AliG

Thats a beautiful finish. Need to show it to the wife.

Looking good Dave, did you just seed it? Looking at the costs I am thinking it's a no brainer versus turf

Thanks, it is pretty much my favourite thing to do on here. I was thinking about it this morning. I really do think you need to decide if you are building this house to live in for a long time or to sell in a few years. It could have quite a big effect on what you spend on fittings etc. Also, looking at the original plans I'd probably want to get a professional kitchen or bathroom designer to look at those rooms.

OK, if nothing else this shows you the enormous amount of space you have to play with between bed one and the master bedroom - You can move the master door around depending on if you want to retain the cupboard on the landing. Firstfloor plan .pdf

I agree with many of the comments re smaller houses are easier to sell so won't say any more on that. I also agree with Dave that having space and importantly a window on a landing makes a house much more pleasant to live in so I would not feel it was wasted space. The bit I feel is odd is the master bedroom and even more so bedroom 1 which have a lot of redundant floorspace but small wardrobes and en suite in the case of the master. There are lots of ways you could better utilise the space, but you definitely have enough room for a larger ensuite and a walk in wardrobe by simply stealing from the floor space. One way would be to make the bed 1 ensuite longer as the bedroom itself is currently 6m long which is unnecessary. You could put a bath under the coomb and a walk in shower on the other side. You could have a walk through wardrobe to get into the ensuite. Alternatively in the master bedroom you could make the ensuite wider but shorter to cross both the small windows. You could then have a walk in wardrobe below it and remove the other wardrobe making that the bed position. You could still do this and make bed 1 the master, it has more room. I would move down the wall to the ensuite to make bed 1 the new more square master. It does depend a little on which window you prefer for the master. Tbh the layout of the house looks like it was done by a builder with little imagination. I am not sure about building regs for a stairlift, I thought that would be an issue on my new place, but they just seemed to want space to park a chairlift if necessary. Downstairs if selling and not worrying about your mucky husband I am not sure there is much value in an extra WC. I would probably make the study larger and lose it along with the cost of the plumbing. Maybe put a larger hall cupboard in instead. I am ok with the kitchen layout, I like the lack of corners which tend to be wasted space. I would have the door swing into the utility room. A lot depends on how you want to use the space, you could redesign the kitchen layout to more clearly split the dining area, I think it is more a personal choice. If you felt the need for a separate dining room, losing the WC and maybe a slightly smaller utility would make the study big enough. I am going to see if I can draw a new bed one and master layout

I have just changed from a 1200mm shower enclosed on three sides like yours, with a pivot door, to a 1600mm shower with 1000mm frameless screen and 600mm walk in space. It is the absolute best change I have made to the bathroom. Wish it had always been like that. One of the main factors as discussed was no longer having any rubber/plastic seals which look dingy and various channels to collect grime. It is far easier to clean. We also moved to a low level tray and with tiling on the floor, it is barely above the floor at all, much neater versus the original tray which was raised up to make the plumbing easier. The screen is 6mm, I was worried it was too thin, but it seems absolutely fine. It was unexpectedly expensive for just as sheet of glass a metal channel and a metal support. So on your current plans frameless hinged doors seem the way to go. I'd be a bit wary of the way the en suite door and shower door occupy the same space though. Maybe I am just overly cautious.

Just a few thoughts Russ. Site/planning issues first. 1. It appears the house is very close to the boundary at the back. There don't appear to be any houses there today, but I think it might break local overlooking guidelines. Once built it would make it very difficult to build the land behind. It may be that this land can never be built on. You could lose all the windows on that elevation of you have to. The kitchen and bedrooms could just have windows to the side. 2. If everything is just one storey high I would consult the planners as to their attitude to a two storey building, even a low one. Design issues - 1. You have some big spans there, I think it will be ok with steel between the end of the lounge wall and back of the kitchen. You might need to go to 300mm joists or 400mm centres. This will affect the height of your ridge. Assuming you use posi-joists or similar. These should make routing services no problem. 2. Ensuite 2 is above a window in the kitchen, routing the waste down might be difficult. You will have a bump on the wall that will ideally be hidden behind kitchen cabinets. 3. Ensuite 2 is too small. It might physically work but will feel miserable to be in. I would aim for 1.2m wide. You can easily lose some width in the bedroom. 4. Not sure about the kitchen design. If you look at the sight lines, as people come in the front door they will be looking directly at the kitchen sink. I would probably move units to where the table is and use the table to split the kitchen from sun room.Then the table would be what you see coming in the door. 5. Maybe consider a skylight/sunpipe for the upstairs landing, it will be very dark. I do like how efficiently you have got all the rooms off it. 6. The staircase will likely need support on the half landing. It may be easiest to box it in.This would then allow an extra cupboard downstairs which would probably be handy. 7. I've never seen a veranda like that, is it frameless? As drawn it looks nice. But why put it round the back against the fence? 8. Depending on the height of the fence and planning issues, the back windows seem to look out against the fence. Good luck with the plans.

EDIT - What I posted wouldn't work due to the requirement to have the WC centre 400/450mm from the wall.

They'll probably half it if you don't seem interested. When people do this I always feel do I really want to do business with a company that was willing to do me over! My 3G alu clad windows are costing about 1/3 of that ex VAT and fitting. I'd guess something like 7-8000 would be reasonable including VAT and fitting for PVC 2G windows.

For the bedroom I think I'd go full height and the asymmetric ceiling adds interest. I was just in a showhouse where they did this and it worked really well. You could flatten off the peak, if you don't like the asymmetry, I wouldn't slope it back down again. I understand the concerns about a really high ceiling, but it looks like the peak will maybe be 4m high. I'd be less bothered for the shower room and hall. If you give the shower room a high ceiling you can always stop the tiles at the height of the top of the door, but I think the room is too small to really benefit.

We have the first system on a bath we just installed. I feel it was much neater as well as cheaper than wall mounted taps so a win win. Unfortunately I am not at home so can't post a picture, but as Barney said there is a separate valve. We mounted it on the wall in the middle of that bath. I used one with a diverter and put a hand held shower on the wall too for hair washing, but that does add to the cost. So something like this on the wall, note this is just the first one that came up in an Ebay search. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-Square-Tap-Wall-mounted-Shower-and-Bath-Mixer-Faucet-Tap-Control-Valve-/261503697880?hash=item3ce2d5c3d8:g:ICIAAOxyjxlTO94S Ours is more like this with a diverter http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Wall-mount-2-Ways-Shower-Faucet-Control-Valve-Single-Handle-With-Diverter-Chrome-/321738874326?hash=item4ae9219dd6:g:Rv4AAOSwv0tVPg30 I think a lot of people on here would warn you against buying cheap plumbing fittings though. You are probably looking at more like £100-150 for a brand name valve or valve plus diverter. Wall mounted taps though can easily stretch to £300-400

For some reason my wife spent a lot of time on our WC as she wanted it to be spacious. Our current one is roughly 1.8x 1.4m which feels quite nice but we have gone up to 1.9 x 1.6m in the new place. I have seen houses with quite large rooms as WCs and the fittings looked embarrassingly lost in the rooms. It's not clear, but I assume in your original 3m wide WC, the side areas are actually boxed in cupboards. I far prefer the separate plant room. I have worried about Jack's issues, that everything should be able to get out if it needs replaced, but I would have thought you have plenty of room there unless the TS is enormous.They are normally around 700-800mm wide. I don't like the WC design though. Perhaps it's just me, but it's a room visitors see when coming into your house. You are leaving it quite cramped as it seems to be maybe less than 1m wide after allowing for the storage. Also I would always try to have room separate as there will be times when you are frustrate you can't get into the cupboard due to someone being in the WC. Imagine having visitors and them hanging around waiting for you to come out of the WC to get their coats for instance. I think I would move the cupboard to incorporate it into the plant room and not the WC. I would want a standalone WC 1.2m wide and then make the plant room wider. The exact space for the storage would depend on the plant room equipment layout. The other alternative is to move the storage space into the utility room. I can't see how big it is, but rather than pay for lots of kitchen units in the utility room, you could move that cupboard to the other side of the wall and save on kitchen units. Make the WC 1.2m wide and add the width to the utility room.

We recently installed Sky Q, it works over wifi, but it works much better using ethernet from the central box which now acts as a server to the other boxes. If I was putting Cat 5 in I would terminate it near to where TVs are going as you can then use it for Netflix/smart tv as well as distributing TV around the house. Even if you don't have these now they will become more common place. I'd still stick with Coax also as Freeview offers a decent, cheap service for spare rooms or if you don't want to pay for satellite/cable. As has been said Cat 5 is irrelevant for telephone use. Until Sky Q came along we only used it to extend the WiFi and for HDMI over Cat 5 in the house, DECT phones have much better coverage than WiFi. WiFi speed can half going through a couple of walls in a timber frame house. We now have almost the same speed everywhere in the house as the Sky Q boxes act as WiFi repeaters. Sky initially used wireless repeaters, the speed of my WiFi dropped by 2/3 doing it this way, wired is the way to go. If you want to put in CCTV I would consider Cat 5 to the eaves so you can put in tidy little dome cameras.

These look quite neat and is waterproof. It is more expensive but doesn't have the flap sticking up. http://floorbox.co.uk/IP66-Waterproof-Box Available here for £80 ex vat. http://www.officepowerproducts.com/waterproof-floorbox-39-c.asp

I am planning a floor socket so thought I better check. Part M starts off by specifically saying it is talking about wall sockets, floor sockets don't appear to be covered by the regulation. I'm in Scotland, the regulation there is less clear. It says that "standard" sockets should be at least 400mm above floor level. I think you could argue that this is not standard. I can't find any way of having a floor socket that doesn't seem to involve having a metal plate in the middle of the floor, you need to plan where furniture goes so it is underneath it.

Hard flooring whether it be Amtico or hardwood. Still looks like new after 13 years whilst the carpets are in desperate need of replacement. If you have kids light coloured carpets are likely to look bad after 6 or 7 years. Hard flooring is around twice the price which should pay for itself eventually - especially when your daughter gets really sick and projectile vomits across the bedroom carpet! Better quality bathroom fittings - Just replaced our en suite, I didn't go crazy, I spent around £4000 on a bath, walk in shower, double vanity, WC, bidet, associated taps and valves and 40 square meters of tiles. I still kept the price down by buying the vanity from EBAY and the bath and shower tray on line. It looks way better than if I had scrimped and maybe spent £1000 less. Shame that the fitters couldn't install a wall mounted WC to save themselves. Pyrolytic ovens. They come out like new and it's a lot easier than cleaning. I got the cheapest pyrolytic Siemens ovens rather than paying for dozens of oven programmes that never get used.

On the fridge one, we have an American fridge freezer, but it is a Samsung one that cost around £1100, so not too extravagant. I know some of the earlier ones had issues, but our one has been flawless and I believe is a better product than the considerably more expensive Siemens equivalents. I like it, however, I do find the ice and water dispenser annoying. The reason for this is that everyone who comes to the house finds them such a novelty that they constantly mess around with them. I never have the ned for crushed ice, but apparently this is vital to people and I worry they will break it through over use. Further, similar to what Dave said, the tap water is often colder than the dispenser water. To solve this in the next house I am going to have a freezer with ice maker inside that drops into a drawer so there are less moving parts to break and people don't see it so don't play with it. I'm just doing away with the water dispenser entirely, it's pointless. As was mentioned on overpriced but low quality contractors, anything that you pay a premium for but then turns out not to be a premium product will feel a waste, but a good quality product that does the job well and gets a lot of use will give you a lot of satisfaction. We have a Quooker tap and I have noticed almost everyone at work who has had their kitchen redone in the last five years now has one. By any stretch, what is basically a fancy £1000 kettle is an extravagance. Yet as they get used all the time everyone seems to love them. I almost fainted when my wife bought a £400 Vitamix blender, yet it just does the job it is asked of time and time again. Prior to that we had a succession of cheap blenders and food processors that broke after a few months. They feel more like an extravagance. Although I keep telling her I am sure there is a happy medium of a good quality, but not so expensive product. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think I have more often been too cheap and would have been better paying up for better quality items. However, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I will use an item for, I will always pay up for function and quality, but not for brands, aesthetics and bespoke items. That is where I think that you can start to get extravagant.

My house was built with the bracing missing from the roof. On one house the roof wasn't tied to the house. It could have blown off. NHBC and building control were useless. Eventually we had to get a surveyor to write up a report at which point the builder re roofed the affected houses. Meanwhile when I build an extension or conservatory, building control goes over every little thing in pedantic detail. It makes you wonder that they put very little effort into checking what is being done by big developers. I think that they allowed the PFI contractors to self certify without going through building control, is that right?

My guy adds 10% to anything he buys or subcontracts in. He also adds 5% to things that I have arranged for his time managing them on site. On top of this there are expenses for on site foreman etc. It is not the cheapest, but it is not unreasonable for the amount of work involved. I do check over quotes as he doesn't have that big an incentive to get the cheapest price. I query anything I think is too expensive and ask him to get more quotes.

I have insulated doors. The garage stays at around 10-11 even when it gets down to 0 in the winter. The car feels lovely on a cold morning. Might be too late for this, but looking at your pic, I changed my garage from 2 doors to one. So much easier to get the car in and makes it a lot more likely that you use it.

My wife wants chunky looking tops in the new place so its silestone with the thick edge build up as people mentioned. It is considerably more expensive and in my opinion doesn't look as good. However, sometimes you have to do your bit for marital harmony. After all I'm the one who wanted to build a house!

I hadn't heard of it either. Looks very sharp, I would like it but the wife wants chunky worktops in the new place so more like 40-50mm. http://www.tpbarcelona.com/en/tpb-classic.html

We had 30mm granite before and now we have 20mm granite. Pricing up the new place 20mm Silestone is around 20% cheaper. I think it looks sleeker and more modern also so it is a win win. Another good way to say is eliminate the drainage grooves. We have them today and they just get full of dirt and need to be constantly cleaned. Most stuff goes in the dishwasher and you can always get a rack or lay down a dishtowel if you are drying something. Again it looks a lot neater. You could save £200.

The pool was delivered this week. We have to store it on site for a few weeks until the slab is ready for it.

Work is finally progressing. The building warrant was only finalised a couple of weeks ago. Between that and the builder massively underestimating the amount of earth to be removed we are 5 weeks behind. Strip foundations are dug and area of the house has been flattened.