remove garage, extension, wall removal, kitchen

We have an asbestos roofed lean to garage attached to the side length of our house - just under 7 x 2m. It is complicated by the fact our neighbours garage abuts our garage. They have illegally turned their garage into living space and according to the builders next door have claimed all three of the walls involved (their garage wall, the central dividing wall and our garage wall) so we will need to build a fourth wall to put our roof on. Our garage looks awful, it leaks and it has to go.

We had a builder (used in the past) come around with a view to replacing the garage with another garage. It turns out this is not possible and it has to be done properly with insulation, proper ground works to meet modern garage building regs. The work was turning into an extension so we said how much more would it be to just make this a livable extension space and extend the kitchen into it. We were told this would be do able on our budget of £20k. Anyway we asked for a quote in writing and after a few months of chasing with no quote, I got other builders in. Again they said we were ok on budget, extension would be ok but we never heard from them again. I finally get two builders who would give estimates. One came in at £40k roughly (this estimate was just the figure) and the second came in at £32k just for the extension work. This estimate came with a breakdown of the work but no breakdown of the cost of each part of the work. Now neither of these builders sounded at all interested in the work (the 32k guy even said if he had known the garage was attached to neighbours he would not have come out) so I have no idea if these are 'not interested' therefore overpriced quotes or if they are reasonable!

The original builder has reappeared on the scene again and is still offering to do the work I have again asked him for a quote and he is going to come back in a few weeks to refresh his memory.

Am I way too low on budget here? Financially the house is not worth spending £40k on because houses around here just do not sell for much money.

Comments

  • Is the rebuild 7m * 2m? sounds a bit narrow for a garage.
    Thinking critically since 1996....
  • Furts
    Furts Posts: 4,474 Forumite
    gracie83 wrote: »

    We had a builder (used in the past) come around with a view to replacing the garage with another garage. It turns out this is not possible and it has to be done properly with insulation, proper ground works to meet modern garage building regs.

    Check this out. It depends what you want, and what you want to spend. But an ordinary garage repair is not subject to any regulations. Even building a carport/garage should not cause issues. If it is an integral garage then OK, but yours sounds like you have a proper back door and your garage is not part of your home.
  • gracie83
    gracie83 Posts: 301
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    Is the rebuild 7m * 2m? sounds a bit narrow for a garage.

    Yep 7 x 2m. You cannot fit a car in the garage which is why I find the whole fire safety regulations so amusing. It will get even narrower when the new wall is built.
  • gracie83
    gracie83 Posts: 301
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    Furts wrote: »
    Check this out. It depends what you want, and what you want to spend. But an ordinary garage repair is not subject to any regulations. Even building a carport/garage should not cause issues. If it is an integral garage then OK, but yours sounds like you have a proper back door and your garage is not part of your home.

    The regs I was able to find were 10cm drop from house down to garage floor (already exists), fireproof door garage to house - can easily get fitted, being structurally sound (the current garage is definitely not), good drainage (current garage leaks like a sieve and floods when it rains!)
  • ratrace
    ratrace Posts: 1,009
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    do you have any pictures so we can get a better idea
    also why not just take it down and leave it as that and put up some sort of fence up to divide you from next door as you say if houses dont sell for much then you would be silly just spending money and hassle for not much return

    remember money = your time and effort which you will never get back so spend your cash wisely sorry this is mse
    People are caught up in an egotistic artificial rat race to display a false image to society. We want the biggest house, fanciest car, and we don't mind paying the sky high mortgage to put up that show. We sacrifice our biggest assets our health and time, We feel happy when we see people look up to us and see how successful we are”

    Rat Race
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