recoveringbuilder

We had wet dash on our last house, messy job and we wanted it white which it didn’t turn out, more of a dirty white, not as bad as a chap nearby mind, his was pink ! We eventually painted it white which would be about 6 years ago and it’s still looking crisp.

Probably because of the name ? I wanted them in my last house but honestly can’t see the difference once they’re on the wall/floor!

We have never built with an end gain in mind as we have always wanted a new house, the first one we stayed in for 14 years and sold when prices were high so we were lucky enough to get a good return which set us up for the next one, our biggest achievement then was that we had a house we would never have been able to afford buying off the shelf. When we sold the second one we bought a ready made house which we could pay outright for and it had land. The third one was never meant to happen but because we had bought a house so much smaller than our previous one and couldn’t settle for the lack of space we had in a way backed ourselves into a corner because we wouldn’t be able to buy something bigger in our preferred location, we were lucky we had the land ( there must have been some foresight when we bought it) because the only solution was to self build again. I don’t know what this house will be worth but I would hope the choices we made in upgrading finishes etc will see us realise a good profit but since we didn’t pay for the land it will be hard to work out exactly. Once again we are lucky that we are in an area that usually commands decent prices but when I look at some houses recently built by self builders and now on the market I wonder if they are even going to clear their feet because of the area they’re in and the ceiling price for property in that area , I spotted one on the market for under 300k same sq metreage as this but in a less desirable area and wondered what it would have cost the vendor to build . I would be very nervous about buying a plot ( there are some for sale near us , priced from 120-150k) then building a 300sq m house, those of us willing to have a lot of input can keep the build cost down but your average first time self builder could end up paying a total of maybe 600k and I’m not convinced that the property would ever realise this price in this area.

Well done that’s a good return!

Interesting to see what it has cost you with buying the plot, we’ve never had to pay big money for a plot, so if it’s not being too cheeky what is the house valued at?

We used the same architect on our last build with same terms

We had to pay our architect upfront for all the work he did, obtaining detailed planning and building warrant was all paid right at the beginning as soon as we had agreed the design.

Yes definitely an improvement, we had a few problems before with cold spots , downstairs bedroom was one of them that never seemed to get to its required temperature but all sorted now, don’t know about running costs we’ll see how it performs over the winter.

Yes we have the heatmiser and the salus auto balancing actuators and they work fine

Yes I sent recorded delivery and they were sent back recorded delivery too.

Yes you get them all returned

Good luck! Whereabouts are you?

No problems with them, all flat and appear to be hard wearing as they have 4 dogs regularly tramping over them!

Depends on your tiler, we have them in the kitchen and the tiler made a really good job of staggering them, most visitors think they are wood

You won’t get cladding, bricks or slates/tiles as part of the timber frame package

You don’t need this, I have twice split a title and have never been asked for water connection point

Depends on the size of house your intending to build and if it’s a bungalow, two storey or other. I do have a spreadsheet but don’t know that it would assist you, personally we disregarded both these companies and went with Claymore.

I think this looks really smart and as has been said before you are not going to be sitting looking at it, tbh I’d be pretty p**d off if I was the roofer who has made such a good job being asked to change it.

We did all the drainage and treatment plant installation, dug trenches for and laid water pipes, painting and decorating and generally keeping the site tidy. Tiling and wooden floors were laid at reduced rates by guys we’d used previously, biggest savings were really made with us sourcing all materials.We’d has a turnkey price previous to starting and it was £100k more than we spent and not to such high spec.

Welcome! The problem with diy is; it’s a lonely job, everything takes much longer than you think it’s going to and you end up getting fed up with it. The house we built before this current one was 385m2 and really much too large for a couple with a grown up son , we had a studio flat above the integrated garage for son so the two of us rattled about it for 8 years before finally deciding to sell. My hubby (and myself) and son in law worked every spare minute they had ( as well as working full time) for 18 months. We had a couple of joiners and a couple of brickies and an electrician and everything else was self built, we spent New Year’s Eve laying underfloor heating pipes and spent 2 winters in a caravan. Would we go this way again? Never! We built the current house with builders although we did do a lot of incidental work and sourcing of materials and not everything went smoothly but we managed to get out of the caravan and into the house within 6 months (although we’re still doing garage and drive on our own and it’s been done to quite a high spec for£1k per metre.

We have hidden lighting in wardrobes done with led tape lights, you buy the roll and cut to length

We did the same, no piece of wood was sacrificed to the skip, advertised on gumtree offcuts of kingspan insulation (we had a lot due to the cathedral ceiling) and it was all picked up by various people doing various projects. Biggest problem was the builders bringing stuff from other jobs that had no skips, they even left us with a fridge freezer from somewhere which had I seen it arriving it wouldn’t have been there but we only had 2 skips during the whole build.

So do you reckon I should be using eco mode? I have always avoided using it because of the length of time it takes!

I’ve been wondering about this too although not to the extent of the op, we are with bulb energy , cheapest tariff for this area however I’m currently paying £76 per month and it still doesn’t seem to be enough. There’s only two of us in the house, I use the dishwasher every second day on a quick wash (45mins) and the washing machine about twice a week on a 30 deg wash, no electric showers, TVs on a good proportion of the day as I tend to put it in and forget about it, I do boil the kettle a lot as I’m a coffee addict, light in the lounge for an hour or so at night and cabinet lighting in kitchen the same but they’re all led. Electric oven maybe twice a week and of course the pellet stove uses electric to fire up , just can’t see where it’s all going!

I’m sure someone who knows more about this than me will be along shortly but all I can comment is; when we built our first house it was done with scotcem tiles , 14 years and never a broken tile, we sold up and built next door and the people who bought from us put a trampoline in the garden for the grandkids, big wind, trampoline hit the roof and broke several tiles, scotcem are no longer in business so they had to get the nearest thing which wouldn’t interlock with the originals and this is what theirs looked like, so I’m guessing it’s to do with that.