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Hi all - I'm hoping to get some advice on the below! We are currently in the process of renovating our 1 bed basement flat in London (zone 2). We have received planning approval to remove the old conservatory at the back of the house and replace it with a flat roof structure which will house the kitchen. This involves altering the internal layout of the flat as shown in the floorplans. The footprint of the house is staying exactly the same, it is 600sqft for reference. To complicate matters, our flat flooded during the flash flooding in London last summer so it has currently been stripped back to brick as part of the insurance repair works and drying out process. The flat is now completely dried out and we have put the job out to tender. We have just received quotes from builders to put the flat back together as per the proposed plans. When we received the quotes, I literally fell off my chair. The three quotes were: £270k, £353k and £403k. I am honestly in a state of shock. I'm fully aware that London building costs are unlike anywhere else in the country and that the cost of raw materials has shot up this year, however, these are on another level. I could buy another flat for that last quote! All 3 builders that quoted were aware of the fact that part of this work will be covered by our insurance claim. However, the majority of it won't be i.e. the removal of the conservatory, the change of layout etc. Am I being totally ripped off because they are aware it's an insurance job? I can't understand how someone can physically spend that much money on a 600sqft flat when the footprint of the house isn't changing and we aren't building any new walls! Unless I was coating every ceiling in gold leaf! Any advice would be much appreciated!

Hi I've recently purchased a 1bed "colony" house in Edinburgh. For those unfamiliar with colony houses, these were homes built throughout Victorian Edinburgh and were designed as homes for the skilled working class, more details about them here if you are interested. Mine is a 1 bed ground floor, 45sqm altogether, with a small front and back garden. It's currently fitted with electric storage heating that I am hoping to remove and replace with a small air source heat pump and install underfloor heating throughout. I found this forum through my ASHP researching and have found it really useful so far. I also want to change the internal layout, so the largest rooms are for the kitchen and living room. I wish to move the bathroom to the opposite side of the house and turn the current kitchen (small, narrow) to a very small double bedroom! This requires a couple of walls knocking down and rebuilt. I won't have the keys to the property until late November so works can't start yet but I'm trying to do as much research before then. Thanks all, looking forward to asking lots of questions as I have them...!

Hi all This is my first post - I hope it's in the right place! :-) I am considering buying a ground floor flat in a small-ish block. Ignoring that I will need planning and freeholder permission (I realise neither are a given - there's no history of anybody attempting this before), is it physically possible to build a ground floor extension for a building with this many storeys? I also realise that every building and conditions are different, so this might be an impossible question to answer, but thought I'd try, as the extensions I have seen online are of buildings with less storeys. We would probably redesign the interior and likely would remove the outer kitchen and master bedroom walls as well as the wall dividing them to then create a large open plan extension. Any comments or advice are greatly appreciated. Cheers!

The super sharp lines of @Trw144 roof line (See here: has prompted me to make a design detail decision about the flat roof on my dormers. My died in the blood old boy roofer friend says "Got to have 50mm overhang from the face and sides of the dormer. Nothing less". But that's not exactly going to produce a contemporary sharp looking roof is it? My intention is now to use GRP/fibreglass with the minimum depth of edge I can get away with. Which is my first point of annoyance as all the pre-formed edging strips are min 100mm depth. So what's peoples thoughts on the overhang issue? Can it only be less if you have some form of internal gutter to stop run off?