recoveringbuilder

I would get the land into your name before starting, it might have been an idea to do this before planning was granted as it would not have been worth as much as just a piece of garden as it now is with planning on it however this said our first plot came from my mother in law and there was no question about capital gains but we did pay a nominal amount for it. Personally I’d get the flat sold, I like to know I have money in the bank to get going, when we built our second house we sold the other one first and lived on site, we didn’t have enough to complete the house but when we got to the stage where we needed more funds we just applied for a normal mortgage and the bank sent out a surveyor to value the work already done and of course it was worth a lot more even in its unfinished state than we were asking for, good luck with your build!

I have now been waiting a couple of months for bt who keep giving me dates that come and go without anything happening, the last contact was from their engineers who came on site and said the local authorities wouldn’t let them put up traffic lights as the road is too narrow so they asked if it would be ok with us to do it on Saturday (today) we agreed on this but today I have a text from them saying due to adverse weather conditions it will be 3 weeks until next update! There’s a light breeze today that’s all!

Sounds about right for the building trade, should have employed polish workers that’s my conclusion !

That’s what gets me they always get pregnant midway, do you think it’s a ploy on the wife’s part to try and get it finished quicker?!

I’ve been a carer and know about all the difficulties being disabled brings but I really can’t see the logic in ramps being a must in private one off builds , we had to fit a wide door on our downstairs bathroom in our last build for wheelchair access but the bedrooms were upstairs so should anyone disabled want to buy our house in future they would have had to have a stairlift fitted anyway.

I would think you’ll need to have a path for sign off, I don’t know about a wooden ramp if that would be acceptable, I remember our last build we had made a mistake with the type of door we’d bought and building control came out and said it wouldn’t do, we had visions of having to rip it out and buy another but my hubby built the ramp right up to the threshold on the outside and made a small concrete ramp inside which we later removed and that was sufficient to pass. We also had to have a hard standing from a car to the ramp and a path to bin storage.

Yes I ended up using the dishwasher all the time, it was a granite work surface and was forever needing polished with splashes , just not practical

I wouldn’t put the sink in the island, we did that in our last house and hated it

Been very blowy here, luckily I moved my dogs into my neighbours kennel block at the weekend because their usual accommodation has moved itself about 6 feet , oh and the back of 3 this afternoon the awning on the caravan took off so it was a dash in driving rain and wind to rescue washing machine, tumble dryer and everything else that was in there before it all disappeared,all this while babysitting a two year old ?

Well we were told water had to come in a straight line not go round corners, electricity will need to come into your consumer unit and telephone into where you’re going to have your main socket

I managed to track down the tiler we used in our last build and he is now on board, through the trade account I got fast set flexible adhesive for £10.95 a 20kg bag(plus vat)

I don’t know about getting neighbours on side, some people will always gripe about things but I do know that unless they have a very valid reason to complain the council won’t listen to them. When we applied for ours 4or5 of the neighbours objected but the council addressed all of the complaints and at the end of the day none of them were valid and our permission came through, good luck

As the title says we’re getting into the nitty gritty now with so many things to make final decisions on. Kitchen is all finalised, David l Douglas have been fantastic so far, we’ve had four visits to them and two visits from their project manager to the site, we’ve got samples of sink, door handles, worktop and paint colour and their service so far cannot be faulted. We decided to source our own range and fridge freezer and had to send them a link to the exact model so everything is in place for October 1st. Elsewhere the work continues, however there are always little niggles that occur when you employ people to do jobs that you previously did yourself and they don’t seem to work in any order, they do a bit of this then move on to something else without completely finishing anything, they talk about doing something which you think means they’ll do it now but a few days go by and it doesn’t happen. We go along for a week or so quite happy then you notice something that’s not quite right and you have to go back to being not quite so nice to them to get it done properly. The tiler who wanted ready mix adhesive is no more and after a lot of detective work I managed to track down the tiler we had in 2007 for our last build and have brought him on board. You may be wondering why I am sourcing the trades of tiler, kitchen and plumber but this was the agreement with the builder as we wanted some control over some things and it has turned out to be the best way as we can dictate when certain things will happen and they must be ready for that to happen. So this morning I’m meaning to go pick light fittings but it’s a dreich morning and I feel it may not physically happen, maybe online? Oh and by the way I am fed up of ordering things online, getting an order confirmation but they never send an invoice, I spent last night going through all my online orders and checking invoices then emailing the offenders for invoices, ho hum!

We got our plumber through my builder and fortunately he’s turned out more or less ok , very good at his job not so good on quantities but someone else we got through it was hopeless and had to go, interestingly enough though the plumber told us they are not rated and just pay to go on the site !

Just read your whole blog as it’s of particular interest to me since we are planning in the future (when we eventually get our two other plots sold) to build a holiday let as an income for retirement, would be interested in knowing how many weeks of the year you get bookings for and wish you all the best.

Ok so I got a tiler on board, have a ton of tiles waiting to be laid and various bags of adhesive and grout, I got a trade account with walls and floors and checked with the tiler if the price I was paying for the adhesive seemed reasonable, yes says he , then tonight he phoned wanting tubs of ready mixed adhesive, told him it was all here now and I ain’t buying any more, he’s not wanting to use the bags, says it won’t do! Anyone anything to say re ready mix v bags?

I still feel the same but we’re on countdown now so I will stick it out!

Nothing wrong with living in a caravan ? I could sell you a couple of plots too!

@vivienzfantastic I have to get one tomorrow eventually persuaded hubby that I really need to get up there so hopefully my branch will have one

It depends where in Scotland you are , we were not in an area that we could get a grant and that is why as a last resort I had to make an official complaint about the £25k quote they gave us, luckily I was successful and got it down to under a fifth of the price!

@vivienzdon’t know if it was you or someone else that said you could get a cheap temporary staircase from howdens for £120?

I don’t see why not after all you could go and buy second hand ones and fit them, at least with your own ones you know they’re good

The last two weeks have been very productive! The rendering is done and the scaffold gone.The pellet stove and thermal store have been installed as far as they can be for now and the plasterboard work is coming to an end. We had to pay a visit to David L Douglas last week to finalise the kitchen- colour, door styles, worktop, handles, sink etc they are very thorough in getting it just right. The plasterer will be in tomorrow and my kitchen and utility floor tiles arrived yesterday. After my previous meltdown things seem to be on the level again, for now! The budget has had to have a few tweaks but nothing too major. A visit from SP energy networks project manager last week revealed the power won’t be with us until October 22nd( they’ll start the digging then but he has assured me we will have power by the end of that week) bit disappointed in that but on the other hand we should be finished and ready to move in by then. So this weekend we will be digging drains to cope with the run off from the field up the hill from us and getting the house drains in, definitely onwards and upwreards

Sorry to but in but I’ve always found taking on trades at a daily rate is not recommended, after having to sack our joiners on our last house we took new ones on on a daily rate and as we couldn’t be there all the time things seemed to take an awful long time until we said we couldn’t keep paying that way we’d need a price to finish the job, after that they went at a rate of noughts!