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Hi All, Relatively new to this all and after giving our architect the house brief, he has came back with a first draft of plans. Would appreciated any feedback or ideas for improvement so we can revise the plans if needed. thanks in advance House Plans.pdf

@Ryan8087 i can onlyy apologise for my mates! It must be Friday effect! So to attach your drawings! Go back to your first post and hit the edit button, scroll down and look out for the paper clip, next to that is the add file button, click it and find your file, add it. Then sit back with a cool beer and wait for all the useful comments to come in!

What I did was pre-empt the valuation office survey, by sending them a detailed floor plan with dimensions and floor areas marked, accompanied by a letter explaining that the walls were much thicker than normal. No one came to look at the house at all, they just did the valuation based on the information I gave them, plus some comparisons with the sale prices of nearby houses over the past few years.

this was my issue with the idea as well, it has been brought up before and there were a few issues, 1, staying up to date with links (someone would have to maintain and check it) 2. different experiences from customers ( a bad reputation travels a lot faster than a good one no matter how good the product is) 3. product endorsement (as a community run forum we really don't need to be getting involved in that) but essentially it is a great idea, if for example, someone like @TheMitchells wanted to share their list of recommended products in a user started thread, firstly "we" as a body wouldn't be affiliated and secondly it may end up being very helpful in the search facility as long as people label/tag their posts well. but be warned this will end up in a very messy thread of comments

You said it

@Onoff will make a scale mock up soon out of used beer cans and report the findings. It may take a while to complete though...

isn't there also the potential for 'marmite' issues arising where one or more members are happy to recommend a product that others dismiss as being rubbish. For example.....

Yup. Guess which letter is on the hat

Jesus. I go to get a can of sugar free Fanta, ( life on the razors edge ), and another question Any cementitious powder adhesive will do the job tbh, just take a small grinder to the underlying layer and scratch them up REAL good to get a key. ?

I have been doing that since finding BuildHub. As well as good products, I add other useful pieces of advice. Its quite a list now and I do have to occasionally read through it to remind myself. But definately worth the effort as it saves having to search through lots of posts for that one you vaguely remember from months ago.

The OR surveyor recommended that we DIY the road crossing and pulling the cable and the guys who turned up were more than happy. Worst case you have an expensive pull cord in your duct :). Superfast fibre is just to the local cabinet, bog standard copper twisted pair from there through the 'last mile' to your pole / JB and then to your house. FTTK/H (fibre to the kerb/home) is still pretty rare in UK - I think Virgin are doing it in some areas?

To be honest I put this up to eliminate the boredom of grouting my shower. I have no intention of gluing anything it's going in the bin. ?

In the light of experience, I'd say that floor sensors are a "nice to have" rather than in any way important. Mine's only used for data logging now, and frankly I don't bother looking at the floor temperature at all most of the time. All that's really needed is a way to be able to run the UFH pump when the heating/cooling system isn't running, to allow the redistribution of heat around the slab a bit faster than just letting it stabilise over a longer time period. This depends very much on how much solar gain the sunny parts of the slab get. Ours used to get a lot, but once we fitted the solar reflective film on the outside of the glazed gable that dropped a great deal, so there is far less of a requirement to redistribute heat around than there used to be.

I have just passed full ownership of the dog over to my wife, I have informed her that from now on I will bill her directly for any loss caused by her puppy. She informed me my dinner my dinner tonight was waiting for me at the chip shop. Oh well I didn't win that one.

Rejoice! The sparkles are second fixing the kitchen is in a transit somewhere near Warrington and the stairs are ready to go in! This is a good day! :-)

They're called standard set or extended set. Rapid is 30 mins or less pot time, can be more like 10-15 mins if it's a warm day. Extended will give you around 45 mins to 1 hour, possibly more, again dependant on ambient temp. Ice cold water is your friend. Don't use the slug of ambient temp water sitting in the pipe as even that'll shave a bit off the pot time. Same with the adhesive, store it cold and dry.

Rapid set is not going to be any good for you, you want "extended open time" so you have plenty of faffing time! Mapei keraflex

£9.32 inc vat on Tradepoint website.

That would work, and I've done a few where the border separates tiled lower / painted upper sections. The cuts look like they're not going to get much better, so border-decision time . T'would be good to lose that top rip though . Re adhesive, go to the smaller tile outlets / big BM and compare prices. Standard set regular for the walls, standard or rapid set FLEXIBLE for the floor. I'm averaging £12-15 per 20kg but B&Q do the Mapei stuff for stupid cheap now and then so check them out too. My mate paid £7 a bag the other day but I didn't see if they were 20kg or not. £12.17 for 20kg of Mapei rapid set. Trade point need you to log in for prices can't remember my password lol. Look ( in trade point ) for the Mapei in the brown bags / trade one They deffo do standard set as my mate bought it by mistake.

On the garage the ridge and hip tiles are identical. Just cut as per the image above.

My ridge and hip tiles are both Marley Modern type.

With the double quadrant at the head of the shelf, is that all fixed yet? If not, tile and make sure there's no adhesive on the back of the tile. Then just bond it on afterwards? Tile cuts in the corners don't need to match unless it's just a bit of luck. I'd go for the better cuts / sizes according to the wall. The floor should be tiled first, but in my early days I used to tile the room off a batten, leaving the bottom course of tiles off, then I'd tile the floor, and then I'd remove the batten and carefully cut / scribe each bottom tile in to finish. If it were me, I'd do the drain and the wetroom area first, then the rest of the floor. Get that out of the way and you'll be able to focus 100% on the walls without the floor winding you up. Plus, not forgetting of course, the wall drain video shows that it needs to be connected, scrim'd, tanked and bedded in, floor and wall, prior to tiling. .

Another snippet of information is that this medium size project is the pre-cursor to a much bigger renovation to our main apartment where we are thinking of making much more energy efficient, MVHR, triple glassing, more insulation, the works. So the plan is to do up the rental place to a good standard, then live there ourselves for 3-4 months while our main apartment gets fixed up. So this first project should not be a hit and run but building a working relationship to go on to bigger and better things. Will need to get a blog going on here soon to track progress to share the experience. Best wishes, DD.

@TheMitchells I've been looking around and Quick Step also do a vinyl laminate floor which is thicker than the Livyn. Have seen this laid and it looks really nice. They do a range that are suitable for bathrooms but only in wood effect. So you may want to take a look.

After you get your valuation, if you think there is even the smallest likelihood that you could be considered for a lower band, appeal and give evidence of any nearby / similar-ish properties which have a lower band. They will often move it down without too much question.

@hmpmarketing There's a good @JSHarris piece about this somewhere. It may, for example, help to explain that because your walls are all 20" thick there is less internal space, so it is actually less valuable than he thinks and even though it is the size of a bus garage you are actually living in the space of a telephone box. Or it may not .

Down our way (Hampshire/Surrey borders) not much is negotiable at the moment. Looking at what friends have been through recently, you're lucky enough if you can get anyone to even quote, let alone be open to discussing lower prices. I wouldn't negotiate individual trades down much if their initial quote seems reasonable. The last thing you want is someone cutting corners because a couple of unforeseen issues have popped up and they're losing money on the job. Even with a main contractor, I think it's a false economy trying to squeeze every last penny out of them. Negotiate fairly, but leave something on the table for everyone.

As per @JSHarris you need to understand the basis of the quotation. One thing to look for is the contingency that the contractor has built in - ask the direct question - and then how much contingency you need to add over and above. Check how much is in the costs as "price sum" and also how much they have allowed for general items such as internal doors and ironmongery. For example, I can get a standard white 6 panel door with 2 brass hinges and a barrel lock with brass plate handles for around £30 all in, fitting would be 1 hr of joiner time. So in this instance I would price in around £55 per door. If you chose an oak veneer door at £70 with a decent brass handle it would need 3 hinges and therefore your costs could rise to around £130 per door. Doesn't sound a big rise until you work out there are around 12 doors in a standard 3 bed house ..! Your "quote" has just gone up by £900..! Ask the contractor what he will charge as a handling fee for you buying items too - some add a 10% charge to cover the issue of fitting non standard items. Last thing is to keep a log of all discussions on site - triplicate book is ideal - and you can agree the changes requested and they can be priced and agreed as you go so there are no surprises.

I decided to make this one a bit higher so it missed the direct flow of water. All the tiles and trims were set into clear CT1 and pushed n until it oozed out of the grout lines / gaps etc. I wiped that excess off with wipes, making sure none was left flush with the surface of the tiles / trims, and left it to cure. I then gunned a colour matched silicone onto the remaining gaps. You could lay that on its back, fill it with water and it wouldnt lose a drop. .