recoveringbuilder

We’re having a wall built in the garden so I phoned up buildbase with a list of materials needed, dealt with them all through the house build and still have our account. Just got the prices through today; £9.50 a 25kg bag of cement and £101 for a tonne of building sand ex vat! The manager I spoke to informed me she is leaving next week and going to another bm so I’m wondering if the prices have really risen that much or if she’s trying to get new customers for her new merchant, certainly won’t be buying at that price!

As an aside to this, when the project manager came out to see us prior to starting the job and we explained to him about what had happened he said this is what they do, produce a large quote and if you’re daft enough to pay it that’s great for them but you should always challenge it. He also was extremely helpful in putting in the ducting for water and telephone at the same time as he did the road crossing.

If he is not vat registered and you get him to provide the materials I doubt you will be able to reclaim the vat on them, normally what would happen is (if he was vat registered) he would bill you for supply and fit and zero rate it to you. I would imagine the best plan would be for you to have an invoice for the materials in your name, if he buys them and he’s not registered he cannot reclaim the vat. The other thing is, are you building the two houses to sell? I don’t think you can reclaim vat if that is the case.

Welcome, are you planning on building both houses?

I had tilt and turn windows in my first house, casement on my second and now have side hung , this was something I never gave a lot of thought to but if I did it again I’d go back to casement. My problem is a couple of cats that I can’t let out because of the proximity of the road and I find it impossible to open the side hung windows enough to let air in but also keep cats from escaping, wouldn’t have had this problem with the casement and the ones we had from quick slide could also be tilted for cleaning.

We were supposed to put in a standpipe just after the boundary box for use during the build and the pipe going into the house was our responsibility although they wanted to check we had run the pipe to the house properly (depth and no sudden turns) as it happened it took so long to get the supply the house was built and we had used neighbours water supply, they did charge us £200 for building water which I should have reclaimed but couldn’t be bothered by that time!

I think we were successful in eventually getting the cost reduced because of several factors and also the fact that we just wouldn’t accept their quote. You’re right enough about the electricity act and I quoted this to them along with excerpts taken from their website saying they are constantly upgrading the system to cope with demand and supplying connections to householders at affordable prices. I just kept at them although I think on our side was the fact that there is a piece of land next to us which has planning for 5 houses, although they originally said that we would have to pay the full amount and we POSSIBLY would get a refund if there were other requests for connections within a certain amount of time. The fact that the plots next to us were (and still are) on the market for ridiculous prices made us uneasy about them selling within the allotted time and therefore we would have ended up paying for the work to be done and never getting any refund.We were also fortunate in that the pole in our land had no way leave so we threatened them with requesting it’s removal. I believe these factors swayed it for us , either that or they just got fed up listening to my complaints!

I have re covered a few items in my time even a sofa and two chairs but it really depends on the shape as to whether or not you can make a decent job of it, I have a large awkward shaped statement chair which I was intending to recover during lockdown but the shape is causing me problems which I haven’t been able to work out just yet.

Not sure what it is, at first I thought it was nepeta but on closer inspection the leaves are wrong

Don’t know anything about self build mortgages as it’s a long time since I have had one but the one thing that is striking me is that you have not installed the windows so the building is not wind and watertight which I would expect is one of the stages. I also am wondering if the fact you’ve currently spent more than the building is being valued at has something to do with it, as I say I know nothing about mortgages but it’s just what I am picking up on, I’m sure someone who knows about these things will be along shortly.

Don’t know what age you are but would it be possible to draw down some of your pension? Not ideal I know but if you’re determined to see the renovations through it would be one way of getting the necessary funds.

Very hard to estimate, we never asked for a quote before starting mainly because we had a couple of plots half a mile up the road from where we were building and we had asked for a quote for them prior to marketing and were given a figure of £2500 so we went on that figure since we were in the same area and much the same situation being that there was a pole on the land in both cases, imagine our horror when we eventually got the quote and it came in at £25,000! When we queried it it turned out that there was no capacity in the line and they would have to bring a new line in from 283m away. It’s a long story previously documented but after a lot of effort we got it reduced to £4,500 but it just goes to show you never to assume anything!

Surprised it wasn’t mentioned on your floor plans, our floor plan detailed everything that was to be incorporated in the build. On our last build the builder tried to charge us extra for quoins on all the corners which he said he had been unaware of but referring him back to the plan they were clearly marked so he had to back down on the extra charge.

+1 , they came to site , told us where they wanted it and supplied cable , ducting and even the rope to pull it through.

Rabbits! I put a fence round the raised beds as we are plagued with rabbits here but the little blighters found a way in! I cropped all the broccoli and carrots at the weekend and froze them . Beautiful big cucumber in the poly tunnel, tomatoes not ready yet but I agree with you on the weather, we had to move all our flower tubs into the garage on Saturday night to protect them from the wind , it’s more like autumn than summer!

I’m intrigued as to what this ‘hoggin’ is- looked it up but I’m sure it can’t be what the definition of hogging is??

For £7.5k you’d be looking at a bespoke oak staircase with glass or other fancy balustrade! You can buy a staircase from howdens ( softwood and mdf) for £120 or thereabouts,

Welcome to the world of self build! you will have plenty of time for research while you await your planning, make the most of it!

Do you really want your master bedroom downstairs when you have young children? open plan kitchen dining living room is great but do you not want a more formal lounge for visitors? what about a playroom downstairs so that when you’re in the main living areas you can keep an eye on the children? Just a few thoughts I would have if I had young children.

It’s possible that he is not set up to do a full house build, we know a lot of good tradesmen who we would get to do smaller jobs but who would readily admit they wouldn’t take on a big project. The builder we used did all the take offs himself from our plans without a qs and he was very accurate, company we’d first contacted did use a qs and the price rocketed. Our son in law is a qs but although we asked him to do the last house we built we didn’t ask him this time.

Don’t know how successful you’d be finding a lender for a prefab house, there are a few in our area and when any of them have been on the market they have been advertised as cash buyers only.

£250 we paid

When we were getting ready to start this journey we initially were going to get a turnkey build. A local company quoted for it and we were handed the quote along with the QS paperwork, the quote came in at £100k over the amount of finance we had available and that was not including any landscaping, driveway or garage and was only allowing £8k for a kitchen but it didn’t take long to discover that the prices the qs was quoting for materials were way above what we knew we could get them for. We couldn’t have paid his price so we had no option but to go it alone, (it probably helped that we had done it twice before ) We were fortunate that we found a builder who was willing to work on a labour only basis for the majority of the big stuff. I spent all my spare time (I was working 3 days a week and babysitting a 4 year old and a 2 year old two days a week) sourcing materials and organising deliveries and checking things were happening when they should, it took a lot of time and as the money started going out it was very stressful, don’t know how many sheets of paper with calculations I had and it made me into someone I didn’t recognise as I had never been a confrontational person but quickly discovered I would need to be to get things done! We did save that £100k and ended up with a better spec house than we would have had if we’d gone with the first company, nobody is going to look after your money the way you would yourself!

So are you not intending to brick or block up the kit which is normal in Scotland?

We had the opposite problem, the loft hatches supplied with the kit were too large for where I wanted them, joiners wanted to put them in the bedrooms but I didn’t want the ceiling spoiled with a hatch, I eventually got my way and had them in the dressing rooms, he made them from oak we had on site and insulated the back