Here we go!

Well, we finally got the money today! (well the first batch). After months of chasing the bank and them doing nothing they said, how they said and when they said, we have just picked up a cheque for the first installment from the solicitor and contacted the builder.

The bank managed to almost scupper things at the last minute by insisting we needed an independent solicitor and a local search - another week! - but we persisted and here we are....

Next steps are to sign the contract with the builder and agree a start date and schedule.

Getting the Money

Well, if we thought finding a builder was difficult, it had nothing on securing the money.

We are in the nice position (like a lot of people) that our house has increased in value in the last 5 years - in fact it has just about doubled, meaning we had a decent amount of equity. Our lender (the Woolwich) has a rule that it will generally only lend 80% of the value of a property. This meant that to finance the extension we needed to borrow against the final value when it is finished.

I spent some time with the mortgage advisor and she spent some time on the phone to HQ to confirm that we could get the money in sensible stages and on the product (10 yr fixed rate) that we wanted. 'Yes' said head office.

So we filled in all the paperwork, stumped up the ridiculous £300 valuation fee and waited...... and waited.....I phoned everyone including the now ubiquitous Indian service centre and they said...

'Compooter says no' (to borrow a phrase) No we can't borrow that much - 'but it's against the finished house' says I - so it's a self build they say, you cant port your existing mortgage for that - 'no it's an extension' says I - oh, so it's stage payments - you can't have a fixed rate on them.....

So I phoned my mortgage advisor - who was on holiday. BUT - she had handed it up to her area manager.

So he chased the service centre and got them to instruct the valuer - who took his time and appeared to forget to value the extension initially, but hadn't. This had taken several WEEKS - but I had kept our builder informed and we still had him booked (just).

Then we found out that the computer was right - we couldn't have a fixed rate for the extra money. Bridging loan then... phoned the Barclays loan line (Barclays own Woolwich and I have been with them 20+ yrs), but as soon as I mentioned early repayment they refused to proceed.... great!

Eventually, I settled on a discount tracker mortgage on the basis it should only be for 6 months and we can restructure it all at the end. Suffice to say, Barclays/Woolwich get NO recommendation from me (despite their decent rates) and there will be a few complaints going in from me, and the area manager on our behalf.

But the end result is we should have the money soon and we are meeting Geoff tonight to agree the schedule.... We may finally have got there - arghhhh!

Detailed Plans

Here is the plan for the ground floor (minus the kitchen):
The innocuous little diamond in the middle of the large room is actually a pillar. This holds up the 3 beams directly and 2 indirectly - hence the comment in the Builder post about Geoff's insurance - that pillar holds up the house.... once the existing external walls are down the existing house is being supported by props!

The upstairs is more conventional. We have designed the dressing room so that it can be converted to a fourth bedroom easily - mainly in case we want to sell it.

The main extravagance upstairs is the huuuuge bath! Depending on how the budget is going when we get to the bathroom and en-suite, they will either be really nice, or pretty basic - we'll just have to wait and see.

The Kitchen is the big expense downstairs. All being well it will look like this:


This was mocked up using the Alno kitchen planner although it's not an Alno kitchen.