recoveringbuilder

I also would be very careful, my kit was ordered without a deposit, I didn’t pay them anything until 10 days before delivery was due of the first part by which time they had been liaising with my architect and engineer, coupled with the fact that you previously weren’t happy about not having a contract I would tread with care.

Thankfully not. We would have killed each other by now! that’s a pity , you haven’t truly experienced a self build until you’ve roughed it in a caravan for a while!

That caravan and awning brings back memories, are you living in it?

Thought I’d give you all an update on this as I never quite finished off the posts that were going on, I had to give up with trying to get some form of compensation from the architect as bc we’re not going to give us our temporary habitation if we were going to insist that they revisited to look at it again so just before lockdown I gave in to enable us to get a sign off of some kind, they won’t sign it all off until the garage is complete. I actually had put the staircase to the back of my mind with everything else that was going on covid wise however it reared it’s ugly head again last week and we’ve been thinking about the best plan of action. I think as @PeterWsuggested some sort of winder staircase might be the answer but wouldn’t be confident enough to try and order one to be made so I’ve contacted a chap who does this sort of thing and he’s planning a visit as soon as he safely can to have a look, he even mentioned that he may be able to use the existing one in some way( don’t know if they can be disassembled) , we shall see!

Ours are doing surprisingly well and we’ve already had some of the snowball turnips and lettuce, had to lift all the turnip as their shaws were overshadowing the beetroot so we have another crop of them in and the beetroot should be harvested before the shaws get too big.All the turnips have been wrapped in wet kitchen roll and put in a bag in the veg drawer of the fridge which is what was advised for storing them.

Seems strange that they don’t want a contract of any kind even as protection for themselves, we only had supply of kit and erection but the contract was signed on ordering, they didn’t want to manufacture a kit which we could then turn round and say we no longer required.

Waiting on @Ferdinand showing pictures of his veg crop?

We had a bed sit over our garage in our last house but it was a double garage, measured around 45sqm iirc , built originally for our son but laterally we did rent it out, don’t think you would have enough space in a single garage though

We were quite lucky in that although we have a lot of clay one of the previous owners of the cottage and land was a very keen gardener and had introduced a lot of good soil to the garden (which ended up being the plot) so we had saved all the good topsoil and managed to make a lot of the new garden and raised beds with it, we did have to buy a couple of ton for the flower border we have made at the back of the house but all in all not too bad.

This lockdown seems to have produced a lot of gardeners, people who have never grown anything before are all trying their hands at growing their own produce and I’m wondering how many of you have done similar? Our “garden “ was just flattened out after the build and left to be revisited when time allowed ,however because we were due a new grandchild in the midst of all this and because we would have to look after our granddaughter when the time came we found ourselves having to self isolate for a fortnight so stocked up with everything we would need in that time and that included a poly tunnel and loads of seed , compost etc. All in all it’s been quite successful and we are now harvesting the first of our produce. We are plagued with rabbits here so we built raised beds and erected small fences around them and now have a good crop of turnip, cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, beetroot to name but a few, unfortunately we got so involved in this that other things (like the garage) have taken a back seat! It has however moved us on garden wise to now make flower borders etc and it’s amazing how when you start one area it all evolves, hopefully by the autumn we will have made a good impression on what was previously a building site so not wasted time and the lettuce are far superior to anything shop bought!

A fortnight before lockdown we had a viewer to our plot we are selling, we agreed a price and the offer came in a few days later, unfortunately lockdown happened and the buyer was put on furlough, he made moves contacting an architect and so forth however last week he withdrew his offer sighting the fact he didn’t know how long it would be before he got back to work and the fact that he’d have to sell his current property to build the new one. I phoned the estate agent to put him in the picture and said I quite understood the situation, why would you spend your savings on a plot when your income was uncertain and you don’t know how long your house is going to take to sell. The agent would have none of it , he said he was of the opinion that there would be a great hunger for houses after this was all over, really can’t see it myself due to the fact there will be a lot of people who don’t get back to their employment due to some places never reopening.

Hi, I believe you must be pretty near us, we built our third house in 2018/2019 although we still have landscaping and driveway to finish. Would be happy to talk to you if there’s anything you feel unsure of. with regards to your 1st fix etc 1st fix is usually the kit erection including doors and windows , ours also included soffit and fascia installation 2nd fix would be internal partitions, insulation, plasterboarding and any flooring which is not concrete 3rd fix or finishing was all other internal joinery work(doors, skirting, staircase, windowsills and wardrobes.

You’re actually right there! I was brought up on a small holding and we had a flock of geese, vicious buggers, I once got a sore peck from the gander when I came home from school and went into the field to look for my mother!

I think what’s really making me uneasy is the fact that two houses within a mile of us (but in an estate) have been broken into during the night, both residents were woken by a noise and one was confronted by a man with an axe, both houses had their door handles and locks removed from outside and this is how they’d gained entry!

This was actually what my hubby suggested!

We don’t have close neighbours, the woman who bought the cottage from us doesn’t live there, it’s lying empty. The next nearest neighbour is a woman in her 80s who has had a lot of illness Recently.

We actually have 4 dogs! BUT I don’t think they’d scare anyone away, they’d bark certainly but I think they’d welcome anyone who came in!

We have never felt the need for security in any of our houses but due to a different social climate now and the fact we are getting older I would really like to have some now. It would need to be something pretty simple to operate as neither of us are very tech minded, I was thinking about RING but hubby looked at it last night and was put off by the fact it appears you have to pay a monthly subscription if you want images stored, any ideas?

I have got lots of little jobs I have accumulated for a scenario such as this however working in retail I will have to be ill before I can do any social distancing and Dave Lewis who is usually very smart about sending emails to inform us of things affecting the business has suddenly gone quiet! I’m most upset about the fact that my daughter is due a much awaited new baby after losing one two years ago and because I can’t social distance myself god knows when I’ll get to see him/her although they only live 10 miles away but being in a supermarket environment then going to visit would be foolhardy.

I think they’re all the same, they take their time to try and justify what they charge you!

I wouldn’t be paying him if the work is not up to BS , hopefully you have kept enough back to cover what you will have to remedy, as for the scaffolding, it would probably be good if you could take the contract but make sure it has been paid up to the point you want to take over. When we parted company with our builders the welfare facility was left behind, we phoned the company to uplift it but they wouldn’t do it because the contract wasn’t with us, it lay unused for weeks with the company coming out every week to empty and clean it, we tried several times to get them to take it away without success. Eventually, fed up with it being there I phoned again and told them if it wasn’t removed they wouldn’t get it at all as the fencing was about to be done and it would be behind the fence, within an hour they picked it up but I do always wonder if they ever got paid for it.

Ours was installed just over a year ago and they had to put in a new pole, we only paid the standard installation fee iirc it was £60, I read somewhere that they get an allowance from somewhere or other for installations to new build properties.

Unfortunately it was the staircase company that discovered the problem and then got on to the architect who in turn contacted BC to ask if they would allow it, the thing is we had a temporary staircase up against the wall for months and everyone was going up and down (builders etc) without any problem. I do feel if it had not been pointed out to BC they may never have noticed considering they haven’t even measured it as it currently is. We were thinking that after sign off we would just move it back to the wall but I get varied opinions on this, some say that’s what to do while others think it may flash up to a surveyor in future should we decide to sell.

IIRC it was about 30mm short at certain steps

I have checked the register as suggested and he is still registered, pictures attached, second architect suggested spiral which I definitely don’t want as I’ve a friend with one which causes problems for getting furniture up and down. Looking back on communication with the staircase firm it seems it is 41.92degrees but it looks and feels much steeper