recoveringbuilder

We put ours out to tender with a local firm I’d met at the Homebuilding show , he had assured me he could make our kit cheaper than the TF companies when the quote came back he was more expensive and was overall £100k more than we had to spend so it was a non starter, we sat and went over the quote and quickly realised we could source the materials a lot cheaper than he was quoting so he was obviously having a good markup on materials. we decided then we would get another builder to quote on labour only and we would source all materials, it wasn’t without it’s problems but in the end we brought it in on budget.

Even although he’s an architect I’d check the head height, ours made a total balls up of our staircase which I’m never going to be happy with and will have to look at again once we’ve been signed off

I had a range in my last self build, went to eye level and a hob in the cottage which I hated so now back to a range again, both have been belling, last one was still in excellent order when I left it after 9 years so hopefully this one will be as good

Welcome, what kind of projects are you planning, plenty of knowledgeable people on here so get asking

That’s a good amount of paving, that will be one of our next jobs, hubby has holidays in June so will be doing it then around 200m2, luckily I cannot get holidays at the same time so won’t be labouring!

Jeezo I missed out there, never crossed my mind to get the cats involved in the build!

If you get in touch with a few of the builders merchants and tell them you are doing a build they will quote for you. We did this then the rep from buildbase came out to see us, although their quote hadn’t been the cheapest once he had visited they set us up a self build account and they beat all the other companies we’d contacted, they even managed to give us the best price on our sewage treatment plant.

I agree the ramp thing is rubbish when you’re building a house for yourselves, if we needed a ramp we would build it but we also would have to make a lot of other adjustments if either of us ended up in a wheelchair, we’d never get upstairs for a start with the position of the staircase there’s no way you could fit a stairlift, kitchen units would be too high etc etc etc Should we decide to sell the house I very much doubt anyone disabled would be interested in it and if they were they would have to make all these changes. We had two goes at our ramp in our last house, first one BC wouldn’t accept, we actually had a disabled viewer when we put it on the market but it was clear for them to see that although they could get into the house they couldn’t have lived in it without major adjustments, hopefully our bricking will be along this week to build the ramp!

Did you honestly get signed off with this ramp?? Wouldn’t happen up here!

Garden office made from the left overs of the black ‘pallet house ‘ yes pallets can come in handy, we too have pallet steps! Hopefully for not much longer, but all joking aside if I was ever going to do it again (maybe in a couple of years ?!)I’d definitely look at these modular homes , looked lovely and the price seemed fair

Well! Quite fancy one of those modular homes!

Both things I just said tonight but at least they’re still together, and exactly what I was thinking about the beautiful view, maybe won’t be so beautiful once all the rest of the houses are there. would have liked to see the young couple finishing though but maybe we’ll get to see it at the end

Hubby and I just looked at each other when we heard the £60k budget! His father was an architect surely he knew it would never do, I must admit to googling hempcrete it seemed interesting. Then at the end they said it had cost between 200-300k that’s a big variant, I think if you started with such a small budget you would have a better idea of how much it had really cost unless the parents were just throwing money at them willy nilly

We had a smart meter fitted when the connection was made , I had said I didn’t want one but they fitted it anyway! But we had no phone at the time so how did that work?

We opened our howdens account in 2006 when we did our last self build, we let 3 people get a kitchen since then and have had a few bits and bobs but nothing major we get an occasional phone call but not harassed but I believe their prices are less to regular buyers

Yes, we’ve had the council tax people sniffing around, told them we weren’t finished and she said she had driven past and it looked occupied, of course all our furniture is here to save on storage costs and curtains up to deter break ins, we finally got the digger back in today to cover up remaining drains and level out the site so I’m going to buy the decking and slabs etc(for paths and steps) then let them come out and once that’s done make our reclaim

I had a similar bath to this in my last house also acrylic, it looked as good as new when we left it 8 years later

I haven’t quite decided on my decking supplier yet, I do like the TekTimber one but as we are now trying to get outside finished off as cheaply as possible I’m wondering about it, hubby would just do timber decking but I feel it would be a shame not to finish off as well as we possibly can, I’ve found a company who are a good bit cheaper but they only seem to do the hollow boards , has anyone gone with them or does anyone have a reason why not to use them?

You can get other companies to do the contestible work but connections need to be made by the DNO you will be able to do the digger work yourselves if that’s what you want to do personally we could not find another company who were authorised to do the contestable work as they were not interested in such a small job

Was just working this out, you’d need 3 of these boards to do a sq m so £48 , the TekTimber timber classic one works out at £46.75 a sq m , think these diy stores try to confuse you selling per board

When we sold our first house it was in the middle of the land that belonged to us so we were splitting it up and keeping land to both the left and right of it, we measured everything out very carefully and with the help of our son in law who is a QS we plotted it on to the plan, imagine our surprise when our solicitor arrived one Sunday at teatime to check that we had measured correctly! She definitely didn’t want any comeback

We tussled with the idea of off grid when we were presented with a quote of £25k for an electric connection, hubby made a lot of calls about various options but all were going to be expensive options to install and none were going to have the convenience of a grid connection. After living in a caravan for 6 months with the electricity supply coming from our neighbours garage which meant if we put the kettle on we had to turn off the water heater etc in case we overloaded the circuit it became very clear we couldn’t have lived off grid. To me electricity is one of your basic needs,

Well done so far , love it! A man after my own heart!

I wouldn’t be having a solicitor apply for planning, I know of a couple near here who had a nursery/garden centre and they got their solicitor to make an application for planning on the ground, straight away refused! they sold up and the new owners got planning for a whole new culdesac of houses, anything that is not straightforward is better handled by someone who has good experience of planning policies

Yes a shame for the young chap who’s partner left but you need to be made of strong stuff to survive a self build, I do always wonder how these staircases pass building control and I think they may live to regret it once they have wee ones running around