Kelvin

Yes but your time isn’t free if you could be earning. In my case I retired early from a very highly paid job for example. As I said earlier we are at £2100/m2 for a good spec through using trades (which were a bit of a mixed bag), careful buying (time consuming) and DiY (slow) We could have built for a fair bit less. For example, we used Scottish Larch from Russwood that was treated with a relatively dear product. It cost about a third more than buying the larch locally and not treating it at all. However, our house is fully clad in this and it was such an important part of the overall visual look that it was important we got this right.

Anything is possible. The last time I was in Ikea they had mock up of small apartments that made clever use of the space including funky bed arrangements that doubled up as other functions. However having to hall your bed up and down every day doesn’t sound like fun.

We had the oak handrail fitted the other week. I wanted it fitted as one continuous handrail so you can run your hand up and around the corner for the full flight without lifting off. Not terribly easy to do. I also spent many hours sanding this prior to oiling then did several coats of oil sanding between coats. Consequently it’s silky smooth and a lovely thing to touch. Between this and the door handles it will be the bit of the house we’ll touch the most. Same with the kitchen cabinets. We wanted a matt finish for a few reasons one of which was how it feels when you touch it. The door handles weren’t dear but we ordered several different handles before choosing these and chose them because the curve fits your hand.

Our main kitchen cost £20k including all the appliances and the large quartz counter top which was £3500 alone. The kitchen furniture was about £11k I think. We bought it two years before we fitted it so avoided some of the inflation costs and it was kept in storage for free.

I disagree about kitchens and bathrooms. You spend a lot of time in both. It’s the thing you also touch the most along with door handles. Consequently any design problems will be very obvious and any quality problems will show up quickly. While we didn’t go absolutely mental on them we didn’t scrimp either and both have worked out well for us.

We’re at £2100/m2. Including all fees and prelims. The only thing that doesn’t include is the decking as we’ve not done it yet.

Cable is relatively cheap so I’ve run multiple cables everywhere plus a few buried in walls but that’s mostly unused Loxone wiring. I have 4 going out to the garage plus ducted for more to the opposite side of the house where the gate will be. I’ve run some upstairs but won’t actually use them. It was just easy to do. eta I did it myself so it just cost me a roll of cable and my time. Not sure I’d have paid a sparkie to do it.

Or don’t fret so much about it. Especially crumbs and a bit of dust as any worktop will show that. Just wait until you start building and watch the dust build up on every surface then 😂

Polishing? Wet cloth. Done. Occasionally diluted lemon juice.

I have learnt that it’s not a competition…

We are open plan too. There’s a double extract behind the hob area and a double supply in the living room area.

I did something similar but being a bit older the payback period matters slightly less. Therefore I considered it both in terms of the payback period and a much longer term window. MVHR self selects though as you make the building more airtight.

I simply worked on the principle that I didn’t want any more water running off our site after the house was built than it did when it was just a field.

On the advice of @saveasteading I didn’t have a skip on-site. I managed and sorted all the waste materials. Consequently it reduced the waste and we used more of the materials I’d paid for.

Completely agree. We also have an attenuation field for rainwater. We could have argued that one away but there is a lot of flooding down stream from us and we didn’t want to contribute to that in any way.

Call a few and ask them. I cut hundreds of square meters of gorse out with a chainsaw. Took days and was cream crackered by the end of it. It was a good job well done but a digger would have done it in a day at most. I’d probably just buy a second hand petrol chainsaw if you’re determined to do it by hand and no power on site but it’s a hard way to take a build down.

I agree with @JohnMo If you have loads to do why make work for yourself.

Also worth keeping in mind that a soakaway and a drainage field aren’t the same even if the terms get used interchangeably. We have an engineered drainage filed even though it’s described as a soakaway in the plans.

I’m in Scotland so didn’t get a choice and had to put in a drainage field. You’re only allowed to discharge to a watercourse if there are no other options. If you have the space and ground is suitable what’s the big deal? Modern treatment plants output mostly clear water and a drainage field isn’t terribly expensive to put in.

You can do it either way. Easier for the plasterer if they are fitted afterwards plus the boxes don’t end up full of plaster. Slightly harder to cut the boxes and there’s the danger of the plaster chipping off around the box cuts.

I’m impressed with the Neff hob recirculation. It works far better than I was expecting. We don’t fry a lot of food. It is noisy on full blast but they all are otherwise they don’t work.

If you can’t avoid sockets on the external walls then there’s not much you can do other than fit surface mounted sockets. For light switches then a bit of technology could sort that with wireless switches.

You could plan to have no sockets or light switches on the external walls. If I look around my house I could easily have organised it to avoid sockets on the external walls for example. I only have two light switches on external walls.

You’ve got to fit the back boxes and 25mm plus plasterboard is as shallow as you can practically go really. There are 16mm back boxes but fitting all the cables in can be a challenge sometimes. You might also have the odd pipe in the void although I’d try and not do that.

My neighbour has hers in a shed. Mine is in the garage.