Money Saving on Renovations and Property Development - DIY

ictmad

HugoSP wrote: »

We 1) It does not always follow that builders merchants are cheaper than DIY stores. B and Q are often cheaper than Travis Perkins, despite my havin an account with TP.

For large purchases I shop around and haggle with the merchants. Most branches of merchants are what are known as profit centres, so branches of the same chain will often compete against each other. Builders can save/make £00s in a few hours by shopping around. My local BM offer me lower prices for power tools than most internet based suppliers, after I complain about the prices they offer everyone else!

its a problem we come ACROSS a lot at my work ,people opemn accounts and expect to get discounts on everything,but with tp/keyline u have to come into the branch and sit down with the manager and discuss spa,s(special price agreements)so if you say the manager ur a builder/joiner or even just building a house and ur gonig to be buying say 100 sheets of platers board,200 bags of opc and 5000 blocks then he,ll set up special prices on those that you,ll get everytime u buy them,otgher items u wont generally get discount on unless u negotiate spa,s on them,BUT we tend to give good customers discount on non spa items as there good customers,although our company has 4 other branches in a 45 mile radius we still look afetr customers and even get stuff we havent got from other branches the next day to look after them
makita power tools(only brand we sell))we tend to give massive discounts on,and for being such as small branch(smallest in the chain)we sell a awful lot as we give massive disvcounts on them better deals than most of the big diy stores,screwfix/online and bm,s in our nearest city 30 miles away,we have also been the biggest shop performer(power tools,tools,paint,joint cement etc)in tehwhole copmany(uk wide) for last 4 months so we tend to look after people more i think as were a small branch we tend to look aafter our customers more as we know most of them rather than bigger brnaches where a lot of people are just faces

ictmad

ormus wrote: »

hugosp, is correct in that are times when a quote off the local builder chap is the best bet.
when i had the flat roof done, i priced all the stuff from wickes, labour was free, ie myself and my son. ended up with the bitumen chap cause his total bill was only 250 quid. the diy saving wasnt worth getting me neck broke!

but these events are very rare indeed.

i tend to use wickes for a lot of stuff,but then i get massibve staff discounts there(lol) i think there better than b+q/homebase focus etc,but maybe iam bias we get a lot of people at work saying(customers) i can buy this cheape in wickes than keyline,why as its same company,but we dont stock as big a range as wickes/tp so dont sell ahlf of what they have

HugoSP

ictmad

That is the experience I have had with TP.

I have been quoted 40% discount at the local branch but they didnt have all the items I wanted in stock. I was driving past another branch in a town about 15 miles away, so I popped in to get all the stuff, I asked for 50% and got it!

HugoSP

How many of you have bought a vehicle (car, van etc) for a large project?

A few years ago after having run 2 cars for a while I bought a cheap van. This dealt with rubbish removal, building materials etc and even moved us into our new house.

Running this in addition to our main car cost more but probably saved its costs in the duties it carried out.

Have anyone else had good or bad experiences of doing this, whether it be a cheap car that is scrapped afterwards or a van that mey have been sold on?

HugoSP

I was reminded of another tip when replying to another post today.

If you are carpeting a house or even a arge area of it in the same carpet, leave your stairs until last.

The reason I say this is that the chances are that you may be able to carpet the stairs out of the offcuts from everywhere else!

I did this in a let property. We had carpeted the upstairs room from a remnant. The room was an odd shape so we decided to do this first. When this was done we managed to carpet most of the stairs using the offcut. The rest of the carpet was taken from another remnent that was earmarked for another purpose, in such a way that it would still fit the room it was going into.

sarahjay

these guys are really cheap & worth checking out
http://www.builderdepot.co.uk/index.htm
there's a £150 minimum order for free delivery, otherwise it's £15

sarahjay

forgot to say that builders depot are in north/north west london

adr0ck

Hugo

screwfix are now on quidco at 6% :beer:

for cheapish plumbing stuff:

http://www.discountedheating.co.uk/

for cheapish sanitaryware

http://www.tradebathrooms.com/

for cheapish lighting - well worth looking at prices (mirrored bathroom lights are a very good price)

http://www.nationallighting.co.uk/

toolstation is very good for some items (as has been mentioned) and so is ironmongerydirect (both cheaper than screwfix for certain items)

magnet can be very good for offers now and again (not just on kitchens but on most joinery items) - they usually have special offers on brochures every month - pop into store and pick one up