Crofter

I've got two exposed beams in the bedroom, and I'd like to use these as the mounting points for the lights in that room. Problem is, the beams are only 44mm wide. So I think I will struggle to find a spotlight design that is narrow enough to mount to that, without it sticking out at the sides, which would obviously look a bit ugly. The drastic solution is to buy more timber and double up each beam- this would need to be glued and clamped to avoid leaving fixings on show. 88mm is still pretty narrow, but should allow me to mount a small spot. The other option is to hunt down light fittings that can work with the 44mm beam as-is. Or fix something to the side of the beam- but I'm not sure if that would look a bit untidy? Or, alternatively, forget the whole idea and use those shallow LED fittings that @Stones has used, and then they could be mounted in the slopes of the vaulted ceiling. That could be a tricky one, though, because one side is already plasterboarded, with only a 25mm void behind, so getting wires to the right places would be... challenging.

Hi and welcome to BuildHub! Timber frame and either wood or steel cladding will give you a very cost effective and DIY-friendly build route. Just depends on what the planners think of these materials, and of course you will need a building warrant. If you would like to start a blog to share your project, just message one of the admins ( @TerryE, @PeterW, @recoveringacademic) and they can set you up with that.

Useful thread- I'm also at the stage of shopping for doors and linings. My decision is, I think, primed MDF arcs/skirts, and softwood linings. All to be painted white. It's going to work out far, far cheaper, and if everything matches it will look good. Shame that Wickes don't just drop the prices on their doors... I don't need any three the same! I've assumed that MDF linings would be insufficiently stiff to really do the job... but maybe that's just prejudice. Not liking the prospect of everything shrinking, I have to say. Is there an optimum time/method for storing the wood to avoid this? I could buy it in just now and just stack it up in a corner somewhere, if that helps.

Aren't you supposed to treat bales with a borax fire retardent? Or maybe I'm thinking of sheep's wool.

That 'Barnhause' design looks familiar, I think I might have read about it a few months ago. Some nice ideas in there (steel cladding!) but I wonder what you get for £41k- from the article, it sounds as though it may be a bare shell lacking insulation etc. There are some pricey features too, though, notably those huge and presumably bespoke gable windows. Fitting out to a habitable, and building regs compliant, standard is a huge portion of the total cost. See @JSHarris's figures comparing the cost of a wind and watertight shell and the total finished cost. Thanks for the kind comments on my own project. It's become a bit of a labour of love, but being so small has meant that progress has been fairly steady. It was tempting to go bigger- I could probably have doubled the size for around £10k- but working on my own I think I would have got too bogged down by the scale. Maybe the next one...

Hi Daniel, welcome to the forum. I'll echo what the others have said about your target budget being highly ambitious. Does it include site prep and services? A quick summary of my own build: As Dave says, it's legally a 'portable building' rather than a house. This has the advantage of making it exempt from any building regs which makes the DIY approach to design and build much less scary. It also opens the door to various unusual construction methods or features, and would allow you to skimp on things like insulation, activity space, disabled access, airtightness testing, etc. Most of these things are in the regs for very good reasons though- so apart from not doing a formal airtightness test, and not having a disabled access ramp, I'm not aware of having cut any corners. The downsides, however, are significant. To stay within the definition, the house cannot be more than 6x18m, and the ceiling can be no more than 10ft high. It has to be capable of being built in either one or two modules that can be lifted, craned, towed, etc. So therefore you cannot have a slab foundation- you must have a suspended floor. It has to be a bungalow (unless you are only 3ft tall). There is no completion certificate, so no VAT reclaim, and probably no chance of getting a conventional mortgage secured on the property. Indeed, as movable property the kind of loan you would be looking at would be more like you would have for a car, boat, etc. In effect this will have a substantial impact on the eventual market value. I was in an unusual position where all these factors were bearable. I did not need finance from a bank, my site suited a building on piers, and as a second home I wasn't going to be eligible for VAT reclaim anyway. My plans for the future do not involve selling the house, and I wanted to do all of the work myself. My total budget comes to a little under £40k, which includes high-than-average site prep costs. I had to do a lot of breaking out of rock to build up an access, had to import several loads of stone at eyewatering prices (you're probably not as far from your nearest quarry as I am), and spent more than average on the sewerage system, due to ground conditions and usage pattern. Add in the other services and associated fees (road crossings etc) and my 'non building' costs come to close to half my total spend. That leaves me spending £20k on a building that is 52/43m2 external/internal. This budget includes notional figures for internal joinery, electrics, bathroom, kitchen, flooring, but not plastering/painting. I also budgeted materials only for the electrics so, having chosen to get a sparky in, I will be going a bit over budget. I'm probably going to overspend a little on both the kitchen and bathroom as well, so in the end I will probably be just over the £40k. I could have saved maybe £1.5-2k by going for cheap UPVC windows, saved at most £1k by going for minimal insulation, and saved another c.£1k each by deleting the woodburning stove and MVHR. A lower roof pitch would have saved some money but I never costed that option. As Jeremy notes, planning in the SE is tricky. Just in case you aren't aware, planning and building control are two totally separate systems. I am exempt from building regs but still have planning permission for a conventional house. I didn't say anything in my planning application about construction method, and just called the property a 'dwelling'. The planners want to know two things: what it will look like, and what the impact will be on local services like roads etc. So they care about how many people will live there, and whether it will be permanently occupied or not. They will care about whether it will be a permanent structure or not. But they don't directly have any interest in construction methods, which are the realm of building control. As to your own build: what has started you down the road of steel frame? If somebody was to ask me to build the cheapest possible new build with acceptable thermal performance, I would use a timber frame with steel roof sheets as the cladding. I found that corrugated steel cladding cost about the same per m2 as larch sourced directly from the sawmill, and it was far easier and faster to install. Obviously too early to tell which will last longer, but my larch is fairly low grade locally sourced stuff and I am budgeting to treat it every few years. Whereas the steel sheets have a 20yr guarantee and a PVC coating on them which looks very tough. You're probably right to go open plan, as hallways and extra partitions require more space and materials. Also I think you're right to avoid brick and blockwork. You don't need expensive things like woodburners, huge and complex glazing, or high spec kitchens and flooring. Good luck, and keep us posted.

Nice lights. Might just have to copy you on this one. As an aside, do you happen to know what voltage the driver delivers? I could do to revamp the lighting on my boat and if these are 12v units they would be quite snazzy.

That's why I always get stuff delivered...

Just noticed that TP do 'Westco' bamboo at a good price- slightly less than Simply Bamboo, and of course I can pick it up and not pay through the nose for delivery. Sample is in the post...

Dragging this one back up again... Bamboo seems to have crept up in price a little, and the cheapest I can currently find is £22.79/m2 inc VAT. I can get engineered oak from £21.99 Now when I Google 'engineered oak vs bamboo' I can find whatever answer I want to find as to which is more durable. A lot of sites list bamboo as being better value but work on the assumption that it is actually lower cost. Just trying to get my head around this... I think there must be some 'alternative facts' going on somewhere... Maybe when you spend this little on oak you get a tiny sliver of actual wood? It's quite hard to find out how thick the wear layer is which I guess isn't a good sign.

Give it to a charity shop, then buy it back a few weeks later and they'll have cleaned it for you too.

@JSHarris @NSS Just been in touch with Bluewater, they can deliver to me but it brings the total to £600. That's a bit over budget TBH so the quality would have to be really pretty special. If I was happy with plain white then I would have so much more choice... guess I'm just fussy

I have tried Shiply before and didn't get any remotely competitive quotes, but it's probably luck of the draw. Also I expect that if you live closer to a major route you might have more success.

I don't know if it would be applicable, but when I faced this issue installing valves on a boat, the advice was to use liquid PTFE and a backnut, allowing you to lock the fitting in place at whichiever orientation you needed. Requires sufficient threaded length to fit the extra nut, though.

Just a quick thought- what do people make of glass cooker hoods? Are they as much of a nightmare to keep looking clean as I suspect?

Thanks @Ferdinand for this, good to have someone looking into the same stuff as I am. I'm feeling a bit of feature creep coming on here. I initially budgeted only £2k for the kitchen, and have now spent the first half of that on the units alone- still have applicanes, worktop, and splashback to go. Obviously I'm going to end up over budget, but it's a question of how much. Cheapest option is to go unbranded or generic, and get appliances that feel like they're made of old biscuit tins- ovens at £120, that sort of thing. Could get the package I need (oven, hob, hood, fridge, dishwasher) for under £700 total- but it would feel cheap, look cheap, and maybe prove to be a false economy. Things like Neff ovens and hobs at £350+ each would gobble up the kitty pretty swiftly. But it is still tempting, because the cheapest I can find a Bosch oven is £270- so if I am determined to go for reasonably upmarket brand names, it's going to cost me way ove my original budget anyway. Might as well go the whole hog, at least on the more visible hob/oven side. My ideal, I think, would be to scoop up something from Gumtree. I will just have to be patient. Still no closer to deciding on the hob, by the way. I love the idea of a touch control induction one, for ease of cleaning, but it's the lingering doubts about ease of use. Everything has to be completely intuitive, and everybody knows what a big knob is for.

Unfortunately the units I like the best are apparently only available from one place (bathroomcity)- and being ready built, the mind boggles at what it would cost to get them, and the pottery, delivered up here.

There's always the inevitable Victorian Plumbing / Victoria Plumb who between them have some nice enough looking stuff- anybody have experience of these? The wife bought a shower from one or the other, can't remember which, and it's a pile of carp. But that doesn't mean that everything they sell is bad.

@Ferdinand thanks for the headsup! MiL has a hide&slide and they are nice, especially in a smaller kitchen. One wee nit- the link says catalytic liners, this is different to pyrolitic cleaning.

Another thought on this- is there a risk of the membrane fatiguing and eventually failing if it is going through thousands of cycles? I really was quite surprised by how much air was getting through. I was very careful to foam up every joint and gap when I added a layer of PIR around the whole interior of the build.

I've noticed my membrane ballooning up too. I've been putting it down to having not finished all the detailing outside- cladding, soffets, etc- and have crossed my fingers that it won't be an issue once the exterior is more sealed up. Another user on here suggested using pieces of insulation board as packers within the service void to help hold the membrane down.

So, tempted by a combination of aesthetics, storage, and the ability to hide away all my ugly plumbing, has led me to consider moving away from a basic suite and towards fitted bathroom units. The layout is: basin, WC, and large walk-in shower. Room size 1600x2400. What's really caught my eye so far is this range: http://www.bathroomcity.co.uk/brand/jax/lucido Shame they're at the other end of the country- it would probably cost a fortune to get these fully assembled cabinets and pottery shipped up here. I've had a gander at the main DIY sheds in Inverness, but I've seen nothing insipiring- just plain white boxes. I do have other options such as Howdens and Willie Wilsons, but my experience of these places is that they can be neither customer friendly nor cheap. Wondering if there's any other options out that I might not have considered? Cheers

Well this sounds fairly straightforward. What a daft design though, putting the sensors in the controller itself, which is not allowed to be in the bathroom. If they made a version with a remote sensor option they could probably charge an extra hundred quid for it and people would buy it without hesitation. Thanks for the all the help/ideas/suggestions/encouragement- I was a bit worried about the idea of opening up the controller and attacking it with a soldering iron!

What about a bit of 0.75 twin core flex?

@PeterW @Temp See closer up pic- looks like you are right on the money. I have an electronics engineer friend who I might enlist for this as he's bound to have a steadier soldering hand than I do! Would it be worth hooking up a little jack socket, or maybe just a wago or chocblock, to connect the extension wire?