AliG

Hi Everyone, Reading some problems of other forum members recently made me think about this. My build is approaching the end, I am hoping to be into my house house in early December. I have found the last two months by far the most stressful part of the build. Early on, there was a lot of heavy building work and decisions on that were made before we started, I didn't have to get involved. Recently though the amount of input required by me has ramped up such as deciding where every socket and light fitting in the house goes and sourcing items I have specified such as fires where the builder can't really just go and buy them. We have also made some last minute changes. The combination of working, and it doesn't help that I work in London but am building in Edinburgh, trying to sell our own house and also having to make decisions in conjunction with my wife on paint colours tiles, etc when up until now I could make most decisions alone has been very hard work and stressful. I am sure that everyone's build has different kinds of stress, costs being more than expected, builders who let you down, planning issues etc. So maybe it would be good to warn people what to expect and ways to make it less stressful. I thought I had put an enormous amount of work in so that it would be plain sailing once we actually started. That didn't allow for the fact that what works on paper may not work when they come to build it and that my wife only realised she didn't like some things once she saw them in real life as she struggles to understand plans. Anyway I am sure it will all be worth it in the end and my stresses are much less than other people's but maybe it's worth just telling people what to expect before they start and helping to avoid some pitfalls.

I tend to like to buy a basic version of a better known brand as I assume that the quality and reliability will be better. Also they do tend to have better after sales service so that if something does go wrong it is easier to get them fixed and get parts. However, this is where you may in fact just be paying for brand and where the power of the internet might help. As people buy products and review them on line you can get a much better feel for the real life user experience. As @Ferdinand says, Which won't have used these items for a long period of time and that is where you can really tell how good something is. If over time you can find a product where real life buyers are happy with it and it is cheaper than it is a win. Of course people like to go onto the internet to complain about things which means that you don't exactly get a representative view of products. Also if you go onto Amazon you will find reviews written by the seller, bad reviews of products because they were delivered on the wrong day even though the product itself was fine and reviews stating that a product someone got yesterday is the best thing ever, when longer term owners say that they all break down. Anyway I would note that on AO.Com the New World has a few positive reviews although there are some similar priced products also well reviewed. I like to look at the worst reviews to see what issues they highlight. For example a well reviewed BEko induction hob appears to split the power between 2 rings if both used at the same time.

A good thing to look for is run out models. Our kitchen company sold us Siemens ovens with a £1500 list price for £750 when they were being replaced with a newer model. I'd have bought a much lower spec one otherwise. I'll just have to do without the WiFi of the new ones, because everyone needs a WiFi oven!

That Samsung hob is a virtual flame one. It seems with kitchen appliances that the price ramps up rapidly as they add gimmicky features of dubious benefit. Siemens, Samsung etc have prices differences of 100% between almost identical basic products as they add features. The question I always ask myself is how many of these features would I use, I don't think I've ever used more than 2 or 3 programmes on the oven yet some have dozens.

Awful news, I am better with money than building so would offer any help I can. We could all go through a myriad of options available, but maybe you need a bit of time to think about what would work best for you guys and then people can offer any advice to get you there.

Thanks for the suggestions, actually one of the change I had made was to make the dressing room pocket doors already. I went up and stood in the space today. I am very happy with the decision to swap the dressing and en suite around. Although it seems like the dressing room should be closed off as this allows you to hide stuff away, having stood in the space, I feel that opening up the dressing room and having maybe a big open arch into the room keeps the symmetry of the room that the wall currently has destroyed. I took a picture where you can see the tight corner that we want to lose and compare it to the other side of the room. I think keeping it open the room will be he same width in both directions and benefit from that.

Ah I wasn't sure as you were talking about moving the ensuite door. I would still have the wardrobe along an end wall. It doesn't sound like you have started that yet.

That's the old layout. The bed goes centred facing the fireplace. It's about 1.2m from there to the ensuite wall. The room is full height across the centre then 2.75m tall when it hits a steel beam that holds up the roof at each side, from there on it is flat. So inside the ensuite would have been 2.7m, but the outside wall is roughly 3.5m high. I found a pic before the plasterboard went up on the stud work and some other pics of the room. The bed goes in front of the steels. At the right hand side of the pic of the steels, the en suite wall comes out 800mm and leaves a tight corner entry to the dressing room. We are going to take the wall back to be in line with the outside wall so it is 1.8m from the bed. The dressing room only has 2.4m ceiling height as there is a mezzanine floor above it. Next question will be should the dressing room be closed off or open to the bedroom so that the you can see the whole width of the room and should we put a window in the new en suite. I'll need to buy some tiles for the larger new en suite. One thing I can do is put the WC in its own little cupboard now like you get in nice hotels. I did suggest having a his and hers en suite but my wife said no.

Hi Everyone, I was just curious if anyone had made any last minute majorish changes. They are plaster boarding the inside of our house. My wife came into the master bedroom and hated it. TBH she is right. What happened was that in the original design the master en suite was a bit tight for what we wanted to get in there, so I asked the architect to make it wider. That got us more space in the en suite but moved the wall quite close to where the bed will go. When the walls started to go up it started to look tight and the room look lop sided. I think what accentuated this is that the room has a vaulted ceiling so the en suite wall got taller by moving it into the room an now looms over the bed. Anyway it is better to fix it now than later so we are moving the ensuite into the dressing room which is a much larger area and shrinking the en suite to be the new dressing room. Probably a few thousand in wasted stud work and plasterboard but I think it is the right thing to do. Luckily there is pipework in place so that the change can be made. I kept looking at the plans and wondering about doing it, wish I had just bit the bullet earlier. To some extent I didn't want to upset the architect. He was fine about it, he said he hadn't liked moving the wall, but the trouble was that the en suite was too small without that. Perhaps the moral is, if you don't feel right about something and can change it then change it as soon as possible.

Considering the shape of the master bedroom there, would you not be better to put fitted wardrobes along one end rather than the side, you are going to end up with a very long narrow room if you put them all down one side. In fact I would say uncomfortably narrow which is a shame for such a large room, you would reduce the width to only 2.7-2.8m. I personally like when a door doesn't swing onto the room so wouldn't move the master door. Door A can clearly be moved a bit to be further from the bathroom door. If you are altering the en suite I would actually make it bigger, if the wardrobes and the ensuite are at that end of the room and the bed at the other end the bed will have lots of space around it. Again the en suite is quite compact relative to the size of the bedroom, unless you are planing a sitting area in the bedroom you will just have lots of dead space. Depending on your family I assume that the en suite will be used all the time so it seems a shame for it to be smaller than the bathroom.

I think that's a problem the guy in the picture might have

I think that needed a warning!

Twice HSE have turned up on my site I have ended up with another £1000 worth of scaffolding. But they never asked for airbags for the roof build as far as I am aware.That seems over the top. We did have them when they put the upper floor slabs on but that was the slab company's choice.

I used this for my house. I have also used this to roughly calculate the expected cost to heat my swimming pool, so it will be interesting to see how close I am when it is finished. I would note if anyone asks a heating company to specify a system, it will almost certainly be enormous relative to the figures the spreadsheet produces as self built houses tend to be way better insulated than they are used to.

I got a three phase supply, as electric cars become the norm as well as induction hobs then it becomes increasingly possible to max out the capacity of a single phase supply. I am just about to order up my Tesla charger which can connect pretty much to any supply that you have. As far as I can see there was little extra cost. The CU was more expensive, but it made no other difference to internal wiring.

I actually saw that door in my search. It looks very nice. I assumed @ryder72 wanted flush doors specifically but maybe not. In my quest to find glass walnut fire doors for a reasonable price I feel like I am currently a door expert.

Could this work? It still says semi solid core, but I would assume it is more substantial as it is a 44mm fire door. I have just got a quote from these people for my doors and they have been very helpful. https://www.leaderdoors.co.uk/doors-c14/internal-doors-c111/fire-doors-c121/jeld-wen-internal-paint-grade-premium-44mm-white-primed-plywood-flush-fd30-fire-door-p31273

Yes that was ridiculous as was Barratt not fixing the damp walls. I do wonder though why people don't take more interest in the building of their house. I have been as nosey as I can be with builders, although there have still been issues. In my experience they all have issues, the difference is the better builders are more reasonable about actually fixing them.

I just put this on. For the moment they are complaining about blocked drains min a flat causing sewage to come up in the bath and flood the flat. I had blocked drains in a new flat 20 years ago. They unblocked them and it was fine. Admittedly sewage only came up in my shower and toilet and it was fixed before it overflowed. I certainly didn't ask the builder to replace the shower, these people insisted on a new bath. Drains can get blocked. Hopefully they will have more worthwhile complaints later.

The architect talked to BC re using a mist system but they were insistent on a water system. I think they are probably wrong and ill informed but that was their requirement. If I had been involved I might have tried to get it changed as it is cheaper and requires less maintenance. There isn't really anything likely to set it off up there so I should be fine, it is just a bit of a worry.

1000 litre tank in the plant room! I'm hoping it they never get set off by accident as it will be pretty messy.

@Oz07 by the time the screeners came back there had been a dry couple of weeks so it was fine in the end. We were forced to have the sprinklers. As soon as you go over two floors the fire regulations are a pain in the neck. The first floor study is open to a games room on the second floor in the roof. Because of that one room almost all the room doors are fire doors, all the steel has to be painted to fire proof it, we had to install sprinklers in that area, we have to have a higher end smoke alarm, etc. We also had to have a fire report written as the house is over 200sq metres per floor and the domestic regulations only officially cover up to that size. Basically all in all the extra cost has been almost £10,000. Also it will be £250 a year to service the sprinklers for the rest of the life of the house. Now with Grenfeel you can see how you want to be careful regarding fires, but as you can see from the picture there is virtually no wood or other flammable materials used in the construction of the house. Chances of a serious fire would be very low. But everyone wants to over themselves. @jamiehamy our tiles were ordered in December for April delivery. Due to delays they had to going storage. As to lights, we have been ordering the nice ones from Aliexpress, direct from China. The first batch came in a week ago and seem to be exactly what we wanted (won't know for sure until they are installed). They were designer lights where the genuine article would have cost 10x as much. In a lot of cases though it looks as if they are pretty much the same lights for 1/2 to 1/3 of the retail price. It shows how much stuff is marked up between the manufacturer and the end customer. @Tennentslager I am indeed pleased about the roof, I think looks fantastic. Party will be in current house if we are not done, but it looks like we are good for mid November now barring disaster. The tilers are tentatively booked to start in the middle of next month and the kitchen installation for October.

For me this has been the hardest few weeks as we get closer to finishing there seem to be more decisions for me to make. Also finishes and how things look become more important. With the build dragging from an initial July finish, to end September and then end November, I decided that I had to make sure it was not going to slip anymore. I think we are now good for mid November. My wife has a party organised for December 2nd which allowed lots of time from completion when it was arranged. I managed to source paint for steel painting which was quoted at a ridiculous £150 a square metre when they knew it desperately needed done, I expect the final cost to be around a quarter of that. I have just got an estimate for the internal doors. Lucky I did as the specials are 8-10 week lead times. They have pretty much finished the electrical first fix and started on the plumbing. They have been framing out and plaster boarding upstairs. The plaster skimmed walls have lovely finish. The windows are still not in due to the steel lintels not being painted and the roof in only around 25% tiled. The windows should be done in two to three weeks and the roof maybe a week later. Then the rendering can start outside and we can work on finishes inside. I have just told my wife that she can finally choose paint colours. Framing for master en suite More roof tiles MVHR and other pipework Hot and cold water loops going in. These will be fixed to the slab. Sprinkler system in, can finish plaster boarding the ceiling now. Plaster skimmed walls More plaster Cabling in AV cupboard Plant room

The builder offered me the option of an interior door and a steel door but as it is in the utility room I wasn't too bothered about a plain white door and it seemed like a bit of a faff to have two doors.

If anyone needs to do this, I found this company- http://www.steel-fire-paint.co.uk You give them the size of each beam and they come back ad tell you how thick the paint needs to be and then how much paint you need to buy. A really excellent service, ordering from them and the builder will do the painting on a per hour rate. Should save a good 6-7000.