recoveringbuilder

Sorry forgot about your deposit, it’ll really all depend on what you are looking to borrow, personally I think I’d still go for a slightly smaller house, there is nothing worse than the stress of not knowing if you have enough money to finish and having to compromise on materials

I think you’d need to have planning permission before you approached lenders about a mortgage unless you were just enquiring about the probability of obtaining a mortgage, lenders would want to see what you were meaning to build.I also think 250m2 is quite a big house for a first self build in which you need funding, we built our first one of 168m2 on a full mortgage and then moved up to a larger one once we had a good bit of equity, just a thought ?

It’s a running metre, so if you were buying say a plank of wood it would be priced at x amount per linear metre and I suspect you were at the Homebuilding show in secc, I was there too!

Hi , architect fees seem to vary wildly as I’ve seen on this forum, personally we paid £2.5k for our drawings and for him putting in the planning application, these drawings did pp and building control and IIRC we paid around another £1k for the SE but I think some on here have paid a lot more,

Definitely agree with that @scottishjohn, in our last build we got into a situation and had to dispense with the services of our main builder, suddenly we had half a house and were desperate to get it to w&w so employed a joiner on an hourly rate- bad idea he totally took the p , after we got to that stage we told him we could no longer pay him that way and that if he wanted the rest of the work he’d have to give us a price for the job, he wasn’t long getting the rest done! as for @selfbuildaberdeen if you are confident in doing the work you’ve mentioned just ask for a quote for the work you do want done, we employed our builders on a labour only basis and they knew from the outset that we would be doing ourselves or employing someone else to do certain things and they were fine with that, funnily enough when we started pricing up what we needed doing I had guesstimated prices for each thing and I was pleasantly surprised when their quote came back within the guesstimate!

How long is a piece of string? decorating quite doable although gets pretty boring, depends how many doors etc need doing but we wouldn’t have considered doing this as it’s tricky to get them just right, skirting and facing too can look crap if they’re out a bit, size of kitchen/ utility will command price but quite doable as well as bathroom, I would imagine you’d want to supply your own tiles to choose what you want and get best price, can be a long job to get it right though landscaping etc quite doable but again you can’t just put a price on it as depends on size and spec yo would need to get quotes for all this work then take away what you think you can do

Ours is like this: the corian is formed as a splash back and window sill, you don’t get splashes on your window which we did in our last house which had the worktop just under the window sill

Never had any problems with any of these delivery companies even although we are still addressed at the cottage next door, they’ all regular drivers and know where we are but UPS they are a different matter altogether!

Thanks @lizziethat would be good if you could let me have their details, we’ve only had a few days of sunshine so far but I can imagine what it will be like during summer!

Hi @lizzie hope you don’t mind me asking more questions about this, did you get a firm to do it and was it expensive? We’ve got the same problem as @Alexlarge cathedral window south facing and a lot of heat coming through

Ours is about 70m2.bigger than your intending but as a rough guide it cost us around 115k to get up to wind and watertight. some banks won’t look at giving you a mortgage once you’ve started, we approached our bank for a very small amount to tide us over while we awaited some cash coming in but because we were near the end but not signed off they wouldn’t look at it, said they’d give us it once completion certificate was issued

Welcome! As the collective will probably say we love to see plans , exciting times good luck!

Yes definitely need to concrete it in , I had a posh brabanita one, cost a fortune, wind caught it and off it went, so looking forward to putting in three washing poles and having a proper washing line, if hubby ever gets round to it?

Ours came in at £1000m2 We started off with a quote for the timber frame which included everything we needed for wind and water tight and all joinery materials including screws nails etc. we then got the quote for erection we went from there to a small building firm who quoted for (on a labour only basis) foundations, drains, block work, roughing and finishing joinery, electrical, rendering, roofing and scaffolding we supplied all materials and I shopped around non stop for the best prices, in fact most of my days were taken up sourcing materials we got the plumber and tiler and a painter to do the high cathedral ceiling and we also provided the installation of ufh and pellet stove/thermal store hubby ended up doing the drains and water treatment plant and we also supplied the groundwork team.near the end the builders left site and we had to get another joiner in and hubby took time off work to assist him, we also paid nearly £6k for services we still have steps, ramp and driveway to do but this is included in the cost already stated and hubby will be doing most of this I don’t believe we have scrimped on anything, all finishing are hardwood and we have a bespoke kitchen so we could have substantially reduced the cost without these, the house is 268m2 one and a half storey , IMO it’s down to a lot of research when sourcing. Our last self build was stick built 385m2 , hubby and SIL did A LOT of the work on that one but it was extremely hard to keep up with the finances with having to buy everything which is why we went with a TF kit this time, you know what you’re getting and what you still have to buy!

Don’t know whereabouts in Scotland you are but the Homebuilding and renovating show is on this weekend at the secc IIRC there were a few at last years show

Sorry to hijack the thread but can I ask @JSHarris about your reflective film, unfortunately we omitted to realise that there would be so much solar gain from the big south facing cathedral window and although summer has still to come to Scotland, the few days we have had of sunshine have made the room this window is in very hot! I was looking at having shutters made but a quote of £10k has put paid to this, can you tell me about this film and approximate cost please

Wish I’d found this thread at the beginning, funnily enough it wasn’t any of the building terms I had trouble with , it was the : swmbo and imho ? took me ages of re reading to work out what the hell you were all talking about!

I would agree with you, our joiners wanted it all painted before the finishing was done and the tiling and this was all done before the kitchen was fitted

I would be wanting a breakdown on the different stages and costs, the builders we employed on a labour only basis gave us a breakdown on different stages; eg foundations, drains Blockwork , render, roofing joinery, plasterboard plastering and so on this way we paid them each stage as it was completed otherwise how would you know what you were paying them / for what?

Welcome, I’m no expert on this but can only tell you from my experience, we have an acre of land which we obtained planning for two dwellings on the one application, we are now selling these separately without having to separate them in planning terms if you get what I mean, there is also a field next to us with planning for 5 houses which all went through on one application which is being marketed as 5 separate plots, I imagine you would pay 5 times at the application stage,ie; 5x £401 or whatever the price is per unit, So I would imagine you will just have to split the titles of each unit

We have them, one in lounge and 1 in dining room but with the cathedral ceiling and mezzanine sitting area we can hear them wherever we sit, very easily installed along with the downlights, glad I got them

I have great admiration for you self building at your age, we were 32 when we built our first one and the reason for doing it was to provide a good home for our children who were 6 and 10 at the time and we had moved around quite a bit in rental property. We could never have afforded to buy anything like what we built and we kept it for 14 years until the family had grown up, I don’t know where the idea came from originally but I am so glad we did it and have done it twice more, my own family now in their 30s would never attempt what we did!

Personally I’d swap around the position of the downstairs wc/ mud room/ utility so that you’re coming in to the mud room first, I’d also want the playroom shut off somehow so that you have a tidy lounge for visitors, I know you’re having a seating area upstairs but with young children in bed at a reasonable time you would not want to be hosting guests outside their bedrooms, not sure about the positioning of the staircase you’d need to check out the headroom at that part of the house, that is just a thought since we had problems with this and that was with an architect drawing the plans!

This doesn’t look too bad tbh, it has obviously just been cut and it will always be this colour immediately after cutting, won’t take long to green up again, we have a paddock which was just cut last night and looks like this but by Monday it will be green again, I would pick the flattest part for your marquee which will have a floor in it anyway and there will be temporary paths laid to it for the guests walking on, any hollows could be filled with some topsoil and seeded as long as you keep it watered.

@newhomewe will end up once the drive is done at £1000m2 but this is not including the plot which we were lucky to get for very little being part of the land belonging the cottage, we could have come in at less if I had not insisted on an expensive kitchen and if we hadn’t gone with the pellet stove but we wanted these things, we could also have cut costs on lighting but decided it may as well be done at the time of building rather than go back to it somewhere down the line