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Everyone’s feedback is helpful/interesting, but I feel I need to clarify a few points: 1) I have not and do not wish to fall out with my builder. I have given him the benefit of the doubt on many points and met all my side of the bargain, paying all of his invoices on time and buying a lot of supplies and ensuring they are on site when he wanted them, to the extent that I went with a £3,500 more expensive window supply contract to ensure windows were installed by the time my builder wanted them installed. 2) I am not paying peanuts. The contract is for a lot of money, even for London standards. I am well paid in my job, but this project is still costing me about 4 times my household’s gross annual salary. (I am already mortgaged to the max with 32 years left to pay. I’m only in my 40s.) There were cheaper options available, but I stayed clear. The point is this is a massive financial commitment for us and I think our builder will be getting a v. good income out of this project. 3) I have not scrimped on professional fees. So far, I have spent about £5k on an SE, £2k on a specialist surveyor to design certain bespoke parts of the build, and about £10k on architectural and project management fees. I’m also forking out money for CVC to design the MVHR. There are incredibly detailed construction drawings, plumbing plans, electrical schematics, build ups, etc. 4) I think my biggest gripe with the builder is the lack of communication. We have at least one meeting a week, often two. I try to pop in at least a third time each week. I am doing the bulk of the project management, but the architect is helping me, so the architect also attends twice a week. Only today did we find out that a cause of delay has been the posi joists. The posi spec changed about 3 months ago (we were going to do only one floor with posis, but then decided to go with two on CVC’s recommendation). At that point, it would have been helpful to know that posis were in short supply or that making this change might delay us as maybe we could have stuck to my original instinct which was that posis only needed for first floor and not second floor. Posis due to be delivered a couple of weeks ago, not coming till next week - apparently. Still doesn’t explain the extent of delays, but sh!t happens and I will accept it. It’s just rather stressful rushing, and at times paying extra, quite a lot extra, to get things the builder says he needs urgently only for the to sit on site for several weeks after arrival, sometimes months. 5) I am generally a good communicator, but I find it difficult to communicate with the builder as he gets quite defensive. I’ve resorted to prefacing everything I say with “I know this isn’t your fault,…” to try and get him to down his guard. 6) I had a very good experience with another builder some years ago on a big project, albeit one significantly simpler and cheaper than this one. We are still in touch and I wanted him to do this job, but timings didn’t work out. He was actually cheaper. I found him incredibly easy to work with and very easy going with me, whilst able to run a tight ship via his excellent foreman. Nothing seemed to stress either of them out, and they were a pleasure to work with, so whilst I am not in the trade, I do think I have some experience (this is our third project). 7) Is anyone else starting to lose my patience with suppliers using Covid as an excuse? In 2022 will people still be using the pandemic as an excuse? What about 2023? At some point businesses need to adapt.

How much more expensive is liquid screed than traditional?

On a building project 9 years ago I signed a £75k contract with a builder who I knew had previously been bankrupt. I was gullible and fell for his image and personality. He came across as really genuine and hard working and the bankruptcy seemed firmly in his past. He drove an expensive Land Rover and I thought he had obviously turned things around. He was recommended to me by my mother in law who apparently knew many of his clients. He never finished the job and a lot of his men were owed money. A lot of money. He left me with a 2.1m by 3.5m hole in the back wall of my house. I had to sue him for a loss of about £12k, at which point he admitted the car was just a lease and he didn’t have any assets worth suing for. In the end, to stop his new company going under, he had to borrow money off his parents to pay me what he owed me. For a man in his late 40s, I thought that was pretty embarrassing. So if like me, you are generally trusting and willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, go for it. But don’t be surprised if it ends in tears.

I asked my builder which screed he is going to use, and he tells me sand and cement based screed only needs a couple of weeks to dry. We are having about 65mm worth. Is he just plain wrong about this, or Is it possible he is using some sort of additive to speed up the curing process? We are laying 600x600x20 terrazzo on top, so need to be sure it works.

The stuff not listed is mainly to be done by third parties. E.g. most of ground floor is a poured floor to be done by Topcret (unless I find someone cheaper) and we are doing a lot of the honey thrift a separate company. There is actually no paint on the ground floor other than in the utility room as most walls are being clad with tiles or with wood and we are using a decorative plaster that doesn’t get painted. But the wood will need to be oiled with OSMO. Query whether we can do the wood oiling after we have moved in? Anyone know if OSMO oil gives off toxic fumes? Yes, I omitted the doors accidentally. There are only two on the ground floor, five on the first and two on the second though. But yes, that will add a couple of weeks. Hopefully in before Christmas then!

Well that is consistent with my observations of the two sh*ts that live next to me. They have two fancy cars in their drive which they never use. Just there too show off their money. Bizarre they have never done anything to their hideous house since they bought it in the 1980s.

Wow, that really is beautiful. Where is that?

Please tell me you are joking?

Maybe they know something you don’t. Gold deposits? Oil?

Well hopefully it won’t be a two year delay!

I’m confused, I thought the general view was that electric UFh is more expensive to run than water based UFH?

That would help yes, as there can be no part of the PD dormer structure that touches or is supported by the extensions. if you are 100pc confident what you are doing is PD, then go for it. You don’t even need the certificate. The certificate is just the council’s opinion on the lawfulness of your proposals. They would have to serve an enforcement notice to escalate matters, and at that point you can appeal. But it’s all very stressful having to go that route, so it’s really up to you: your confidence that what you are doing is really PD vs your concerns/stress levels in a worst case scenario of having to appeal an enforcement notice.

Thanks everyone, all good advice and thanks also for the support. Don’t know what I would do without this forum. Often feel alone with this, particularly as the only other people I know who are building at the moment are some friends of ours who went with a building company that were way over our budget and an architect and project management package that cost £40k, so they are having, they tell me, a very stress free experience. I stopped taking the neighbours calls a while back. They are horrible people. They are the neighbours that put in vehement objections to our plans at every opportunity. They are both retired and don’t need to work, but young enough to get out and about. And yes, I will have to just ignore family for the time being. We are going to bake some muffins and take them round to the builder and his guys. It’s been a couple of months since I’ve taken them any snacks and tea bags, so feel bad. Although they have converted my son’s future bedroom into a canteen/site office, with its own sink and boilling water dispenser, so I feel they’ve made themselves at home.

Thanks @Carrerahill, that's good advice. I guess it's a combination of three things: legitimate costs in terms of having to pay rent and two lots of council tax - in London this is quite a lot of money; general levels of stress being quite high whilst the building project goes on: this in part has been fuelled by my ridiculous neighbours who have got very aggressive with us over noise. We have tried really hard to be civil with them, bought them presents and apologised for the inconvenience which I genuinely accept is extremely irritating for them, but when all the party wall work was finished and the noise levels genuinely abated significantly, they continued to complain just as aggressively as they did before. I have now stopped answering their calls and literally have half a dozen voicemails accusing me of all sorts of things. They have completely lost the plot and are basically mad, asking us not to make any noise before 12 noon and claiming they are entitled to dictate when our builder has breaks etc. But another part of this stress is certain relatives who we see very often keep telling me that I shouldn't accept such delays and keep preaching about how when they've done building work it always runs on time (even though that is bullsh*t). I don't think they realise the complexity of our project or its scope. They think they know better and it's very difficult for me to ignore this because I'm succeptible to this sort of "pressure". Just wanting to move on with my life. We have been trying to do this since we first applied for planning in 2018 and it's just taken much longer than we thought. We'd even started house hunting in 2015 only for Brexit to freeze up the housing market. I promised myself I would move to working part time once I knew what the project would cost me and reconsolidated my finances, but that is a bit difficult to do until it's actually finished. But I hear what you say. There are things in life one cannot control, so it's really about having the courage to change what one can and the ability to accept what one can't. I probably need to just accept that there's not too much I can do, but still try to diplomatically get my concerns over to the builder.

Well it's the most we can do because of the eaves of our house and other issues, windows etc. Obviously the more you do the better, but it needs to be balanced with other considerations. We are putting in a lot of insulation in the subfloor and in the loft and installing MVHR so all in all it will be a big upgrade. It's not been finalised yet, but I don't think we will use k-rend. We have a wall that is pretty damp and needs some specialist treatment. We considered k-rend, but there are other products that are more suitable in our circumstances.

Have you considered buying an old property that can be demolished and start over, or partially demolished? In most parts of London, that is almost the only way to do self build and what we've more or less ended up doing.

It's made by a company called Clay Works, but there are loads of other suppliers too. Tadelakt do something similar. It's not to everyone's taste, but we like it. We will probably go for Smooth or Tonal finish: https://clay-works.com/classic-finishes/ My understanding is that one of the main differences between these two products is that Tadelakt will only sell it if they also install it. Hence why we went with Clay Works. The entire front and side elevations will be coated in a 40mm board and then we will smooth render over that. The part of the rear elevation that isn't being extended will have the same.

I wouldn't sacrifice the side access. Very useful and not worth it in my view. Agree with you that it will make planning more difficult, particularly in a conservation zone.

What kind of plot is this? Would you be losing external side access to the back of your house by having the bigger en-suite? If not, bigger is definitely better. Not sure what the other differences are. Does one have a sky light and the other not?

Not sure I follow, what do you mean?

Switching the study with the utility would be my immediate change. The upside is that you can put a window into that room and get daylight in your study, whereas in the middle of the house there won't be any chance of that - who wants to study/work in a dark windowless room? The downside is if you were going to have your hot water tank in your utility, it is no longer in the middle of the house. But I think a house this big would need a secondary loop for hot water anyway, so that shouldn't matter. Another downside is the utility would border a bedroom, which might preclude overnight washing machine action. You could sound proof the utility room, which is what we're doing.

I agree, but just be warned that if the LPA are clever/difficult they might do what they did to us when we tried to argue that point (and quoted that same case). They distinguished the precedent that we were referring to by saying that it (actually our direct neighbour's house) was set in a slightly different position to our house and so it wasn't inconsistent to make a different decision in our application to in our neighbour's application because the considerations where slightly different in the two houses. Bloody ridiculous in my opinion.

I'll probably get in trouble for inciting violence, but I couldn't help thinking of that scene in Lock, stock and two smoking barrels when they discover a traffic warden in the back of their getaway vehicle and all give him a few punches for the sake of it, and thinking that when they do the sequel, they should have a similar scene with a planning officer. Also, I don't know how to add a footer to my posts, but I adopt @MortarThePoint's footer. (The above is a joke and if you are reading this and your are a planning officer, I really didn't mean to offend you.)

Indeed reasonable to the clapham omnibus passenger. Except that I have a right of set off clause in the contract as well, so I can set off what he owes me in liquidated damages against what I owe him. (I pay him in arrears.) So the only way it would get to Court would be if he sued me for withholding the last few payments to account for my rent. The liquidated damages in dispute would be lower than the small claims track limit, and so the Court wouldn't allow expert evidence, and all the variation notices he has issued show the breakdown in labour costs and materials, so there is already very good contemporaneous evidence that the variations amount to less than the time extension he's already had. But I agree that it's better to talk it over a cuppa than resort to litigation, and I will always try to talk things through. But for the conversation to be productive he needs to understand that he's not the only one that loses money if there is a delay; I lose as well. I just get the impression he thinks that because I've agreed to every price variation notice he's issued and the request for an extension which he's requested, I'm made of money and he's got that seriously wrong. So we need to find a way of working out how to mitigate delays.

The purpose of a liquidated damages clause is to make sure I am protected from any damages that directly flow from him being late. The original contract was due to be completed by end of August. There have been some changes and delays which are not his fault and so I invited him in March to make a request for a reasonable extension. He requested end of September and I agreed without any quibbles. Recently he's been complaining about delays which he says are not his fault. I am not sure I agree with him, but I accept that part of the delay is not his fault and rather than enter into an argument with him I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and so I invited him to request another reasonable extension. That was a week ago and I've heard nothing from him. I will remind him this weekend, but my plan is that after he makes the request, if it is reasonable - and by reasonable I think it has to be 3 weeks or less but I will give him the benefit of the doubt and let him go to the end of October - I will agree it but point out to him that there are no more extensions and after that I will have to discount my rent and council tax beyond October from then onwards. On the one hand I agree this is a risky strategy, because it risks him rushing the job and not doing it properly. But on the other hand it's an extremely expensive contract, even for London standards, and I fear he is really taking the piss. If I have to swallow my rent costs as well, then we won't just be over budget, we'll be broke. To answer the point above: am I observing a team that are punctual and on site every day? Well I'm not sure. They take a lot of cigarette breaks and although they are on site at 8am every morning, the first thing they do is have their breakfast. Some guys are harder workers than others. I've seen other sites where the work ethic is better, but also other sites where it is worse, so I guess this is okay. I just think that for such a big job, manning it with 4 guys (and sometimes 3) is a bit poor. I know the contractor has another job somewhere else, but he's being doing this for 30 years, in London, and must have loads of contacts he can draw on.