The whole house

Some slightly ropey photos today. Here is the whole rear of the house. You can see the full scale of the extension at the right of the house


Here you can see the front of the house. The window lintel isn't on yet, but should be up tomorrow.
Rob is now here full time bricking and Geoff has him working on the front and gable walls so the main roof can go on soon. We need Howard the structural engineer to work out whether the RSJ along the side of the house is up to the job if we go for a traditional roof (as Geoff suggests) rather than a modern truss job. The trusses would sit on the front and rear walls whereas a traditional roof will load the side walls as well. Once we know the loadings, RSJ sizes and cost comparison we'll decide which roof to go for and Geoff can order it straight away to put it up (hopefully) the week after next. Then we should see the glass going in and the extension made water tight (excluding the porch). Time to get the valuer back and get the next load of money! £12K left at the moment.

Next door have also got into the act with a dormer (and a similar side extension later on)....

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!