ultramods

The wall would be at the front of the house in this photo, so that the lawn is the same level as the house floor. the wall would be at its highest of 800mm to the left of the photo and maybe only 400-500mm to the right hand side.

retaining soil

retaining soil so that garden lawn is level with house floor. Laid on clay soil. The main house foundations required 3 courses.

thanks and what about the foundation cost? I have been quoted £3k by the builder that has done all the other building work for the house but thought it sounded quite expensive. The wall will be retaining wall, so not sure if that means blocks would need to be laid flat or not

Can someone tell me roughly how much a 28 metre long, 900 mm high (above ground) blockwork garden wall should cost using either Solid Dense 7.3N 140mm or 100mm concrete blocks please? The wall is single skin, no render or coping required.

I would say do screed ASAP as it can take a long time to dry out, which can then delaying fitting the flooring.

I used it for the first time this year. Ordered two light fittings from two companies on the same day back in February. One light fitting arrived in a couple of weeks Second fitting is still in customs Both fittings were of similar value.

It will be post Brexit

I am going for myson touch 2 wifi stats because the plumber uses myson. the stats are all hardwired, however each stat can be controlled via app if required. https://www.myson.co.uk/products/programmable-room-thermostats-touch-2.htm

@soapstarI'm not sure if you have already done this but have you ever shared your plans and a breakdown of your current build costs as it might be possible to reduce your overall build costs through identifying where you are paying too much and allow you to include the garage now. Did I read somewhere that your house is 290 sqm, if so it's similar size to mine, your painting costs are 16k what does that include? I ask as we are paying around 8k for all our internal walls and ceiling to be taped and painted. We are painting all interior and exterior woodwork. We decided to not paint the walls and ceiling and let the same company do the taping and the painting, way any imperfections have to be fixed by the one company, the tapers can't blame you (the painter) for a bad finish.

I am receiving conflicting information from the trades on the ideal finishing sequence. Can someone please tell me the order that we should complete the following (I have ordered it in the way I think would be best in terms of the finished appearance): Painters apply first two coats to all walls and ceilings in the house - This has been done Joiner fits Internal Doors and frames Tiler tiles all floors and walls to be tiled Joiner fits all skirtings and architrave Wife and I paint all doors skirtings and architraves Painters paint and walls and ceiling with final coat fit carpets The main things I am concerned with is the detail of the tiles and skirting/architrave junctions. I would prefer the tiles to be under the skirtings and architrave. The joiner is pushing to do everything at once either before or after the tiling. Would it be OK to do the door frames, skirtings and architrave after the tiling, this sounds OK, however would the joiner need to mark on the floors where the door frames will be so the tiler knows not to tile that area? Also this approach does increase the chances of the joiners damaging the tiles by dropping a door frame on them

I have wired all rooms in the house with speaker cable in the ceilings, in family area and snug I have put 4 speakers in each corner. I have positioned the cables based on no real expert advice or research. @Nickfromwales certainly sounds like he knows what he is talking about. The resident hifi expert at my work dd recommend this 79 strand cable https://www.av4home.co.uk/products/qed-profile-79-strand-speaker-cable-complete-100-metre-drum as an "affordable" good quality speaker. I'm not actually planning on having any ceiling speakers, expect for maybe in the bathrooms. I have just put in the cable for future proofing. I will be using sonos in most of the house. In the living area we will have soundbar below TV, along with subwoofer and then a pair of sonos one's wall mounted 2 metres high at opposite end from the TV. The kitchen will also have a pair on sonos one's wall mounted at 2 metres. Snug will have similar setup. We also have 3 external speakers that I will connect to a Sonos AMP. Sonos have recently teamed up with a third party speaker company for wall and ceiling speakers, the look nice however very expensive. https://www.sonos.com/en-ie/sonos-architectural I have been using Sonos for almost 10 years now and love them. Although Sonos worked wirelessly as a mesh network you can also hardwired them to a router/switch.

Looking good. Did you do the roughcasting yourself?

Not Brownhills, however we did look at those plots. We are building In Kingseat.

I will PM you

I think a lot of people on here have used BPC. You can send them your plans and they will design the system for you for about £100 (which is refundable if you buy the system), they will provide updated plans of where everything should be installed.

I think this is a little harsh, this post is @selfbuildaberdeen introducing herself and her build. Having said that I do agree with everyone stressing the importance of putting in MVHR now. I bought the DIY kit from https://www.bpcventilation.com/ for around £4k for a 325 sqm house. My dad and I installed all the ducting and the unit in the loft over a weekend - Posi-joists made the installation of the ducts easy.

Where about in NE are you building? As others have said posting your plans would really help people assist you. We are building in newmachar a 325 sqm two storey house for around 350k (excluding land cost) to a high spec. You and your husband are welcome to visit our build if you like to see the spec etc. I am project managing the built and have done a small amount of the work. We have 1 company doing Joinery, roofing and rendering. 2nd company doing all groundworks, foundations, block work etc. 3rd company doing electrics. 4th company doing electrics. 5th company doing plastering and decorating. And two companies doing stair and baulastrade. I have found that the build in general has needed little supervision from me. However that's because the plans were detailed including the size and type and position of all sanitryware, showers, kitchen units, worktops, sinks etc.

I would still be wary of supplying it for all that it will save, if you supply bead that the renderers don't normally use and something goes wrong with the rendering, even if it's completely unrelated to the bead, they may blame the bead. We had an issue with some of our windows not opening, because some of the block work was build too close to the windows. We were lucky that for two of the windows a small section of render could be removed, a thinner bead added and render reapplied. However for 2 of the other windows large sections of render would need to be removed as you can't really path or repair it. I just don't want to see you getting into a situation where you have a crap render job that the render company won't fix because you have saved a few hundred pounds supplying the bead.

Do you know how much money you will save by doing the beads yourself? I ask as I think the beads for my house took the guys around 20 hours to do, not a huge labour cost for something very critical to get 100% correct.

The treads will be clad in 20mm thick oak, which will reduce the gap by 40mm. Here are a couple of photos from today.

That photo was taken a few months ago, there is a wall on the other side.

Building control said no balustrade is required across the window as the window glass is safety glass. There will only be one glass balustrade that follows the path of the current temporary timber handrail.

It's the Coburn Straightaway 180 https://www.coburn.co.uk/product/straightaway-180/ I will do a blog post next week once the door is complete with lots of photos

Feeling pretty pleased with myself as I have been dreading making this door. video-1558292016.mp4