newhome

Sparks seem to be charging £45 an hour round here these days.

Thanks! There’s a knob that turns in a wall hung cistern to turn the water off and I can’t grab it enough to turn it off with my fingers.

What’s the difference (in purpose) between the one on the left (adjustable wrench) and the one on the right (waterpump pliers)? I need something I can grab something with to turn it.

I struggle to get people here as there is enough work for folk on their doorstep, and some of the ones that have come have either fleeced me or been frankly sh1t!

I hear you! I have the same issue here! I live 8 miles from a small town but sometimes it feels like I’m in Timbuktu!

Probably best to post a new topic in the right sub forum as then you are likely to get a better range of replies. I can see that you’ve done that now ?. You need to to break the work down and try to cost each job separately both in terms of materials and labour, then see where you can / want to do the work to save some cash. I don’t suppose either of your parents are registered disabled? I think there may be some VAT concessions for specific work for a disabled person.

Welcome! You must be in a different part of southern Scotland to me as the weather is nae bad here ?. What would be really helpful is a copy of the current plans and some photos and then people here can get a feel for your project and provide better advice.

Welcome! Best to start a new post in the right sub forum as you are likely to get better replies to something with a specific heading.

We just decided to do all the painting ourselves as it was a good way to save money. One of the easiest jobs to do yourself and well within the capability of most people. It’s a bit of a slog if the house is large but worth the saving if you’re trying to cut costs surely? Plus it’s something you can do as and when time allows since it’s not imperative to have finished the decor before sign off.

Yep. Second hand kitchens can be had for buttons on EBay. One way or the other anything you leave out won’t be eligible for VAT reclaim / zero rating later so a 40k saving will cost you 48k when you come to do it. Our ‘patio’ even had UFH pipes in it (empty of course!), and we had the TF company design the kit so there was a self contained ‘panel’ we could just remove to create one of the doorways later on. The other doorway used the French doors that eventually got moved to the new room opening onto the ‘real’ patio, and internal double doors were put where the French doors had been. In other words it was all designed with that room in mind, but as a later addition.

“Charging authorities must allocate a ‘meaningful proportion’ of levy revenues raised in each neighbourhood back to that neighbourhood. This will ensure that where a neighbourhood experiences a new development, it receives sufficient money to help it manage the resulting impacts on the locality.” Maybe a FOI request to ask what the meaningful proportion should be? 1% (a la @JSHarris‘ example) doesn’t sound very ‘meaningful’!

One thing to consider would be that building it later would cost 20% more as you would have to pay VAT. You would also have to get the building control plans altered to remove the garage presumably? We did something similar here. We wanted to build a breakfast room on the back of the house (full PP was already granted before we bought the plot) but planning wouldn’t allow it unless we submitted a full application from scratch and we didn’t want a long delay. So we put the foundations in during the main build as a ‘patio’ and built it later on.

????!!!!! And welcome. I’m not far from you (relatively).

The inspections are the majority of the cost of these warranties. The actual insurance is with a different insurer and in my case covers £877 of a 2.5k policy. It is the insurer who would pay if there was a claim, not the seller. In any event I’d like to see evidence of a successful claim on one of these policies. Here’s mine.

I'm in the 46.6% ! Body dryer next surely? No. 1 son will likely only care about one thing rising and falling and it won't be the shower head . Body dryer is a must for the full shower experience, the rest is just faff.

That was when he was 12 though ?

Sure is! At least you got your final visit - I didn't even get that and got asked for ridiculous things like the gas safety certificate for the boiler when guy had been out here, seen the electric boiler and even took a photo of it! Just seems to be a box ticking exercise.

And unfortunately it's not unknown for builders to walk away without finishing a job leaving you with not enough money to finish it. That's one of the benefits of employing separate trades in my view as you are containing the scope of the work that each trade is contracted for and only putting a specific amount of money at risk with each job. It may take more organising on your part and you will need to know where one trade ends and the other picks up but there would be plenty of help on here with that. It might all just take a bit longer to build but in the time, cost, quality triangle if cost is the most important thing to you then one of the others needs to give and that may be time plus some tweaking to the spec because no end of time will be able to deliver to a competely unrealistic budget (I'm not saying the OP's is). And from experience watch out for the words 'extras', 'suggestions' etc. and get a quote there and then for the additional work. Some trades seem to quote low to get the job and then start piling on the additional costs from the get go. We realised that pretty early on at the groundworks stage thankfully as every time the builder 'suggested' something in reality he was counting that as an 'extra' and adding on a fee that was way more than we would have agreed to pay. Cost us quite a bit more in the end unfortunately but at least we found out early.

Welcome. Can't help on the advice front I'm afraid as I'm the one generally needing the advice but there are loads of knowledgeable people on here and several up your way too so welcome onboard. As above, pictures always help put things into context and will help those who can advise form a decent picture of what the challenge is. For building materials keep an eye on local ads on Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace. There are always things that come up there and if you only need small amounts (sounds like the outbuilding isn't enormous) you may be able to strike lucky. Just plan ahead and look for what you need early on as there is never what you need at exactly the right time.

Looks great! Amazon sell that (from Germany). This one is only 1.2m but you get the idea. Bendy skirting

How far apart do you need to do it? Sounds like hours of fun

Thanks. I don't have an aerator but I could possibly think of a way of using something that might work. Looks like they sell sandals that strap onto shoes! I'm getting a bone graft to fix a hole in my knee and I will be non weight bearing for a month that will be a complete pain, but there is a 70% chance it will fix the issue so I need to give it a try.

Had another go with the electric raker. Got another ton of thatch out and a lot more moss this time. I can see the earth in places now but that's better than a ton of moss hiding the earth I guess. Something else I remembered whilst I was pushing the rake up and down. I get rabbits on the lawn (lots of new piles of rabbit dung on the lawn since Friday when I cut it - they must have liked that I mowed it!). Does that influence the type of seed I should buy? And when I leave it uncut for a while it's clear that there is quite a lot of 'annual grass' in the lawn as it grow faster than the other grass and looks like this. The nicer looking grass is slow growing and a richer colour.

Thanks. I will get the thatch machine out again and aim to get it fed before I am on crutches and then wait until later to reseed it. I think I possibly did it too late last year which is maybe why the seed didn't germinate.

Yeah I know I still need to seed it. I was thinking of maybe feeding / treating the lawn before, during or after the seeding process. I think I’ll need to sprinkle seed everywhere tbh so more than a patch. Lawn currently looks like this. In fact it looks like there is still a ton of dead thatch in it so maybe I should go over it again with the electric rake? Looks like it needs more work before seeding to me. Can I seed it later in the year? I’m about to have a knee op in early June and can’t see me hopping round worrying about watering and mowing it for about a month after.