fatgus

He's a big old thing... the village's apex predator

I imagine we have less wild beasties here than in NE Scotland… a cat’s about as dangerous as it gets here. Or maybe a rabbit…

Our current main bedroom is the same… bungalow, doors onto patio and no other windows. In the summer we often sleep with the doors open. No intruders yet, but the neighbour’s cat has joined us for the night a few times

Indeed it is 😁 It’s one of the things that keeps life interesting. One of the other things that keeps life interesting! Also the bit I still enjoy in my day job… You’ve very fortunate Gus. What I’ve done has treated me reasonably well but I would dearly love to make a living from something I really enjoyed. I am Good shout. Already done

Understand totally and agree 100%. I’ve been a director for 23 years. Used to love it, briefly loathed it, now mostly a means to an end… enjoying this build project infinitely more, even though we haven’t broken ground yet. We’ve been gradually clearing our site for well over a year… today I was pulling the guts out of an old caravan and putting in my first ever field gate. Now knackered, but looking forward to more of the same tomorrow… a great way to spend the long weekend Gus… Thanks for taking the time to add your thoughts. It’s all informative and interesting stuff, and one of the reasons I frequent this forum

I had to Google that! Not quite as exciting as I imagined 😂 Essentially to make their quotes more competitive. We're sticking with opening. The saving, as you say, is pretty negligible and I just know we'd regret it at some point if we go for fixed.

I think this is the case with most of the surveys we've needed (e.g. bat, otter/vole, arboricultural). In one report, the 'other' house name had been left in 🙄 It can be a bit irritating for sure, but if the price is fair, it's factually correct, delivered on time and the outcome is what we need, I'm not sure it really matters if it's a regurgitation of someone else's report 🤷‍♂️ I might have had a different view if the architect was doing the same, but I don't think they would have had the opportunity with our project What did get my goat: the (swiftly rejected!) quotes for some of the other planning requirements... upwards of £2k for a GIS or a planting plan???

Thanks Gus. That makes a great deal of sense 👍 Bear in mind that the work we’ve done ourselves reduced the burden on the architect. That being said, I think they probably did under-price it and I daresay that if we were to approach them now we would receive a higher quote regardless. I should probably also say that we started this process back in 2022. It was also a very small practice in a small office and at the time I very much doubt the director was charging himself out at £100/hour. They’ve grown nicely over the last few years, which is lovely to see, but again that probably means a current job would be priced accordingly. Ultimately, between them and us we achieved planning approval for exactly the house we want… even if we spent £4k and had zero quality information for later use, I’d be happy. I’m sure there will be things that would have been different if we’d gone for one of the several quotes that were >£40k, but looking at what those companies deliver, with one exception, I fail to see how we would have achieved a better outcome at this point. Also, we did our due diligence… we spoke with a few of their current and past clients, and a construction company they’d worked with, as we did with some of the others on our shortlist (easy to find though local contacts and of course historic planning applications). Feedback was positive. The only negative was, as you alluded to, relatively small issues with construction drawings, but having spoken with the home owner, it was nothing significant. Interestingly, the feedback on one of the larger companies (or at least, larger quotes) was not so good… they gave a pretty good sales pitch, albeit with a touch of over-confidence, but the recent client I spoke to was most unimpressed. You may well be right Gus, and the choice of architect could cost us as we progress through the build, but we didn’t make the choice purely on cost, we enjoyed working with them, the house is exactly what we want, we’re perfectly happy to date and if the construction drawings are lacking, we’ll go elsewhere 🤷🏻‍♂️😁

Very good point. All bar one of ours are SE facing, the other is NE but will only get any sunlight in the very early morning. All quite small windows too.

Thanks Gus… that would seem like good advice. We’ll be looking at this in more depth 👍

No problem at all I’m not sure I follow, sorry Gus… do you think £4k for 1-8 is low or high? And do you think 9-21 should be more than a couple of thousand? It’s actually nearer to £3k, to be fair Based on the other quotes we had, these guys appear very reasonable. It doesn’t bother me one way or the other really, as I’m very happy with what they’d done (and continue to do) but it’s still interesting to hear other people’s take on fees…

Thanks Craig… interesting

Not the first time I’ve heard that…

Extension, but been empty for some years…

Nordan now do supply & fit, at least the Cardiff branch does. That’s crucial for us because of the reduced risk, but also because we can get 5% vat on supply & fit as opposed to 20% on supply only. I might be wrong, but I think Westcoast is the manufacturer and Rawington’s windows are from Guttman?