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.
Wednesday, 23 May 2007
Tuesday, 24 April 2007
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!
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!
Friday, 20 April 2007
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.
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.
Finding a Builder
Builders
oo er. What a palaver. I think we spoke to 12-15 builders in the end. Some didn't return calls, some took plans and never returned - note here - get plenty of copies!!!!
We got a range of quotes from mid forties to one hundred and twenty thousand. The standard figure you see quoted is about £1000/m2 which means £2000/m2 (ground floor area) if you go for a 2 storey extension. This is a good budgeting figure, but you should be able to beat it with a small family builder.
We thought we had a builder, who changed his mind, then changed it again, then finally just didn't turn up for a meeting.... The moral here is definitely to keep in touch with your builder regularly even before you have contracted.
After that let down we got a load more quotes and finally settled on a local builder - Geoff Brookfield (http://www.brookfieldbuilders.co.uk/general.htm). So far Geoff has been on time, answered the phone and also been very accommodating with my bank's messing about and delays. Fingers crossed these bode well for his performance on the job!
To be honest, choosing the builder has been the most frightening aspect of the job so far. Entrusting the safety of our house (and next door) to a stranger based on a few chats with them and their references is pretty daunting. Needless to say we will be checking Geoff's insurance very carefully. (See the page on the detailed plans when I've done it for why this is especially important for us).
As for finding a builder, we asked for personal recommendations from friends and colleagues, used the federation of master builders website (generally the more expensive quotes came from here), and the yellow pages. We also used material suppliers as a source, including when we were considering thin-joint blockwork (Thanks to Chris Hirst at Clan).
I would suggest getting more than the recommended 3 quotes. If you are like me, you'll 'settle' on someone when you meet them, but it's important to balance their quote with a range. The cheapest is not necessarily 'dodgy' but a general rule of thumb is that material costs will not change, so the only real variables between quotes are labour and profit. Larger companies have more overheads so will usually be more expensive - but you have the 'comfort' factor, plus they should do the job faster (more labour available) and they should not have the biggest problem....
Plumbers and Sparkies!!!! Every small builder struggles to rally plumbers and sparkies reliably. Check your builder either employees his own (or does that work himself) - this is unlikely with 3-man-band builders as they don't have enough work to keep trades fully employed. If they do it themselves - make sure they are qualified and certified properly. If they have a regular team they bring together on jobs, that's probably less of a risk.
So... my advice would be to make sure the builder has the responsibility - ensure you contract the builder to manage the trades and that he is financially responsible for any delays they introduce. He may be OK with using your recommended tradesmen (if you have them) but you may have to accept his tradesmen. I would say this is worth it to avoid the hassle with organising things. We have taken this as a general principle - the builder has the whole job. We'll tell him if we want to use particular suppliers (eg. Kitchen) and we'll pay them, but it's up to Geoff to be ready for them and organise them all. If your builder won't do that, you'll end up project managing things - get a drop in the price, and be prepared to take a lot of time off work or at least be prepared for a huge phone bill and a lot of extra stress.....
I'll document how it goes with Geoff. Hopefully it will be basically positive (we're bound to fall out somewhere!) but if not, at least you'll know why and how - so you can avoid any mistakes we might make....
oo er. What a palaver. I think we spoke to 12-15 builders in the end. Some didn't return calls, some took plans and never returned - note here - get plenty of copies!!!!
We got a range of quotes from mid forties to one hundred and twenty thousand. The standard figure you see quoted is about £1000/m2 which means £2000/m2 (ground floor area) if you go for a 2 storey extension. This is a good budgeting figure, but you should be able to beat it with a small family builder.
We thought we had a builder, who changed his mind, then changed it again, then finally just didn't turn up for a meeting.... The moral here is definitely to keep in touch with your builder regularly even before you have contracted.
After that let down we got a load more quotes and finally settled on a local builder - Geoff Brookfield (http://www.brookfieldbuilders.co.uk/general.htm). So far Geoff has been on time, answered the phone and also been very accommodating with my bank's messing about and delays. Fingers crossed these bode well for his performance on the job!
To be honest, choosing the builder has been the most frightening aspect of the job so far. Entrusting the safety of our house (and next door) to a stranger based on a few chats with them and their references is pretty daunting. Needless to say we will be checking Geoff's insurance very carefully. (See the page on the detailed plans when I've done it for why this is especially important for us).
As for finding a builder, we asked for personal recommendations from friends and colleagues, used the federation of master builders website (generally the more expensive quotes came from here), and the yellow pages. We also used material suppliers as a source, including when we were considering thin-joint blockwork (Thanks to Chris Hirst at Clan).
I would suggest getting more than the recommended 3 quotes. If you are like me, you'll 'settle' on someone when you meet them, but it's important to balance their quote with a range. The cheapest is not necessarily 'dodgy' but a general rule of thumb is that material costs will not change, so the only real variables between quotes are labour and profit. Larger companies have more overheads so will usually be more expensive - but you have the 'comfort' factor, plus they should do the job faster (more labour available) and they should not have the biggest problem....
Plumbers and Sparkies!!!! Every small builder struggles to rally plumbers and sparkies reliably. Check your builder either employees his own (or does that work himself) - this is unlikely with 3-man-band builders as they don't have enough work to keep trades fully employed. If they do it themselves - make sure they are qualified and certified properly. If they have a regular team they bring together on jobs, that's probably less of a risk.
So... my advice would be to make sure the builder has the responsibility - ensure you contract the builder to manage the trades and that he is financially responsible for any delays they introduce. He may be OK with using your recommended tradesmen (if you have them) but you may have to accept his tradesmen. I would say this is worth it to avoid the hassle with organising things. We have taken this as a general principle - the builder has the whole job. We'll tell him if we want to use particular suppliers (eg. Kitchen) and we'll pay them, but it's up to Geoff to be ready for them and organise them all. If your builder won't do that, you'll end up project managing things - get a drop in the price, and be prepared to take a lot of time off work or at least be prepared for a huge phone bill and a lot of extra stress.....
I'll document how it goes with Geoff. Hopefully it will be basically positive (we're bound to fall out somewhere!) but if not, at least you'll know why and how - so you can avoid any mistakes we might make....
Thursday, 19 April 2007
Building Regs
Once we had planning permission, the next step was to gain building regs. We decided not to continue with the architects for this work as we wanted a very detailed set of drawings to enable the builder to work without much input from us. We found a freelance architectural technician to draw the plans for us.
He drew the plans and worked with the structural engineer to get the beam calcs done. We ended up needing 6 beams and a pillar in the middle of the big room to keep beam sizes down and allow us to open up the stairs. The net effect being we need a party wall agreement with our attached neighbours. (see the direct government website for info on this)
Luckily, despite them objecting to the plans, they have been reasonable in our dealings on the party wall and our structral engineer has met with them to explain everything - hopefully we'll get their agreement this week!
We gained building regs relatively quickly once the structural calcs were submitted - all we need now is the money from the bank and we're off.
He drew the plans and worked with the structural engineer to get the beam calcs done. We ended up needing 6 beams and a pillar in the middle of the big room to keep beam sizes down and allow us to open up the stairs. The net effect being we need a party wall agreement with our attached neighbours. (see the direct government website for info on this)
Luckily, despite them objecting to the plans, they have been reasonable in our dealings on the party wall and our structral engineer has met with them to explain everything - hopefully we'll get their agreement this week!
We gained building regs relatively quickly once the structural calcs were submitted - all we need now is the money from the bank and we're off.
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