newhome

Well that's the million dollar question . Thankfully I didn't spend a million dollars . The house is too large, way too large. There would only have been 2 of us living here and now there is only me and I live in a pretty large house, most of which I don't even go in, that has 6 bathrooms / shower rooms, which is mental. The house next door is a similar design and we viewed it before purchasing this plot (it had just gone under offer), and as planning permission was already granted and the building warrant approved for this plot we went with the overall design and just altered the internal layout so that we could get going on it as hubby was keen to get cracking. Having a house that suits the way you live is most important and having endless rooms that I never go in is a bit crazy TBH. I do like some of the things we did internally. We took out the snug and the office that the house next door has and made one big kitchen / family room. I spend all of my time in here and find it relaxing and comfortable. I would never have used 3 separate rooms the same. I wish that the utility room was larger as I could easily have lost a metre off the kitchen / family room and not even noticed. We put in an extra bathroom - AGHHH!!! and really we should have removed at least one, and we changed the downstairs cloakroom to be a wetroom with shower. That's ok, but it makes bathroom number 6! We took out a bedroom to make an upper sitting room upstairs. I have never yet sat in that sitting room upstairs . It would be an easy job to reinstate it as a bedroom though. I would make the master bedroom larger. It's not small by any means but I don't need a large open plan sitting room upstairs and would rather have some of that space in the main bedroom. This is a biggy! I would have put in a different, more straightforward heating system. One that I was able to understand and could get people to work on. It was never installed correctly and no one round here has ever been able to work out how it works, and I have spent lots of money on people coming and doing 'stuff' to it that seems to have compounded the issues. I have a very long thread on the go about my heating nightmare if you have a few hours to spare . I have a central vacuum installed that I never use. Ok, so it didn't cost the earth relatively but I push a cordless Dyson round instead and never use it so it was a waste of money. I wish that I had spent more on the sanitary wear and / or got people in who were better at installing it as there are no end of plumbing jobs still to do here where things packed up not long after they were installed or were never installed properly to start with, and getting people out here to do work is a nightmare, and those that do come can be terrible. At least with many bathrooms I can just use a different one if something breaks . We did spend extra money on the insulation, but whether that has been a success I'm not sure. I haven't really looked into whether the heat losses in this house are different from next door who just have standard insulation. We started off by looking at lots of suppliers for the TF but in the end we went with the supplier of next door's frame as they already had drawn up plans for this house for the previous plot owner and were happy to work with us to redesign the internal layout to match what we wanted. They were always very helpful so I have no regrets there, but I suspect that what we wanted to have done wasn't particularly challenging for them. We sourced different windows as we wanted windows with internal blinds that the TF supplier couldn't supply. I do like those however as I am not a 'curtain' sort of person . Think they are the main things anyway.

This is such an individual thing for sure and one that only you can decide on . In hindsight (it's always great in hindsight!) I wish we had saved money in some areas and spent more in others. I was responsible for the budget and little else initially (well apart from working to keep the money coming in) so I tried to rein in costs where we had gone over elsewhere and some of those things I wish I had just paid the extra for ultimately as the compromise bugs me in places .

It’s also much easier to nail everything down if you are an expert in that field. Many self builders are not which means the contractor always has the upper hand. A contingency fund is essential in my view.

Just to clarify, although I have quoted @ProDave my reply below is to @Ralph This is very true and I suspect has happened in my case. My husband and I planned what we thought would be a house for us to retire in later on so we weren't always as cost conscious as we might have been as we were building a house for us, not for profit. That wasn't a major issue to begin with as my husband wanted to do as much of the work as he could himself for the 'challenge' and self satisfaction, and it would help to keep the costs down. Unfortunately he got sick half way through and I then had to organise for random trades to come and do the remaining work on a piecemeal basis that cost much more than we had budgeted for, and it was all a bit of a nightmare at times. And now I'm on my own in a house that's far too large for me, and will be selling up at some point, possibly now at a loss although I may just avoid that. I'm not saying that this will happen in your case of course but you do have to plan for the unexpected. There will always be costs you don't plan for. I wish we had gone with the 'fixed price' quote we received early on from a builder recommended by our TF supplier that would have taken us to the end of the first fix. It would have meant that the house had been built much quicker, and in hindsight it may have been cheaper too given the events that followed later with my husband's health. And I wish we had scaled back on some of the non essentials now. Some of them are white elephants that I never use! So review your spec and review it again, and then again for good measure. Is there anything in there that isn't essential? Are there things you can retrofit easily later on when you see if you do actually need them? Are there things you are getting overly fixated about that cost more than their eventual value? If the cost of those things is holding you back can you force yourself to compromise so that you can actually break ground? Is holding onto the dream more important than getting on with things in the here and now? Have you had someone else look at your spec and critique it to see if there are certain factors keeping the costs high? Have you asked the builders who gave you quotes what they could suggest to bring the costs down? I don't have much experience of fixed price quotes in the building trade but I do a lot of contract work in my job, and the thing I have learned about fixed price work is that it needs to be based on a very clear outcome, with agreed sign off / quality criteria. There are fixed price quotes that just buy you a capped amount of time and materials effort which is not what you want. For the type of work I do we just go through the change control process if we need something to change post agreement and go cap in hand for more money. When it's your own money there will be a finite amount, and the only person you can go cap in hand to is you. So get a detailed spec in place that very clearly notes all of the things to be delivered, what is to be done / delivered, the materials to be used, what the end result should be and the sign off criteria. This should help to set full expectations on both sides and prevent endless arguments later over what the builder considers to be 'extra'. And ensure that they don't charge you vat either as you will not be able to reclaim it later. You can only reclaim vat for materials purchased in your own name. I wish you the best of luck with your build.

You clearly haven't seen me in action when it comes to DIY! I pull it off the wall half the wall comes off with it . I did tug it a bit and nothing happened. I don't even know how they are fixed on TBH. Glued?

No clue!

Thanks. Quite a few of my rooms are set to frost only as I never go in more than half the house so don't bother heating them. This room is the vestibule that I don't go in either unless to open the front door or collect paper off the printer. I took the frost setting off and nothing happened because the room stat is showing as 18 degrees now although it's much colder so it didn't think it needed to start heating. I raised the desired temperature to 22 degrees and the heating clicked on which once it thinks it's got to 22 degrees will make it 4 degrees hotter than it is in there now I guess Yes I have the central control panel and I'm not sure about the factory reset. What I would like to do is ascertain whether the room stat is actually working though because if not I will need to order another. @PeterW should I try the factory reset to see if the room stat is kaput?

It’s supposed to be the current room temperature but it’s more 7 degrees than 20!

It did use to work but went wrong at around Christmas time. @PeterW does this mean I need a new room stat after all? This is the one you were going to move elsewhere but looks like it may be cream crackered. Maybe it froze to death out there?

This is a weird one too. Room stat says 20 degrees which is BS. The bolometer (or bollockmeter according to @SteamyTea) says 7.4 degrees. Bloody baltic in there so it’s the room stat talking bollocks!

That’s pretty warm! Look at the bedrooms! Now you see why I need a leccy blanket

I’m generally less subtle than that . I find a sledgehammer works better generally if only to make me feel better!

Sooooo! Finally bringing this back to captain sensible land and heating (yeah boring I know!). Electric has been up and down more times than a tart’s knickers today and right on cue the Heat Miser controller has sprung back into life. Clearly it’s the wrong type of snow for an electricity supply which ain’t great when you’re trying to work over VPN and the router goes off whenever the supply cuts out. Grabbed some photos before normal service is resumed and all the settings disappear again. It also might explain why the manifolds upstairs call for heat as it looks like they come on sometimes despite being set to frost. I never go in that half of the house so am not familiar with what happens re the room stats there so wasn’t aware they did that First photo is how things normally look with the controller showing ???? Second and third photos show controller showing proper temperatures and status post a power cut which alerted me to the fact that some upstairs rooms are allegedly heating despite being set to frost (see photo 4) which clearly means they are set incorrectly. I don’t think the upstairs ever gets any heat in any of the rooms just now anyway so despite saying heating they ain’t! One for you @PeterW

Hey, @Nickfromwales and @PeterW dinnae be coming oop the day. It’s fair jeelit ootside but bonny enough tae get the washing oot . I’m fair scunnered wit the snow.

I'm blaming @SteamyTea. It all went downhill when he posted the epilator!

How did he not laugh at that!!! Did you marry an android?

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/other_subjects/180138-wax-hair-removal-a-little-tale-i-found

http://slightlyviral.com/beware-sugarless-gummy-bears-on-amazon-com/

Yep, same here! I have seen a similar review of the er bikini line, but this was better I think

Lol, have you left some of your pubes in there for her as a souvenir?

Depends where you are using it

Aw, is your heating broken too?

There's one up the road from me; Torness. I go there to walk the dogs but haven't noticed them glowing in the dark yet .

If you have any hot wax it may suit her needs better

Yes all the time. Used to do it every time I used it when it got the water to a fairly decent temperature. I used to have to reset it every time I used it. When the boiler engineer came out he said he had 'changed the settings' so it would no longer trip but since he came out the boiler has worked ok so I haven't used it since. Used it every day for about 8 weeks at one point! Ignore this - thought you were asking me - not cuppa boy