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A picture paints a thousand words and is also a way to dodge @PeterW‘s profanity checker

Where's your Grammar. She's out with me grandad.

She did, did she?

Tray went in yesterday - feels very solid. Thanks to @Nickfromwales for advice.

Biggest saving you can make is changing the kind of driveway. Resin bound is pretty much the most expensive driveway that you can build. £120ish a square metres as quoted seems about right as the costs would drop for a larger area. There are other kinds of permeable driveway. You can get permeable blocks or permeable tarmac. That would roughly halve the cost. I know that a lot of people here are looking at the costs and saying they seem high but they seem about what I would expect for a main contractor. They don't tend to price things like skirtings by saying I buy this for £x a metre and then it will take a guy 1 day to fit at £150 a day. Instead they will price it at £10 a metre fitted. They don't want to spend time looking for the cheapest sources on the internet etc. Thus you can often do this kind of thing cheaper, but it involves a lot of work. Unfortunately I think as you go along you might find further small things still not costed, e.g. does the window quote include window sills. Often these smalls things just get forgotten about until you realise that they are needed. From a quick look at the plans, you could probably lose the wall and door that create the vestibule as it is not necessary. You could also have the dressing room open to the bedroom which would save a door, between them that might save £1000. I guess it might be too late to change the plumbing, but if you swapped the en suite and the dressing room around, the en suite would have a window to the front and the dressing room doesn't have to have a window so you could do away with the skylight currently in the en suite. (I'd also personally make the ensuite wider and the dressing room narrower either way) Is decorating actually included in the various prices, e.g for the skirting and architraves? Painting is perhaps a job you cold do yourself for a decent saving.

Woman without her man is lost Place the missing comma(s)!

They send a shiver down my spine tbh, and I'm too aware that they would literally twist you in half before stopping........well they wouldn't stop tbh. To see guys poking shovels in there with their hands on the grips makes me wince, but yet not a single story of anyone ever getting mutilated has burnt my ears. . Curiosty says "go look on YouTube" but the other part of me that wants to go to sleep soon says FECK THAT ! One of the worst site injuries I can recall was done by the humble plasterers trowel.

if I had to pay £1 for every grammatical mistake I would be verging on the national debt I'm not as bad since I downloaded Grammarly

I'll vent my pet hate at miss used grammar. If I had £1 for every time I have heard someone say "you could of done that....." FFS OF is not the same word as HAVE. It should be "you could have done that....." There. I can sleep easy tonight now that is off my chest.

Nope :-)

I should add a lot of the frustration comes from how it is worded, (youtube comments) "could you not have........" ill give you an answer explaining why "i'd have just.........." GFY

Don't forget Gumtree is pretty word specific, try "chop saw": https://www.gumtree.com/search?search_category=all&q=chop+saw&tq={"i"%3A"chop+saw"%2C"s"%3A"chop+saw"%2C"p"%3A0%2C"t"%3A7}&search_location=cornwall&tl= "sliding saw", miter instead of mitre and so on. This is good for typos to search for: http://www.fatfingers.com/

What he means is don’t spray 2 pack unless you have a full set of air fed masks and full extraction as it has the ability to kill you .... Just for the avoidance of doubt and all that...

How much water is actually going to pool on top of the batten if it wasn't angled? I would just use normal square batten and have done in the past for exactly the same build up. Angled could be argued as being better but I think it's very marginal with overlapped boards. More importantly is to lay the top boards so that they 'cup' inwards and clamp on to the base board for a snug fit, with sawn wet boards at least.

If it makes you feel any better, Lizzie, I had an as-designed SAP and first time around it came back as B84 and failed! This is in spite of having a whole bunch of PV and a sunamp to store the excess energy. The guy didn't seem to know or care too much so I asked him to do the figures again, this time with a thermal store. They also included a bunch of cold bridges as standard. The second lot of figures came back as a B86 but, more importantly, a pass. I could argue the toss and try and get them improved but i don't care at this stage. I'm not sure that I will be too bothered at the as-built stage, either, TBH, as I don't think it will make any difference to anything for me.

We managed an A95 without renewables and it would be A102 with 3.2kWp PV.

Which cupboard .........?? We went in lots of cupboards..!!! And each has a story to tell ...

"Mint sauce anyone?"

They weren’t man boobs, he’d got a bacon cob up each side ....

My thoughts exactly

Baxi, Vaillant, Worcester Bosch, or similar are good, any thing other needs serious scrutiny. Also need to know how much this boiler has had allocated to it so you dont get a bag of shit for megabucks and BB has had it for a song.

All the ones we looked at can be recirculatory but we had to buy the carbon filters separately for ours.

All that is inside the heat pump is a plate heat exchanger to transfer the heat from the refrigerant to the water (brine) so I can't see there is anything in the heat pump to get upset. I have spoken to Technical help at Telford. They advised for my small heat pump to use the standard heap pump coil not the larger one. The argument being that the larger input coil takes it almost to the top of the tank so most of the time will be in the hottest part and you won't get much extra heat transfer. They advised the larger coil is best suited to larger cylinders above 450L

The resin bound is easily good enough for a turning area. We had 200mm compacted type 1 then 70mm asphalt then 18mm resin bound. We don't think we have a separate cost for the resin bound because it was included with having kerbs and edging laid. We haven't laid the resin bonded yet but it will have a similar base and would be good enough for a turning area although it wouldn't be porous. There is a cheaper bitumen bonded surface but the gravel tends to pull away from the surface especially on a turning area

You forgot 18% maths.

I just bought a rangemaster hood and that came with carbon filters, not sure this is standard!

Indeedy. The banana was split some years ago. (Better go and do something useful)

Looking at those numbers, I would say that some of them should be reducible by perhaps a quarter to a third .. based on the areas Inknow about, but God and the Devil are both in the Detail here. On the doors etc, we have for £5742: And Declan said My recent experience, on the LBB for 6 doors and skirting throughout, came to around £90 per door for getting the heavy Oak Veneer Mexicano doors, ball bearing hinges, wing handles and tube latches bought and delivered per door. All good quality. The doors were about £70 of that, but the deal was very good and might be a bit more next time. Others are reporting numbers around £100 for similar oak veneer doors and furniture in a recent thread so that should be doable in the £100 ballpark. If you are using white egg crate doors or similar then you should be under half that. If you go for cheap doors consider better door furniture that you can reuse with better doors later. Fitting for me was about £80-100 per door including quite a bit of trimming to match existing frames. Note that this only included forming one doorframe. I paid £1.60 inc VAT per metre for 94mm bullnose pre-primered skirting. Buying that is a minor cost. Painting and trimming and attaching skirting will be more significant (probably glue it on). Obvs buy it in lengths and a selection that are slightly more than your varied room dimensions eg 4.2m for me -> no joins but go 2 feet too long for joins and corners rather than risk 1 foot too short. Get it all at once and get the calculations right or you may get another delivery fee for the small second order which is under the free delivery threshold. This latter is meat and drink; same principles apply everywhere. 4-5m skirtings in small hatchbacks can be done, but needs care ! Door linings, once the openings are formed, could be £30 depending on circs. I paid £25 for a white MDF 108mm version, but my supplier now advertises these at £54 - so it must have been a sale or to clinch the order. On that basis I would punt that you should look for your doors, skirtings and architraves to be somewhere under 4K, perhaps nearer 3.5k. procured and fitted. Paint the skirtings and architraves before fitting, and spray your walls first if they are being sprayed. F

Did you find out any info about the pros / cons of the two different sized coils? From what I read the HP likes the return as cool as possible so the bigger coil should win the day. Im still getting to grips with the science of the HP's so by no means an expert.....yet. Im booking myself in for a few HP training and product awareness courses shortly so that'll soon change. Knowledge is power, so im roughly 37% powerful, 66% bacon, 41% Tunnocks teacakes, and the remaining % im leaving for beer.

Are you saying he's fitting electric UFH on the entire 1st floor, and setting it into SL compound? There are foil mats that go down without SLC to do this, thus saving several hundreds of pounds. Can you get as much detail on that environment of works as you can plz? Cost of UFH components and the supplier? Cost of electric UFH and the supplier? ( argue in both cases that you want good warranties etc if you need a cloak to go with the dagger ) Does that include manifold/s? Does that include manifold pump/s and blender set/s? Whose designed the UFH layout? eg number of loops per zone and the pipe spacings. YOU MUST KNOW THIS BEFORE THE SCREED GETS ANYWHERE NEAR THE HOUSE!! It cannot be rectified afterwards. UFH controllers and room thermostats? Does he think the boiler fitter will be "sorting all that out"? eg then you get another bill for change of £1k for the controls. You say the boiler will be supplied. Price and EXACTLY what boiler? If its a combi then you'll need a buffer tank to drive the UFH, so factor that into the airing cupboard so you know up front that you'll lose a bit of space in there but the heat won't go to waste, but most importantly that you get quotes from plumbers to do the correct job rather than 5-pipe jockeys who will bolt the boiler to the wall and scarper. What is the depth of the ground floor screed, and what is the M2 so I can get you a price to compare?

No dopy, its so you can isolate the aav and remove it without draining the antifreeze out.

best bit of physics i learned today on radio 4, bananas create antimatter

It was like a facking beaver had attacked it. The thing to watch out for is the horrible twist grip thing on the arm that you swing to change the angle of the cut. Who the hell invented that piece of crap.? The Dewalt has a castellated ring where you just slide and it clicks to lock into place using a finder tip catch under the flip down secure lock 'tab'. That means switching from one angle to another takes seconds. The secure locking tab doesn't need to be used for the preset angles as the click stop is rock solid on its own, so you only need to drop the secure tab if you've gone between the clicks to an odd angle. With my other mates ( expensive ) Bosch there was still that twist lock thing that took an age to loosen and then re-tighten EVERY time you need to move it which is just such a PITA !!! D E W A L T

Are you making the whole frame on site ? if so stop messing about and go and get the big dewalt, build a cutting table with built in tape measure and length stops, i built our last place as stick built on site and you will need a dedicated cutting station for thousands of cuts.

Am I right in that OP gave builder a previous quote to price against and current builder only quoted against this as instructed. Builders are not qs'. He likely didn't employ one to help him quote because he was only asked to quote specifically against what was supplied. If this is the jist of things then I think a wake up call is needed. The contractor is losing all the cream where he was potentially going to make his money because op failed to do due diligence and get a proper spec. 1500 per m2 for a fully managed project isn't expensive. Sorry for the rant, might be wrong with above assumptions, just wanted to give balance. As to way forward like you say, sale of existing asap and rent. Will feel better with recharged warchest

Nope that's not gd one bit. The brickie is meant to use his trowel to scoop up the motar that gets squeezed out when you lay the bricks and blocks and use this over and over again. Them cavities are full of motar droppings as well. Then the massive gaps between different layers of insulation are ok if you want cold spots all over your wall. You may get him to remove the rest of the closers and sort that mess out before your Windows go in.

Studwork is way over if it’s timber, as is the plastering. Just paid £6k for 470sqm of board and skim walls and sloping ceilings with another 65sqm or flat ceilings on a 168sqm house so that price is well over. Get the sparky direct. Oh, and get those cavities refilled, 10 minute job to do it properly !

No way to pull the 4mm wire out with a string attached and then pull the bigger one through......

Hope so

Thanks so much Peter He charges me 150 per person per day as far as I can tell. So that comes to £860 all in so another grand saved.

Great !! So fascia comes in 5m lengths so no joins .... Assuming he is putting brick corbels at each end you don’t need any end caps or joiners either. Taking just one supplier, and there are others, then this is what I get it to. Fascia board at 225mm (average for a board depth) http://www.angelplastics.co.uk/Category/25/16mm-White-Maxi-Fascia-Board 3 off - £90 9mm vented soffit board http://www.angelplastics.co.uk/Category/94/9mm-White-Vented-Soffits 3 off £60 Plastic head pins to fit (60mm) http://www.angelplastics.co.uk/Category/504/Polytop-Fixings 1 off £7.20 Guttering (Don’t scrimp and get decent stuff like BM or Terrain..!!) http://www.angelplastics.co.uk/Category/806/Black-Crescent-Gutters 4 off gutter 4m 4 off running outlet 18 off bracket 8 off stop ends All in £180 Downpipes http://www.angelplastics.co.uk/Category/854/68mm-Black-Pipe 4 off downpipe 4m 8 off 112 elbow 4 off shoe 4 off joiner (terrain needs these..) 12 off bracket All in £204 That’s a total of £560 inc VAT delivered for all the bits for decent (not top end but not cheap crap) fascia, gutter and downpipes. Get him to beat that... and it’s a day to fit all that lot too for someone with a labourer and one skilled.

Right - I've (kind of) pulled myself together and I have got the beginnings of a plan. Needs a ot more detail, a lot more planning BUT I CAN AND I WILL Bare bones Get property watertight and put project on hold Get this house sale ready - not a huge amount to do, just a couple of room to decorate, guttering to clean and some trim missing in bathroom Get this house sold House sit for a friend - or stay with her more likely - she has a house in France and is away from June to September, whilst I get the new house ready.

He is a good builder and the brick work and roof are his trades - All the corners and everywhere there has been something other than straight bricking, he does the first one himself and tells the lads exactly how he wants it doing. And, being fair to him, the attention to detail has been just as good this week with everything going on as it has been all along.

On a separate note I’ve got to say that sailing course brickwork is first class - very neat and tidy ..!

After messing around for a few days looking at options it basically came down to a cost and time issue. I didn't want to spend more money as over budget in a number of places! () and putting cost implications to one side all of the options were going to take time and therefore delays. So I took a pragmatic approach to this.... ( see pics) The slating is now done and the roof looks great, just got to find the time to get the fascias and soffits finished now.

Stockholm Syndrome .

and none around the edges? Surprised you've got time to reply @Nickfromwales! It must be beer O'clock on Buildhub SOS now?

While my architect wasn't perfect, he were very happy overall with what he did for us. The design he came up with was a complete departure from the lines along which the previous architect we'd been using (and fired) had been going. It was far better, and more importantly, it was something we had a chance of getting planning for. Unlike many (indeed most) architects, ours is an absolute whizz at the planning process. He's very familiar with local and national planning policies, and shepherded our extremely modern design through to first time approval in a very conservative area. I like to think we helped by actively engaging with the community and our neighbours first (because we wanted to, I should add, not just because we wanted to get planning permission!), but the planning submission was a work of art. He didn't have many serious weaknesses. If there's one thing I think he could do with some work on it's his weathering details. Some of them really didn't manage water very well, but thankfully these were picked up and rectified by others before it was too late. There are two things I'd counsel: 1. You MUST get a fantastic personal feeling from the architect at every point until you sign up. Any misgivings, or misunderstandings, or odd vibes are a warning - if that happens now, it'll be HELL when things inevitably get stressful. 2. There are exceptions to the rule, but choose an architect whose buildings you like. There are very few architects who are so talented that they can design (or indeed are interested in designing) many different types of building well. Ours is a specialist in modern designs, and we largely liked what he'd done before. Don't go along to a specialist in neo-Georgian and expect them to design you a modernist temple!

Boiler is included - but nothing else on the plumbing fitting it is only included if they get the rest of the plumbing as an extra.