Thedreamer

Cripes, surprised your accountant (or customer) never spotted that. Your loss as things currently stand would be the VAT on the markup applied by you on the price of the materials.

Sorry for being a bit nosey, but why would you want to do this? It's quite common up here to buy a static, clad in timber so it's looks a bit more like a log cabin and build a shed to provide storage.

I would just ask them to provide a quote correctly you don't want any misunderstandings at a later date. To be honest if I told them it was residential build and they quoted with VAT it would leave a slight negative impression with me.

Have you recently become VAT registered? I would recommend getting the invoices in front of you and totting up how much this is. Depending on the size and date of the invoices you might be able to correct this on your next return. As well as dealing with your VAT position your problem is going to be that your customers are not going to be able to get the VAT back from the HMRC on the DIY scheme.

Same here. I noticed that one of my temporary downpipes which is sitting on the grate quite tight as it's not fixed to the wall, was not draining so wiggled a brick tie underneath and the water came out with a lot of pressure. Was just full of crud, having a shoe and gully will allow me to keep the water flowing.

I'm planning a shoe over the gully.

Surely somebody will want this pair? @Ferdinand you should put in a telephone bid. I personally would like this old timey horse cart for cruising around my local area.

Might be a little far North for most members but there is a implement auction happening in Dingwall this Staturday. A lot of agricultural equipment, but some diggers, containers and scaffolding etc. http://implements.frasersauctionroom.co.uk/sales/276

I previously created a thread on bill of quantities that might be helpful for you. We stick build our house so had to work out every bit of timber and nail etc. A tedious job but satisfying when you see the timber frame up. For my mortgage I need inspections from a surveyor or architect. The first thing our surveyor inspected was my costings and provided assurance to the lender that our project costs were accurate.

Yes not one for heights either. Our house is a room in the roof design so it was just three levels at the gable ends. Usually the jelly legs would disappear once I was concentrating on the job in hand. @AnonymousBosch - just out of interest on the safety harnesses, were you good at wore these all the time or more at the start? Did you wear when putting up and taking down? This might of been useful when I had to tie boards down in the gales last year. @MikeSharp01Useful to have some lengths of rope on site if you ever need to tie boards down quickly in windy weather.

Ideally would like to have access to a tower for a gable end. I was able to scaffolding with stuff belonging to my wife's uncle this was a huge help and mean't we could work at a slower pace and didn't have hire or adjusting costs. He also knew somebody who was retiring and sold me a some old but perfectly usable long scaffolding boards for £100.

Definitely some pictures on the next blog entry later this week.

What type are you using @MikeSharp01? We used Cuplock and found it quick and easy to adjust.

Yay, I've taken down the remaining scaffolding. ? Big effort the last month painting the roughcasting to get this away for good, satisfying to see the house standing proud by itself for the first time. Next job will be tidying the site and emptying storage container to get this gone as well.

Yes a lot of house designers or architects used this term even play on crofting activities to sell the design. https://www.scandia-hus.co.uk/designs/the-croft/ http://www.ruralhouse.co.uk/houses/rc4/ The irony is that designs like these marketed as 'croft house' which are beyond the reach of young crofters struggling to work the land and afford a property. It is a real issue in the Highlands and Islands and one that nearly made us move away from our crofting township. Fortunately we were able to save enough money and obtain a croft house grant to build. The majority of 'croft houses' that are working croft houses are not the older ones. The majority of the older ones have been separated from the crofter, gone to ruin, used as holiday lets in the summer and then long lets to some poor soul in the winter.

Might be worth determining the legal status of the property, the term 'croft' or 'croft house' often gets used when it is not applicable. Crofting law particularly for property, security, deeds etc is a specialist area and care should be taken to understand what you may acquire.

I lived in a solid stone croft house for five years and it cost a fortunate to heat. £100 a month in oil and another £60 for electricity and it never felt warm. On these properties often you peel back the plasterboard and flooring and goodness knows what is there. They look attractive but the way we live now can result in damp, mould etc. A lot of properties locally have also recently been clad in external insulation on a free scheme and they look terrible. We actually moved out 5 years ago from the croft house to live with my in-laws in order to save enough to buy built a house on our croft. I would double most of those prices and in built a 20% contingency.

They have been fitted for about a year, all fine at the moment, but I'll keep an eye on the joints. I'm not to far from the sea but well sheltered from the prevailing wind and rain.

That is ridiculous! Delivery charges/haulage I just want common sense applied. Now back to the window chat.

Skye is a 'proper' island, it just has a bridge connecting it to the mainland. Consumers should not pay silly delivery prices for no reason. @Stones thank you for sharing the delivery cost.

Just checked this it was either collection from Cumbernauld (12 hours trip) or an eye watering £1500 + VAT for delivery. When I asked about the delivery costs either themselves or supply chain partners were inflexible and lacked common sense. Unfortunately although there is a bridge to Skye DSV do not accept this as the mainland of Scotland and wouldn’t make delivery to the island. However there would be no issue with Cathiness. With Nordan we had no such issues. If your in the Isle of Wight I would definitely check what the delivery costs would be early on when getting quotes.

Didn't appear to be much between them, but the Rationel windows were going to be a ridiculous price for delivery. The impression I had was that Rationel supply windows indirectly through a different company, however Nordan was direct. Nordan are more popular in our local area and they place extra emphasis on their windows being good for coastal/windy regions. We went with timber alu clad, triple glazed. When your ready to get some quotes I would ask for the prices based on alu clad/timber and for double/triple. I was surprised how cheap it was in particular to go from double to triple.

That's the plan with our stove, it's only going to be 4kw but surrounded by heavy concrete blocks in the centre of the house. Although realistically it will only be needed in winter.

I agree with earlier posts about breaking it up with a window. This is going beyond your original questions, but what's your proposed budget to complete the work? Would I be correct in thinking it's just under 5m2 gained? Would be worthwhile to find out what the value would be per m2? Also of that house design in the development, has anybody else done a similar extension?

That's 100% correct. But often some contractors have the 'mentality' like they are running the risk of zero rating as they wouldn't want to be told later during an inspection that they should have charged VAT, which obviously wouldn't be the case in this circumstance.