Ferdinand

Forgot to say. You need to put detailed thought into your VAT reclaim at the start, because how you set up your contracts, who buys what etc can have a major impact.

There is a Contents page above that which links a lot more potentially useful information: https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-construction

@Visti OK. I promised some comments about broader site strategy. 1 - You can make a significant difference by what services put in when (and how), whether you get a storage container, and what you buy-then-sell (eg scaffolding, digger) or build-then-use (eg outside loo not portaloo or potentially storage office which turns into garden office) rather than rent, and how you sequence it. 2 - Consider bringing your energy, comms and water services to one or more kiosks or services box on the edge of sit, which gives you those services to use and means your contractors can take them further as needed without outside company buggeration and expenses. You also get proper supplies on site without having to pay for temporaries. Consider plumbing mains waste in early such that you can connect a loo to it. Put the loo where it can be removed again, or make it a permanent "forever loo" or something that is big enough (handwashing for builders in there too) that can turn into eg a potting shed or similar (garage?) in future, or just storage-with-a-sheltered-hose-connection eventually. 3 - Do what the big builders do with their and put down a drive sub base good enough to use and take heavy lorries etc, and finish it at the end. 4 - Think about storage first, and how you will keep it or remove it. On your site I would consider running in a 40ft storage container down where the drive will be to the back garden, or perhaps a combo office-storage Portable Building (which will come wired, windowed, clad inside and somewhat insulated). Then take it out at the end before you finally finish your drive / build the carport, or leave it in forever; that last may depend on the planners and what you ask for in the PP. Probably bring it in after the sub base drive is down, for ease of lorry or skate access to bring it in. Might be worth considering 2x20ft if they can be HIAB-ed directly. My dad once bought a nearly dead 40ft refrigerated (for the insulation) lorry trailer when he moved site, filled it up for its last journey, and backed it into his new yard as a storage facility. Was there for 18 years. 4 - I wonder if it is worth you investing in a 12 month subscription to SPONS, as you are very early in your process and profiling all your costs. @recoveringacademic has a sub and has posted repeatedly of the benefits. 5 - A final curve ball. Given Gravenhill, is there anything you can share with neighbours either side (leave a hole or a removable section in the fences), or rent to them, to reduce costs for both or make a few hundred £££. One aspect might be a water or energy supply or £15 a week for access to your outside built-in site loo if you have yours in early, or kit. Think about all these in advance too, and do them once. Ferdinand

Editing.

I mainly disagree with the 'architect rip off' comments in the thread above. No. It isn't a rude awakening; it is a helping hand up the necessary learning curve - you are fortunate that it is while you are building spreadsheets rather than while you are gazing at an unnecessarily pricey water-filled hole in the ground which has swallowed 30% of your money. I think you have engaged a known-good practice who have created an excellent house design for you that you like. Witness how detailed most of us had to be in our comments on your Intro thread to create feedback. A big chunk of what you have bought has been to reduce the risk of getting a poor design, and that has paid off already. They have a clear upfront fee structure which is not imo particularly overpriced for a London-based practice. They have given you a fixed fee price and structured cost package upfront rather than a % of the budget, which would normally be up to 15% depending on what services you are buying. When you talk to them, for heaven's sake try to not apply blame or imply any unacceptable motives on their part. I am sure you won't. Frame it as 'shocked by the estimated costs and can you help us address the issue'. The last thing you need is a bad relationship. Take the beloved out for a really nice extended meal and a film this w/e where the subject of self-build is BANNED. And I am one of the more sceptical on here wrt to some architectural practices. So now use the lessons to save 10x as much on the build as the extra you invested on the architect :-). 1000% return - bingo. Ferdinand

You are getting some excellent detailed advice here. I will come back with some more later, and some thoughts about site and purchasing strategy (eg connect to your services early including waste in order to save £20 a week for a Portaloo, and get a cashback Amex and Credit card to give you 0.5-1% off on the finance side for everyone who can take them). Ferdinand

Make it in small enough pieces, perhaps bolted together, so that you can get it out again for your next place - if there might be one. Keep an eye out for closing down shops, garages etc. Or put a request for the top surfaces on FreeCycle? We once (mother special) obtained a huge thick marble top from a butchers shop (8-10 ft long, 2 inches thick) when mum was buying meat and it was being removed - "I'll have that!". Took 4 men to put in the van, stuck out the back, and it was only removed by dad tying it to a tree and driving away. Supplied marble bits and pieces for years. F

General Points. I think the single biggest saving you can make is by not using your contingency, which on your revised costs would put you at £288k if you achieved it - within spitting distance. That needs you to sweat the detail first as far as possible and not fall prey to gold-plating later. You seem to be doing this - good. Even if, as has been suggested, the theoretical costs are "over", and you can afford it all in nearly-your-budget, I think the experience will have been a useful one. In Charlie's T&C, the basic architectural services are fixed cost, so that is in your favour. On the hard-nosed side, if it hits the 2 years, and - eg - you have not built your veranda, there will probably not be a lot they can practically do to enforce. Will they chuck you out? Repossess and sell on? Come after you for money you have not got, which taking away would prevent what they want happening ? It is almost going back to how they self-built or renovated houses way back when ... build the minimum then gradually upgrade as funds allow while living with cast-off furniture, a kitchenette and rush-matting. My parents did that on a renovation that took a couple of decades. Ferdinand

That phrase could have a multitude of meanings. Do you have a definition?

You might find that 18mm is hardly any more than 11mm. In which case you get full sarking, and you can probably nearly shuffle around on it.

I was thinking of PMs, and that TFL is in the sweet spot as a protected bureaucracy (=no competition) where the Govt cannot get at it due to reporting to the Mayor, and that the Mayor has not been able to crack down easily for political reasons for many years (though they are trying).They tend to get 2 free Go Anywhere in London season tickets. Last year, 500 staff earning over 100k. But I am OT.

Replying to this. 1 - I went with roofing laths as my support battens, and 25mm Celotex, with 18mm OSB3 over. Carefully sanded the OSB joints to reduce risk of imprinting, and I will chose my underlay carefully. 2 - The the service voids worked very well indeed, and also let me run cable ducts for future Sky etc. 3 - I reckon it saved a few hundred on the rewire / replumb by ease of access. 4 - Next time I will use a 30mm void as a slight bit of extra room would really help. Doors are being hung next week. Ferdinand

You needed to be working for TFL :-).

ISTM that we should always be extraordinarily cynical about house price reports and surveys imo. While I broadly agree with the comments about North-South divides etc, the report discussed on this thread about this BBC 'research' into how house prices had 'fallen since 2007 to 2017 in real terms for many people', which gave us to the chance to be outraged in salacious detail by going down to Ward boundaries, ignored at least one pink elephant in the room which was a huge variation. They used a 2007 starting point, which was pretty much at the absolute peak house price, and if they had used either 2005-6 or 2008-9 the price would have been 10-15% lower - entirely changing the narrative and conclusions. They were not even clear which ,month in 2007 they were using when there was a larger variation within the one year than many of the 10 year changes they were yelling about. This graph is raw prices from here. Many more charts on the same page. IMO that robustness test demonstrates their poor research quality. Ferdinand

I was looking at the site as constrained by fences, the road (?) etc, and which visually looks tighter on the new one due to hedge positioning, and how within that you could make it seem more spacious. I was also throwing in the "water's edge" idea.

Of anybody wants a quick reference - these are government regions and I think the boundaries reflect National Trust regions quite closely - an NT Handbook may be the quickest reference. EM is Notts, Derbys, Leics, Northants, Lincs and Rutland, I think. NI must be somewhere where they do things differently . F

I wouldn't go there as a primary support. Here we discovered 6 months after moving that that was how our heavy stair handrail is attached like that, when one came out. I spent half a day looking for structure in the wall and found nothing suitable, so I ended up bolting right through the wall and making the 100mmx100mm stainless steel anchor plates on the other side a feature in my office. For this, I think I would build a small custom boxframe from CLS to sit beneath the cupboard, either to the same footprint or slightly smaller to look attractive, then sit the unit on it and panel the sides with a suitable finish. You may or may not need to drill into the floor to hold the box frame in place, or could fix it the wall with something just to stop it moving. Alternatively you could glue the box frame to the floor. It could go inside the Ikea legs of you prefer. You could even make your box frame from 18mm ply as a simple box. I could also see something like an Ind Coop beer crate that builders stand on working if it is the right dimensions. There is nothing to stop you using bricks or a stack of one or two breezeblocks or thermalites or similar on their side instead of a box frame. You can just hide them behind a trim. If there is an issue attaching the unit to the top of the blocks, then plug a small sheet of eg marine ply the same size as the footprint and screw to that. Ferdinand

Good price for battens. What size? IIRC my pricing at the best local source was either (cannot remember which) 28p/38p or 38p/48p per metre plus VAT for untreated / treated 25mm x 38mm roofing laths. Suspect that this cost saving self-made battens measure may perhaps fail the effort / reward test. @recoveringacademic what would the total cost of bought in battens be at (say) 50p per metre? Ferdinand

I was thinking that a full wooden frame might be overkill, and that an ally or even plastic frame might do it. Essentially you want a light fitting 50-100mm deep the same size as your island. I was thinking about the lightness of structure that is used for suspended ceilings, and this sort of thing (from a quick Google), which is a shallow enclosure for panel-LEDs. This one is about £22, and easier to put up than a wooden frame. Not an area I know, but I expect that custom versions and various sizes / colours / finishes are available:

Suspended ceiling components?

My untreated oak veneer doors have just arrived, and will need treating. I am looking at either normal Osmo oil, or Polyx Oil - also by Osmo and iirc a harder finish. Sprayable versions do exist, albeit at the usual slightly eyewatering prices . I can live with that for only a few litres. http://www.osmouk.com/retail/product.cfm?product=359 Has anyone tried spraying their doors? Are there any lessons to learn? Cheers

Cheers @A_L What do you think is realistic, and do you have any good alternative or modified suggestions? Cheers Ferdinand

This is a spinoff from Jeremy's privacy thread. What are the best methods of creating a visual block quickly to disarm some potential "overlooking" objections from ground floor windows into neighbouring gardens, if it needs to look permanent by the time Planning is applied for? 1 - The classic would be a hard landscape feature - say a brick wall, or a 2m closeboard fence, which can then be conditioned to remain. Problem: pricey at approximately £40-£70+ per metre run for the fence and fitting, or perhaps at least £150-£200 per metre run for a decent 2m wall. 2 - Tightly cropped Lleyandii 2m hedge. How long? Does it take about 3 years to grow and be dense clipped to 2m from planting if planted at a tight staggered spacing in a double row? 3 - Are there alternatives to Lleylandii for the similar job? 4 - A fedge? (ie Living fence). These tend to be made from willow and later become thugs unless kept under constant tight control, 5 - Thinking around the box, plant something a little slower and propose a condition that first occupation not be allowed until a dense 2m visual barrier exists? That does not completely disarm the objection. I think my *strategy* would be a quick grower as above, but plan to remove it later and plant something else in front which will be more attractive. The con of that approach is the effective loss of garden when the initial block hedge us removed. Has anyone done this? Thoughts and comments are welcome.

Thanks. If I had the money to build that, I would not have regretted a loss vs inflation for that experience.

Or wasn't there a successful Grand Designs when a Scottish supplier of potatoes to chip-shops built his house *over* a private lake? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/property/article-1218678/Were-cashing-chips-selling-Grand-Design.html GD Episode: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs/on-demand/38275-008 Could you shunt it forward or to the right and cantilever or balcony over the lake? Would that be a different response to the site restrictions? Lesson to the wise. Build cost was about a million in 2005. That Mail article has it priced at £1.9m in 2009. Around 2012 Rghtmove had it under offer at £1.25m. (To be fair they haven't lost money and the adventure sounds well worth it). Depending on the specifics, perhaps a classic approach for a constrained plot - build nearly to the edge of the plot and use the most attractive area as something you *look* at. Wonder what @caliwag thinks?