed a fixed price for the plumber (idiot me) ... who suggested running pipes across the middle of several rooms given the extra floor. Good idea and it saved pipes and time, but I was not the one who got the financial benefit, though I did get the benefit of the quicker fit out. Lesson learned for next time.

 

I think the two together could potentially save several days and a fair amount of materials, which may justify the extra floor even without the heat savings.

 

I think an extra storage area is a big potential benefit as you get to buy stuff early you see by chance. I went out and bought a shed for that purpose, and the bungalow is still cluttered.

 

Good to see that the various suggestions on the Jack and Jill worked.

 

Do you have a link to those hitech looking showers?

 

Cheers

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited November 12, 2017 by Ferdinand

These ones? I think I paid £99 each in a sale. 

 

 

https://www.victorianplumbing.co.uk/maverick-thermostatic-shower-panel-black-bsp001

 

19 minutes ago, Grosey said:

, with many things sat available 2-3 weeks in advance. 

I have noticed this on many projects and believe people building there own place underestimate the need to have materials ready weeks in advance if only to take dimensions of or have a quick look at how it's meant to go. 

 

On our last place I had a garage full of toilets, taps and all manner of fittings. 

I found I needed to know what toilets we where having to determine the offsets from the wall for the drain runs, so they probably sat in that garage for at least 4 months. 

As a contractor nothing bugs me more than standing discussing the location of something that the client should have thought about weeks ago. 

This I believe is what @Grosey means by removing risk and hassle from your tradesmen, then you will get better prices. 

 

I have a neighbour i Work for who is a nice enough chap, but he messes about and we flit from one task to the next whenever I work for him I add £20 per day so it softens my annoyance factor a bit. 

@Russell griffiths exactly that. I had all sanitaryware and radiators available in the garage 6 months before we needed them. Many times things were dragged out and measured or checked how they fitted etc, all first fix was completed to fit second fix items I already had. 

 

Also exactly right about de-risking. My timer for example, arrived and the tiles were piled up in the required room, adhesive and grout was in the garage, box of trims was available. He had nothing to do or think about other than start tiling. He also had no labouring to do, what’s the point in paying a skilled bloke to lug 50 boxes of tiles up 3 flights of stairs?! Either do it yourself or find a child to do it and pay them a shiny 50p (this is a joke, sort of)

 

If id have got the tiler to quote on price in his head he would have thought hmmm 5 days for the job @ 160 a day, however I want to be covered if something goes wrong so best quote at 7 days. 

 

I paid him day rate and it took him 5 days as we all knew it would, so I effectively saved £320. Have confidence in your management and avoid paying “insurance” to tradesmen in case something goes wrong. 

 

The few snags we did hit and where extra work was required were resolved quickly by having good people available, who were happy to just crack on and solve the issue as they knew their time was covered. If people were on price then each time there was a hiccup there would have to be a discussion on the price to resolve, costing time and money.

 

 

Another thing if interested may be that I funded this project via a peer to peer loan from https://www.folk2folk.com/

 

This was organised much more quickly and easily than a regular self build mortgage, no real staged payments and I was released £100k in one chunk, which allowed me to stockpile items as per the beginning of this thread. 

@Grosey I just looked on the folk2folk website, really like the idea from a speed perspective. Did you have the same fees and rates at the business loans, as it's looks quite expensive?

It’s not cheap, mine was 6% apr interest and maybe 2% fee I think, plus a few other associated admin costs, but I drew mine in Jan this year and looking to give them 3 months notice shortly. The loan is actually called easy in, easy out. Not for everyone but it suited my situation perfectly. 

Thanks @Grocey. What you have done in a year is impressive.

I am interested in how the loan worked .. I thought they were all business.

 

Did they accept the plot with pp as security?

Yes, I owned the plot outright funded via other means. I also had enough cash to get the shell started so there was an “asset” for them to loan against. It was supposed to be in £50k chunks but I sent them a photo of the blockwork progress and there were happy to realease £100k. 

 

It was my mortgage advisor who recommended it, it is business generally, but I believe they see self build as a form of business as people are creating value with their money. 

 

They are as as interested in you as a person as your project, you need a character statement from a solicitor or someone to vouch for you etc. It’s really quite different to dealing with a self build mortgage, I visited their head office in person several times whilst setting it all up, talking it through face to face was really helpful as there were a few elements which took some understanding. 

 

Folk2folk are Cornwall based and tend to operate in the South West I believe. Not sure how far there reach but there must be other similar companies around the country. 

I talked to F2F eighteen months or so ago, and they were very personal from that side too. An investment is linked to a particular building or project and you know what it is.

 

Catching up, they do make loans nationwide, and ... given that they offer investeors 5.5 or 6.5%, they seem to be getting their margin from fees. 

 

Ferdinand

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2017 by Ferdinand