Ed_

Who did you go turn key with out of interest?

Thanks all for the useful comments, food for thought!

Excellent idea!

One of the things i'm thinking about is the basement. Its a walk-in basement because the site is sloping and for a number of reasons it just makes sense to do it, and obviously it cant be done later. But is it possible to erect the basement structure, not even insulate it, just block it off and for that to be signed off? Because if so that gives me a £50-100k buffer in the worst case scenario.

HI all, at the design stage and feeling a little unsure how much we can afford to build. Rules of thumb vary say £1500 to £3000+, so thats half the size... It's hard to get proper costs without a proper design, but we don't want to create a proper design without some feedback on the costs first! Especially when planning permission timescales are accounted for, so how do you all do it? Related question - lets say we are slightly ambitious in size and it ends up costing too much, what potential is there to economise later? Everything needs to be finished to get a proper mortgage so is it feasible to leave half the house as a shell for example? Thanks, Ed

Likewise i would love to see what is being built here, any pictures etc. I would love to use Dan Wood to save myself some time and stress but their off the shelf designs aren't suitable and they are fairly coy about bespoke. Currently working up plans with an architect, will take them to DW once complete to see if they can quote.

I've heard it said that 2400mm is the best ceiling height, because that is the standard plaster board size. I've been doing some thinking (dangerous, I know) and wondering about the practicality of going for say 100mm more and having a gap below the plasterboard that is covered by the skirting, see image. This would provide me with an easy conduit around the edge of all the rooms, accessed simply by unscrewing the skirting. Want to add a socket? Unscrew skirting and tap directly into the ring main. Want to run a network cable. Same. Anyone done this?

Should have been clearer, it's a down slope. Thought about a basement, but seems like a headache on a constrained site. I have no idea whether continuing the ground floor beyond the edge of the slope is easy or hard?

The problem with a deeper house is: 1 - i expect side windows (certainly at 1st floor) to be a problem for planning permission, which limits the practical depth. 2 - 10m back we have a 2m high slope, i think it would be better/cheaper not to go beyond that - and again, planning might be harder as will start to overlook neighbours gardens (due to height differential). Its essentially a city centre plot, so parking in front is the norm for the street, much as we would prefer otherwise and many of the existing houses are 1m apart in places. But i would like as decent access as i can, which means going as close to the boundary on one side as possible in order to make more space at the other.

1 - Car port built to the boundary. Not in good repair, I don't know them yet but it might be reasonable that they would trade scaffolding for a new or repaired car port - thanks. 2 - bungalow about 0.5m from boundary.

Hi everyone! At the start of the process - we have bought a dilapidated house that we would like to demolish and rebuild. Main constraint is the plot is 12.5m wide. Dan Wood want 1.5m either side for scaffolding, which restricts what we can do a lot. I was hoping for 1.5m one side (for access) and minimal the other, say 0.5m, which leaves us a 10.5m wide house (other half really wants 3 windows wide!). Most self builds seem to be on large plots so plenty of room, does anyone have any experience of a more constrained plot or are all timber frame builders going to need external scaffolding? Would anyone be able to make do with say 1m width of scaffolding either side? (or less) I'd rather not end up having to do brick and block. Many thanks!