No Progress !!

Have been away in Malaysia on business and the reports from the UK is work is still at a stand still.. has been like that for 3 weeks now. I could not get an update from Epsom Builders so called All Foundations directly.. and Andrew Murfin told me that the work was due to start again "imminently" and would take around 2 weeks to complete. Cant wait to get Stage 1 finished and signed off.. so we can proceed to the brick work.

Sign off of the stages

Just found out that my architect does not have the qualifications to sign off the buildstore stages ! Also neother the current builder or the possible replacement has either. I was a bit stuck but called John O'Toole the NHBC solo inspector and he said he could do that so we are back on track again.

Bricks Approved

Had a call from the architect saying that the bricks we submitted have been signed off. This is quite a red/creamy brick - with a handmade look - quite textured. I need to find a concrete slate coloured tile as the one submitted was a red mix and we are not sure we want that. Some samples of the brick above. Not sure what it will look like on our house yet - hopefully we will know in a few months time.

Brick and Tile Match the Sequel

We were told last week that the brick and tile we chose was not approved by Tony Evans the council conservation officer ! Mark suggested we look at a house he is building in Epsom.. and we did and liked the brick. We cant have the tile though because Tony Evans wants plain concrete. Anyway we think we have some options so our architect is going to get these approved. Needless to say we put the previous brick order on hold.

Piling work starts

The piling started on schedule on 5th October in the pouring rain but all seemed to proceed well. Half way through we were told the step had to come back but only 350 mm rather than the previous 500 mm. We can do this by grinding down the piles at the front.

Work Starts !!!

Work finally started again at 9am on Monday 5th October. We all met on site in the pouring rain for the architect to check and finalise the levels. After that we had a short meeting at home to discuss changes needed to the drawings and pricing for stage 1. The architect suggested asking a quantity surveyor to comment on the pricing and provided a recommendation. I later made an appointment to see him.

Later the same day the architect called to say we no longer need a step in the house - so it can all be at the same level - good news - but am confused about why this was such as issue before.

I am expecting a full new set of drawings to be produced this week. Have also asked for these on cad format.

In the meantime my new contractor is away on holiday so nothing will progress on that front for a while.

Also was told we cant have an air source heat pump so we are back to solar panels. More research needed.

Had a chat with Andy Bull who we met at the house renovation show about the network and cabling. Am waiting for some information from him so we can finalise the designs.

Keys

I went to see Epsom Builders today to get the keys to the land and mentioned we had a concern about whether the house would fit in the space available. Mark very kindly offered to send Paul to the site so we could take some quick measurements - and put our minds at rest. We also made some copes for the keys to make site visits easier in future.

Bathrooms

We spend a few ours in Bathstore in Sutton to get a feel for the sort of bathrooms we will be putting into the new house. The highlight will be the master ensuite which will have a minimilistic wet room and a separate large jacuzzi bath and twin sinks. We are not going to fill the space with furtniture and storage but go for a less cluttered look. However we think having some shelf space around the bath for toiletries and decorative items will be nice. Alicia will be having a corner shower with a rain water shower head. The family bathroom upstairs will be a bath and an over bath shower and twin sinks again. On the ground floor we will just have a simple cloakroom - but it does look like quite a large room so we might think about how best to use the extra space.

Kitchens

We visited Magnet in Sutton and met a kitchen designer called Asria to help put our initial kitchen design together. We ended up with a complete design for the kitchen and utiity room. The kitchen came out a lot bigger than we expected - but the utility room was a lot smaller. Just shows how difficult it is to envisage scale when you just work to floor plans. We chose one of the most expensive ranges in Magnet - Java which is a light wood colour with black granite worktops. We have a nice 5 burner gas hob - 900 mm wide, some other more basic neff appliances and a huge american style fridge freezer which will have a built in water filter and ice maker. The whole process took a few hours to get the design done and we had to visit the shop again for pricing. The list price was £45,000 - but rapidly came down to around £25,000 with discounts etc. If VAT is removed and we push a little further we should have the kitchen supplied and fitted for around £20,000 which is expensive but inside the budget.

New Prices

Broke the news to Epsom builders on Thursday that we are going to get alternative quotes for the build so I can ensure I am getting a market competitive price. The situation now is that Epsom will do stage 1 which is the foundations and drainage and I will get some altermative quotes for the rest of the project. We think we can do a fixed price upto stage 4 and then stage 5 will depend on details of the internal finishes which will take time to work out. I am preparing a detailed spec defining all the elements in stages 2, 3 and 4 for pricing. I have Epsom builders to prepare details for Stage 1 - as work is due to start again on 5th October.

Alternative prices ?

I was getting more and more frustrated with constant changes in the build price and confusion over markups of subcontract costs. So I decided to send all the drawings to an alternative builder. His initial reaction was there was potential for some cost savings - but so far I have not received the figures yet. Changing will not be easy especially as we have now just been given the go ahead and the last thing I want is more delays. I might just need to proceed with stage 1 while I pin down the prices for the rest and see if I can change at a later stage. Will post again once I have the alternative quote.

At last a response from the council

After a delay of almost 2 months we received approval from the planning department to start work again !!! I dont have this in writing yet just and email from Mark Wilson from Epsom Builders saying he had spoke to Jacey Yates and have been given a verbal go ahead. Apparantly the tree officer was happy with the revised foundation design providing we made some changes to the surface water drainage at the back of the house. This may involve putting in an additional soakaway. The builders have scheduled the foundation company to come back on site on 28th September. Lets hope we get going this time.

Costings

Have spent all day going through all the various price estimates to analyse the changes. The total project price is actually pretty much the same as when we started. However the problem is it should be around 50K cheaper due to costs which we have removed. I actually worked out 50K costs had been added which almost exactly compensates.. of these 34K were unexpected. Need to have a long discussion with the builders about this and come to an agreement. At the moment there is no signed contract .. so they are taking a risk. However, as the work has started it is now hard to change suppliers.

A day of drama

I had already planned to work from home this afternoon as I had a meeting with the NHBC inspector booked for 3pm.

However I got a call from the architect saying the tree officer had been on site with "all guns blazing" - and said we could not build with 9 metres of the tree trunk. The current plans show the house edge within 6 metres. If this was the case we would not be able to build or would have to very signifiantly reduce the size of the house making the whole project not worthwhile and the land next to worthless. He also said there was a drain running across the land which might need to be diverted and we would need a camera survey to assess whether it was actually used.

Both bits of news came as a shock but I had another read through all the correspondence and it seemed clear that we could build near the tree providing piled foundations were used. I called the architect back and explained this and he said he would speak to the council and get clarification. To cut a long story short it seems the tree officer got it wrong and we can build as designed as long as we take the right precautions. However we need to split the ground floor across two levels so the back of the house is 50 cm higher than the front ! The architect was confident he could work around this without spoling the design. He would need to check the impact on the higher floors. Oh and about the drains.. it is most likely they are disused which means we can probably just ignore them. However this still needs to be checked ofcourse.

The NHBC interview took all of 5 minutes and it seems this is fine and the policy has been activated.

Work Starts at Last

Today we had the water supply fitted and also started on site clearance. At long last some activity on the site.

"Knot" so good!

We recently acknowledged that there is a rare plant growing on our plot "Japanese Knotweed" and from the title, obviously it is causing alot of problems. Japanese Knotweed can grow through practically anything including brick, and there is a risk of the building being destroyed and if not dealt with before the build, it's growing, growing, gone!

The Knotweed has hollow stems with distinct raised nodes giving it the appearance of bamboo, therefore it is easily confused. The builders should be able to take care of the problem so we can start the build as soon as possible. It shouldn't delay the build very much, but its still a problem and it's "Knot" so good.

Completed At Last !!!

By completed I mean we have completed on the purchase of the land. So really this is step one of the long road between now and having the house completed so we can all move in. Due to the delays we expect the build to now complete early in 2010 - probably around Feb/March. This is later than we wanted but it is a good time to put our current house on the market either to lease or sell. I just spoke to Keith (the estate agent) and he should be dropping the keys (to the gate at the front of the property) soon. Nothing too interesting but once we get the keys we will take a few more pics of the site - which no doubt will look no different but at least we will know we finally own it !!

What the "h" !

Guess what .. we are getting ready to complete on the purchase of the land and got a panic email from the solicitor saying we need a revised mortgage offer issued because the building society mis-spelt Rizwana's middle name. They made is Shanaz instead of Shahnaz. Who would have thought a missing "h" could cause such a big problem. Anyway we got the new paperwork through today so we are still hoping to complete next week.. as long as nothing else goes wrong ofcourse !

More delays !!!

Just heard that my solicitor is not happy to complete until after he
has received a letter from the neighbours building society saying they
agree to the connection to the drains !!! They have agreed to write
the letter.. but so far no letter has actually been produced. I
personally think this is a small risk so will be pushing for
completion anyway. Lets see what happens.

More site pics

This shows the site after some of the rubbish clearance work has been done. Does not look very big in these photographs.. and we know we are going to have a tiny back garden - but plenty of room for the house - and a good driveway for at least 4 or 5 cars at the front.

Update on the Deed of Easement

Got this text from the seller (Andy) on Friday .. "I have just driven to Ali's office (5pm Friday Heathrow !!!) and have a signed copy in my hand! Will drop to my solicitors over the weekend. Cheers. AA". He is referring to the Deed of Easement which we needed the neighbour to sign so we can connect to his drainage. This simple piece of paper has caused a delay of around 2 monthis in completing the purchase of the land.. so good this has finally been sorted out. We really should almost be there by now. We should be able to complete the purchase next week and then we can actually start on the build.

Budgets

I need to brief Harris on budget constraints to temper some of his research into electronics. A 70 inch OLED TV may well physically fit into the lounge but unless there are some drastic price reductions unlikely to fit into the budget !

Games Consoles (and some T.V'S)

I'm really excited about playing on the PS3 in my new bedroom (where it will probably be) on a 40" 1080p T.V (Hopefully) we are still deciding on what to get for the rooms. XBOX 360's will be used as media extenders which is good for when the long awaited Project Natal for XBOX comes out. Alicia will have the Wii in her room with a similar T.V to mine, and I cant wait to play some new PS games in 1080p. Were expecting to get a 70" LED T.V probably Samsung because they are one of the few companys that do the quite new LED T.V's. I cant wait to play something like Gran Turismo 5 (expected to be relesased late this year) because of its graphic quality. They have also begun making 3D PS3 games so am also looking forward to some good ones to buy . That's basically all i can say about what i'll have to wait a while to get but hopefully during this wait more new stuff is released ready for once the house is ready for us to move into. Everone is very excited, not to mention myself.

Progress on the Purchase

We signed the Deed of Transfer and Deed of Easement documents. We just need these to be signed by the seller and the neighbour then I think that finally completes all the formalities on the purchase of the land.. so 5 months in to the project we finally reach... step 1 !

Site Pictures

As you can probably see from the weather these pictures were taken in February 2009 shortly after the heavy snow fall in the South. Just taken a while to put them up - they show the building plot fenced off and some of the views over the park. When we finally complete on the land purchase I will put up some more recent pictures to show the site in summer.

Naming the House

We have lots of time to sort this out but one of the debates has been the name of the house. We did think of something like Parkside because we are right next to a park. However we are still thinking about other options. We have a large oak tree next door and also some woods so Oaktree House, Oaktrees, Woodside or Woodlands are also options. Perhaps even Park View as the main room has great views of the park.

Deed of Transfer

We got our paperwork through on Friday 12th June to sign the Deed of Transfer. Another step closer to finally completing on the purchase of the land.

Multi Media

We are going to have a Hi-Tech Multimedia system which we are going to design ourselves. I have been given the job of chief architect for multi-media and all the technology in the house.

We are going to have the server room in the study. This will house a rack mounted server and the switch panel for the network. We are going to install cat 6 throughout the house and also run coax cable to all the main living areas.

The server rack will include a media PC running windows home server. This will be able to stream video, audio and photographs to any devices around the house via the LAN and the use of media extenders (including XBOX, PS3 and portable devices). There will also be a wireless LAN which will be used to connect to the various laptops.

The main server will be backed up regularly to the internet via a skydrive service.

There will be 4 main plasma/LCD/LED screens. One in the living room, one in the family room, one in Alicias bedroom and one in Danial's bedroom. We are also thinking about a small screen in Dad's room in the gym area. We will also have a projector and screen in Danials room for home cinema and gaming.

We are thinking about implementing virgin boxes throughout the house rather than sky as we prefer virgin broadband and phone services. We will be implementing freesat so we can access MTA but we will also be able to access that via the internet to any screen in the house.

We are not going for a centralised concept - we will have the devices close to the screens where they will be used. This may limit flexibility but should make the system easier to use and more reliable. In time everything will be channelled through the media server which will result in the ultimate flexibility but the technology is just not mature enough yet.

We will have recording capabilities to the virgin boxes, but also hard drive recorders and a PVR installed on the media server. That should be more than sufficient.

Our main viewing room will be in the living room. Here we will have our large plasma screen (over 50 inch) and a surround sound system with roof or wall mounted speakers. We will have a nice multi-media amp here, with a blu ray DVD player as well as the Virgin HD box and the HD media extended to connect to the media server. Nice !

Games consoles will mainly be divided between Alicia's and Danial's room - probably the PS3 in Danials and the Wii in Alicia's with the XBOX in the living room.

Designing my room!

My dad handles all the legal stuff because I think designing is much more fun. It's true that he is very clever so he knows more about law than me. I'm not thinking of becoming a lawyer in the future anyway. I will deisgn my own room and most of the stuff will be purple. I am excited about my en-suite too!

Power sources

We have a planning requirement that 10% of the energy needs to come from renewable sources. Sounds simple but it is amazing how little even the experts know about how to do this. Maybe most people just dont bother and maybe the planning departments never actually check. Howeber, the last thing you want is a problem at the late stage of a build so I did a lot of research up front and talked to different people. The best option would have been a ground source heat pump and we even made the utility room bigger to accomodate this. However there was not enough ground outside for the ground loops which would mean digging deep bore holes which would have been very costly. The cost of this virtually ruled out this option. So we decided on an air source heat pump. The main downside of these is that they might be noisy and they also produce less power than ground source. However we are assured they will be sufficient to generate 10% and the company providing them will write an energy statement to support this. Solar panels by themselves would probably not be sufficient but we have the option of using them as a top up if required. These can be costly but can be added at a late stage in the build if required. We are very tempted by having a ventilation system for heating and cooling but it will add quite a bit to the build cost and we have to see if we can fit it into the budget.

En-suite or not

One of the big debates was organising an ensuite for Alicia which was not on the earliest plans. The original drawings had two family bathrooms.. when Alicia saw this she was not too pleased. However, as Alicia's requirements are very important we had to redesign the middle floor and we split the family bathroom into two - an ensuite for Alicia and a separate WC. This means a total of 3 bathrooms in the house with 2 additional WC's. Lets hope you are not desperate to go to the toilet because with 5 to choose from you might wet yourself while making the decision.. I suppose you could just go for the closest.. but that would be too obvious ! We looked at so many options - including making Alicia's ensuite a Jack and Jill bathroom to allow access to it from the main corridor but these were all ruled out for various reasons. The final design means the family bathroom is on the top floor and the second bedroom does not have a bathroom.. but in the circumstances it is the best compromise.

A question of drains

When we got the estimate from Thames Water of around £20,000 for connecting to the drains it came as a shock. We were literally just about to exchange contracts at the time and it was lucky for us we were able to delay this. However even more fortunately we found that we could connect to the drains next door we just needed a legal document called a Deed of Easement to be signed by the neighbour. However, sorting this out has caused a few weeks delay and is still in progress at the moment. Once done we can complete on the land purchase. You can see our house and the neighbours and where we will make the connection. The neighbour could have asked for money to allow the connection but he did not as long as we promised to make any repairs to his property and the fence caused by the work we would need to do. We are fortunate that we are going have great neighbours to live next door to.

Rizwana wants to see a house

Just showing Rizwana the blog and her first reaction.. "Darling, why can't we see the house in Cheam which costs more than 1 million pounds ?" My response "Ok my dear make the appointment and while you are at it try and meet a millionaire !"

Brick Match

One of our early tasks was to choose the bricks. We saw a house near where we live which we liked the look off and decided to try and match. Not as easy as you might think. In the end we chose a brick called Hathersage blend from a company called Terca. An interesting mix of colours - lets hope it looks good when the house is built. Not really a match to the house we saw.. a bit warmer and maybe even better.

Original Plan

Here are some early plans of the proposed house. We worked hard on these and have created some more recent drawings which I will upload when they are finalised. It was a great experience working with the architect Jim Langley who did an excellent job for us.

Welcome to our blog

Here we will from time to time document our first (and most likely last) house build. It seems such a long time since we stood on the building plot on 31st January and shook hands with the seller Andy Abbosh when we agreed the purchase price. I was just about to travel to Malaysia a few days later and was expecting that everything would be sorted out shortly after my return. No such luck ... up to now we still have not completed on the land purchase ! However (fingers crossed) we expect this to happen very very soon.