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Thanks for everyone’s feedback. I will accept the quote.

If I had the time, maybe. I'm sure it's not that easy, and i don't mean to belittle the task, I just wasn't expecting the quote I got.

To me, it looks like a one day job. That's why the price surprised me. But I'm in London, which I guess raises the prices. Though I would be extremely surprised if my builder is paying his guys much more than £150 a day, if that. Only half of them speak English.

I asked my builder to install cornicing/coving in two rooms. He sent me a contract variation notice where he is proposing to charge £15 plus VAT per metre for a small/medium coving (projection 120mm drop of 90mm) and £18 per metre plus VAT for a larger one (a projection of 190mm and a drop of 100mm). I am supplying the coving, he would just be cutting it, supplying adhesive and installing it. These prices seem a bit high to me, but I have no basis for saying that really, just gut instinct that given the room shapes are very regular and all tools (including a mitre block) are already on site, it just seems a bit high. Thoughts? For reference, the smaller coving is going in a room that has a perimter of about 14.5m and the larger coving is going in a room that has a perimenter of about 18m, and the coving in both cases is made of real gypsum, not the lightweight plastic.

It gets worse. Today I received this email from a very small workshop I have contracted to do all our joinery, having paid a substantial cash deposit to them last month: Just to update you following your email, unfortunately [name of master joiner whom I contracted withas sole trader] has had a stroke whilst abroad and is currently in hospital over there. We are trying to keep things moving in his absence but have no idea when he will be back, if you can send over as much information as you can and some timescales we will look at our production schedule and capability and we can go from there. Assuming this is genuine, I really feel for him. He's relative young (about 50) and appeared to be of normal weight, so a stroke seems a little surprising but I assume he is being honest. I doubt we will be in for months now.

Our project started 13 months ago. It was meant to finish by Aug last year. We still have at least 2.5 months, probably more. Bloody ridiculous scheduling by my builder. Has we been in by Xmas, he would have only been 50% over his original timetable. I would have accepted that. At this rate, he will end up being about 100% over.

Shame you didn’t soundproof the party wall at the time you extended.

Hmm, conflicting views expressed on this thread. Not really sure what to think. Whilst what @markc says sounds plausible, as soon as I analyse it further it can’t be right. Worktops are never given an opportunity to aclimatise, regardless of the humidity in the kitchen they are being installed in. The worktop company install the worktop on the same day that they bring it to the property, and I’m fairly sure that happens around the world in all sorts of humidity. I would also like to think that given I’ve paid CVC over £10k to supply, design and install my MVHR they would have pointed out this was an issue. I will give them a call in the morning to ask them, but I suspect I will do everything except the wood flooring, then turn the MVHR on for 48h then install the wood. Query whether this issue also affects the Topcrete poured floor we are having?

Interesting… I see you and @JohnMo disagree on this. I will wait for a few more to join in. My concern wasn’t just the filters but also the ducts.

Thanks @JohnMo. Are there any down sides of epoxy coating? We have one room where we are sticking engineered herringbone directly onto screed that was poured almost 4 months ago. So as it’s only one room, it will hopefully not be expensive to expoxy coat it, though something else I haven’t budgeted for. Any other downside apart from cost.

Our MVHR was put in a while back, but it has not been commissioned yet because the house is still very dusty and dirty, with quite a bit still to do. We have two rooms still to plasterboard and all of the ground floor and master bedroom to plaster. Most of the house still needs to be painted and then the flooring will go down, with some rooms having Pergo laminate and other rooms having engineered oak. Both the laminate and the engineered oak say that the product should be allowed to aclimatise for at least 24h before installation. It has been in the house for a few weeks already, but with the MVHR off, the humidity must be 70% or 75% at least. The current plan is to commission the MVHR after the flooring goes down. But this was driven by a desire to avoid clogging up the MVHR with dust. I’m now wondering whether MVHR will cause the humidity to drop fairly dramatically by 15% or more, and if that happens after the flooring has been installed, couldn’t it cause the flooring to buckle/fail? Should I reschedule things so that cleaning happens earlier so that we can commission the MVHR and then install the flooring?

Plus 0.5 for the Delonghi Magnifica. We’ve had ours since 2013. About 3 years ago it broke and we paid about £160 for Delonghi to fix it and service it. They replaced the infuser and got it working again. They were also meant to clean it al but didn’t, so we complained and got most of our £160 back, which meant that they effectively fixed it for free. That is not the reason why I’m not fully recommending it. We are generally happy with it and we use it a lot (at least 6 cups a day), but I think there is one compromise and one drawback. The compromise between the Magnifica and the slightly better bean to cup machines is that although it does yield a good crema and makes reasonable coffee, it’s just no real comparison to a barrista made coffee. It just doesn’t have the pressure to be able to yield all the taste and punch a coffee bean has to offer. My parents use exactly the same beans that I do with a Rancilio (which I accept is not a bean to cup, it’s a proper espresso machine) and I am always impressed by how much fuller and more robust their coffee tastes, even though it is the same bean and the same amount of coffee. My mum, who is a little more sensitive to caffeine, had to switch down to single shots after using the Rancilio because it just delivered much more bang for the buck. The comparison to a Rancilio is probably not that apt (although you can get a fairly good deal at the moment if you pair with a separate grinder: https://www.coffeeitalia.co.uk/rancilio-silvia-v6-e-2020-last-edition-de-longhi-kg79.html), but the comparison to a Sage is. My understanding is that even the £600 Sages (not the entry level one but the next model up) pass the steam through the coffee with 15 bars of pressure, which means it will give a much more robust coffee. In turn, that means you can use less coffee than you would in a Delonghi Magnifica, which means the slight premium for a Sage over a Delonghi Magnifica will pay for itself within a few hundred coffees. The drawback is that it is quite difficult to clean. The inside of our Magnifica had some mould in it which we didn’t realise about for a while because it was so well hidden. But all coffee machines need regular cleaning, so maybe this isn’t such a drawback. Interested to read about the Prima Dona and the Melita, not brands I had come across, so will read up on them before our next purchase.

Bean to cup is definitely cheaper to run. I buy my beans in 5kg bags which I share with my parents, and at that size it works out about £13.60 a kilo for very high grade beans, like Monsoon Malabar that normally cost £19 a kilo. Bean to cup is also more environmentally friendly.

Link?

We are having rounded edges, I think they are called pencil. Call me old fashioned, but I’ve always hated sharp angles in interiors and always will.

Can’t you just scrape the sealant off with a Stanley knife (or more sophisticated scraping tool) and then re-seal?

But where does the risk from chipping come from? Is it that if you have a heavy pan, and as you lift it out of the sink there is a risk you catch the edge of the worktop because of the negative reveal or hit the edge of the worktop with it? Because if that is really the only source of chips in this situation, then I'm not too concerned because the sink is nowhere near big enough to have anything larger in it than a tea mug or two, and in a contest between a tea mug and 30mm caesarstone, I'm hoping caesarstone wins.

lol. There is no deposit. The landlord is a relative!

Whether Part E applies to an extension is a little tricky. I had a quick look at the regs and found that it does apply if there has been "a material change of use" to a building, and that includes where: "the building, which contains at least one room for residential purposes, contains a greater or lesser number of such rooms than it did previously". So if they added a room to their house for residential purposes, then it would apply I think, at least to that additional room. But I suggest you go through that document with a fine tooth comb and checking each cross reference to the schedules until you understand the applicability properly. It is legal analysis, but can be done by anyone with patience and a desire to read the doc several times. Alternatively, pick the phone up to building control and ask them. You can do so anonymously so as not to stir sh!t... yet. It is possible to insulate a party wall very effectively against airborne sound. I've just done it along our party wall after being fed up of hearing my neighbours so much. It just requires sacrificing some of your room space. What are the dimensions of the room of your house which is affected. Can you post a sketch showing a layout.

I've decided to get a narrower sink. It's a oblong shaped one that is only 160mm wide by 320 long, so will free up another 140mm of worktop space. Was half the price of the round sink as well!

It's okay, the tap we've gone for is rather massive: (This was not intentional, but I guess is now serendipitous.) It's basically a standard kitchen tap sized tap.

Wow, I wish I'd known they were that price, I would have considered them. I got a quote about a year ago and it was coming in at about £1400. I've now seen this drip tray from Qooker which is almost ideal, except it's only available in one finish, which doesn't go with our colour scheme. I'll keep looking. But interested to know what people think of my negative 25mm reveal idea. Another constraint is the worktop is being templated this Monday so i need to hurry!

Well this would have been ideal, but when i looked at Zip the price was ££££. We've already purchased our boiling water tap and tank, and now just need the receptacle to catch the water drips and drain away, ideally something in matt black or brass.

We have a 700mm nook in our kitchen which we are making into a hot drinks station. The cupboards above and below the worktop will house mugs, boxes of tea and coffee beans, and on the worktop itself about half of it will be occupied by a coffee machine and the other half of it will be occupied by a small round 300mm diameter undermount sink and a boiling water tap. I would have ideally preferred a 200mm sink so as to give more space to the coffee machine, but we haven't been able to find one that works with our colour scheme, so 300mm it is. I came across this article which discusses the pros and cons of different reveal styles and it made me think I could have a negative reveal so that I lose less than a 300mm diameter from my worktop. The only disadvantage quoted in the article of a negative reveal is said to be "The countertop ledge can easily chip, and its exposed underside may attract mold. Though these risks depend on your countertop material, a durable stone countertop might cancel out those concerns." We are fitting 30mm thick caesarstone so I'm assuming this counts as "durable stone" and that chips are not a risk factor. Given the only thing splashing down that sink will be hot water, tea, coffee and the odd bit of unused milk, should I be worried about mould? Could I have a 25mm negative reveal all the way around so that my sink hole ends up being just 250mm in diameter or is this asking for trouble in terms of mould? We are having MVHR in case that makes any difference.

Thanks @PeterW, I had a look at Mendes but they didn't have what I was looking for. I have simplified things somewhat by changing our door choice to stuff that is generally in stock. I have found almost all of the doors that I need. The one door I am missing is is an unfinished oak door in 2032 x 710 size in this style https://www.todd-doors.co.uk/shaker-1-panel-oak-fd30-fire-door, i.e. a simply shaker (this one doesn't actually need to be a fire door). Alternatively I could just buy a blank and add the shaker border to it, but I really wanted to order it at the same time as a matching fire door made by the same manufacturer as it will be going next to a fire door that is 2032 x 813 (and which is linked to above) so would be good if the wood grain and oak type were the same. To answer your question, almost all of our doors are 2032 high, but the widths vary and sometimes I've found doors supplied as 2032 high in the right width, whereas other times the right width is only available if I go for 2040 and trim it. Sometimes trimming by 8mm is possible, sometimes it's not - depends on the manufacturer and how generous they are with their lippings.