Which Builder? General Advice
tgross39
8 years ago
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tgross39
8 years agoRelated Discussions
Advice needed for lighting above kitchen island which contains a hob.
Comments (21)Hi @shanagarry80, thanks for your comments! I'm not at home right now so I can't be sure how big the extractor fan actually is but it is over a 90cm hob and oven, so must be at least 90cm. It doesn't look particularly large in situ and the inbuilt lights are very good for illuminating the cooking area. Have a look at Gutmann's website; as I said in one of my earlier comments, other companies do make similar extractors but our kitchen people thought this one best, however our kitchen is now 3 years old and a lot can happen in that time! Hope you have fun designing your new kitchen!...See MoreWhich piece of renovation advice would you NOT pass on?
Comments (13)Probably the 'worst' advice, we had, was when renovating a house in Provence. Fitting everything into the high-ceiling bathroom including a shower area, meant we were persuaded to build in a bath across our nice window with shutters. (.."There may be someone who wants a bath"...). It was therefore never as easy to just walk up to the (wisteria-fringed) window and look out. In 10 years, we never (once) used the bath, far preferring the really nice walk in shower, as did all our guests. (The bath turned out to be a dust and spider catcher and was a (back) pain to clean). Lesson learned. Having renovated several properties and apartments since, we have simply removed baths and concentrated on installing lovely to walk in, spacious and safe showers with decent water pressure. We have never regretted putting in under-floor heating....See MoreCow boy builders - disaster
Comments (10)I feel your pain and you are not alone, albeit yours is an extreme case. We were left with a crap subfloor in our (cripplingly expensive) kitchen extension. I won’t bore u as I posted about it before. The only real solution is to rip it out and redo - however due to underfloor heating and a kitchen being installed this isn’t immediately feasible and without an admission that thingsarent right (settlement my arse) we aren’t in a hurry to address things, even cosmetically, we can’t afford to! my friend and neighbour is 3 yrs down the line following building work and only just finishing (small Victorian semi!) due to a whole litany of bad practice-builders (with every credential going inc loads of recommendation) went awol, Plumber’s work led to condemned boiler., all new bathrooms had to be ripped out the list goes on. another friend is paying 15k to have roof work redone after a bodge job from her builder who got off at court due to a technicality. theres no answer other than confronting them, escalating cases to legal eagles, and naming and shaming those who rip u off and take no responsibility for bad practice or even sometimes genuine errors. once u get your house back you’ll soon get inspired and want to finish it off nicely (and quickly)! Have u lined up someone to redo works?...See MoreHelp! Tendering for builder quotes..... getting nowhere fast!
Comments (8)Thanks Jonathan, good to hear that our budget doesn't sound way off! We know we're in a pricier part of the country, but have been shocked at the quotes received so far. I didn't think our design was that elaborate! We have one steel where we are opening up the back of the house to push the kitchen out, plus a vaulted ceiling there with a couple of Velux windows. Our plan includes a couple of new french doors, but not bifolds or anything, so no major glazing costs. One things that could push costs up is our extension roof as its a slightly odd design (flattened a bit at the apex) due to jobsworth planning officer. We were also hoping to have it vaulted with one Velux, so there may be costs there with insulation, wiring, beams etc, although the engineer didn't think a ridge steel was necessary. There are no major plot limitations or access issues. We do need our existing tandem garage demolishing, plus removal of possible asbestos roof and moving the manhole to the new side passage. We also know that one corner of our new kitchen will need deeper foundations due to our leylandii hedge (which we'll probably remove at some point anyway!) - we've already had a fruit tree removed so it didn't impact the other side of the foundations. We have also asked for under-floor heating in the kitchen and know that we'll need to move/replace our boiler and possibly have a new consumer unit. We also asked them to quote for a couple of "extra" bits, like replacing the existing ancient front windows to match new ones, refitting current family bathroom, and stripping out some ugly wood cladding in the hallway. So I guess there are some issues and extras there which we need to explore further..... but we thought we had allowed for some of them by setting our budget around £100k and holding £50k back for spec decisions and unforeseen bits and bobs. We will definitely be speaking to the first builder who quoted £155k ex kitchen and bathrooms, as his quote was the most thorough and we had a good feeling about him. I think perhaps there can be some further discussion with him around costings and where we could make savings (or put things off until a later date). We were keen to get all quotes in before entering discussions, but the remaining two are taking an age..........See Moretgross39
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