More holes....

Well, Paulo the builder has been busy again. The building inspector came on friday and wanted the big hole for the pillar expanding, plus some underpinning between the chimney breasts where one of the beams will rest above. As a result , we have a bigger hole and a new hole. Once the inspector comes tomorrow lunch time we should get the base of the pillar poured and the underpinning in. Also the first few courses of bricks for the pillar - enough to sit proud of the main slab. Then the inspector comes again, the hardcore under the slab is compressed and the slab can be laid. Then things should speed up. 5000 bricks are coming on tuesday so plenty for the lads to go at!



The hole for the pillar:


A rather unusual view into the lounge:


The new hole for the underpinning... digging this was a pig - the clay was as hard as concrete and the main electrical supply cable for the house was just behind Paulo's legs! And that's the main soil pipe so not much room for manoeuvre...

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!