Building my dream home and then paying it off!

DFB35

Good morning,

I have a diary on the DFW which ive kept for a year and made a huge headway in repaying our debts as you can see from my sig!

However now my circumstances are about to change as we are starting a big expensive extension project so I thought I would come here as ultimately we will need to pay it off at some point!

I want to use this diary to document every step of the extension, costs etc.. which might be useful to someone and also as a place to vent as I believe it will be stressful at times! And then when it's been built I am hoping to start my journey to MFW and pay it off as soon as possible :money:

More details to follow...

DFB35

A bit of background as I know I like reading them myself

We bought our current house just on the outskirts of London in 2012, before that we owned a flat in London which luckily we made some money on. The house we have now is truly our forever home, sure there a lots of things I want to change about it (hence the extension) but we love the area and our road, plus our neighbours are really nice. The house itself is in ideal position for extending as it has space at the back and side with own garage so we can extend above it as well. At the moment we only have one bathroom, which is not ideal at all and three bedrooms with the third being a box room. We have two kids and as they are growing up it feels more and more cramped especially with one bathroom!

We have just finished paying off our car, and spend the last year really hammering down our debts, we have also completely changed our priorities and attitude to money and have not acquired any further debt in ages. So now feels the perfect time to do the work, we are in our early 30s so in theory have a lot of working life left in us to pay the house of before retirement haha :rotfl:

What we want - downstairs - much bigger kitchen, an extra reception room and downstairs toilet. Upstairs - and extra bedroom with ensuite and bigger main bathroom. I also want to have enough left over to do the garden, Windows, new front door and render and paint the house. Plus build a wall instead of the fencing at front, there might be a few other things like we might knock the wall through the living/ dining room. So quite a big shopping list :eek:

The cost :eek: we have estimated that we need 100k for everything. We came at this figure using online builder calculator plus some costing from my sister in laws extension a few years ago. I'm hoping we can do it a bit cheaper while hubby recons we won't have much change left over from the 100k :rotfl:

DFB35

So after making this huge decision we called up our current mortgage provider and asked if we could borrow the extra funds.

At the moment our outstanding mortgage is 151k which will rise to 251k which feels absolutely enormous! Our bank will lend us the money and gave us an agreement in principle which is valid until September, they have estimated our house to be worth 376k (it's about that on zoopla) and don't need to do another valuation. We have decided to go with a fee free 10 year fix at 2.99% making our repayments just under 1,200 a month which is 400 more than our current payment. The mortgage is for 25 years but we hope to pay it off much sooner (it allows unlimited overpayments) so hopefully be mortgage free by the time we hit our 50s!

We have also contacted the architect, the same one who did our families extension and we were very impressed with the results and more over know we can trust him. He would also manage the work and sort out the builders etc for us. The architect has been for the initial assessment and is coming back on the 16th of April to finalise our ideas and do the drawings - so exciting can't wait!

My hubby arranged the appointment and it will cost 1800 for the drawings, but I don't know when that's due (16th of April or when the drawings are ready?!) or whether it includes the planning permission, so I will get him to call and find out before architect comes. To manage the project he asks for 1k and my brother in law said it was definitely worth it and the best 1k he ever spent and as we are complete novices to this whole thing I am happy to pay that.

So here we are at the moment! Mortgage in principle and waiting for the architect. I will come and update this once we have some more news

DFB35

It has been nearly a month since i last posted and there isnt much progress but its time for an update!

Firstly the initial architect consultation was pushed back a week and we finally had it yesterday. The architect went round and measured everything up and I need to call up and obtain a DWG site plan which i will email to him on monday (approx £20). Then he will be able to do the initial drawing which he will bring to us for another consultation and we can amend things as needed. I for example having difficulties picturing some things which i hope will be clear when i see it on paper!

We will be extending to the maximum possible boundaries (I believe its 3.6 meters on the ground floor 3m roughly on the first floor), and also want to move one of the internal walls. At this stage we are trying to do the maximum and the ideal of what we want to achieve but once we obtain the builders quotes we might have to scale back a bit - this was the advice from the architect at this stage.

He explained a bit more about his fees, its £1800 payable when he completes the final drawings and then if we need to make any alterations it will be free, but all the planning permission, structural engineer or local searches fees (if we need them) will be on top.

One thing he suggested which sounds very good is the lantern skylight roof (look it up ) instead of the flat roof on the bit of the extension where we cannot build on top of (due to the neighbour boundary). This will really flood the kitchen with light :j

So the next steps are:
1. Architect does the initial drawings, shows us, we modify them and then he does the final plans from which we will be able to obtain builders quotes.

2. Then once we have the quotes we comfortable with we either put for planning permission OR scale back according to our budget and re do the plans (free) and when we finally happy go for the planning permission.

3. We need the quotes and the planning application reference number to draw the funds from the remortgage. But we dont want to draw it too early and start higher repayments until we are nearly ready to build BUT at the same time we dont want our mortgage offer to expire (September) and when checking the rates yesterday I noticed that our mortgage provider no longer offers the 10 year fix that we went for.... hmm so a bit of a time scale to work with.

Meanwhile, we are already discussing some possible decor for the extra bedroom and the bedrooms re-shuffle. I want to try and minimise the need for complete re-decorating to save on costs and try to reuse some of the furniture combinations we have.

Speak soon and I will update once I know more

LadyGnome

Good luck with the work. DH renovated our house (it's what he does) from 3 bed 1 bathroom to 4 bed with 2 bathrooms and a downstairs loo. Even though it cost a fair bit it was cheaper than moving to a 4 bed house.

We put a lantern skylight in our extension and it does make a big difference.

Building control require different info to planning so it's worth checking with your architect about that.

PurpleFairy26

Hi DFB35 were doing similar to you so have subscribed. We've got some draft plans drawn up and have builders coming this week I gave a diary too over on DFW, maybe it would be better here as we want to be a mfw too. Looking forward to having your journey.

DFB35

Hi LadyGnome and PurpleFairy :j

Thank you for popping in to my thread

LadyGnome thank you for your advice I will definitely look into that!

PurpleFairy it will be nice to follow your progress on the build, I am so excited but nervous as well, especially about living in the house while the work is being done :eek:

Speak soon

DFB35

LadyGnome wrote: »

Good luck with the work. DH renovated our house (it's what he does) from 3 bed 1 bathroom to 4 bed with 2 bathrooms and a downstairs loo. Even though it cost a fair bit it was cheaper than moving to a 4 bed house.

We put a lantern skylight in our extension and it does make a big difference.

Building control require different info to planning so it's worth checking with your architect about that.

Since deciding to go for it I have been keeping an eye on houses I pass by and saw one with lantern roof it looks amazing!!! I'm really set on having one now!

Just a few qs if you don't mind? What is it really like living while the extension is being done? I'm dreading it already and I imagine we will need to clear the rooms so there will be stuff everywhere... And what about going to work your house will just be open for someone to sneak in and take stuff??? Do you move valuables elsewhere?? And then when we doing kitchen and bathroom arhhhhhhh!

LadyGnome

We didn't move in until the work was done as we decided to keep our old property to rent out. We were doing a full back to bare bricks refurbishment as well as ground floor and loft extensions as the house hadn't been touched for decades. Let's say conditions on site were basic at times as the only running water was a tap outside so the loo was flushed with buckets of water. We barbecued quite a lot when we working there.

Practical situation - can the fridge be moved or will it be okay where it is? If you have meals in the freezer that can be microwaved then you can manage without a cooker. Washing up can be done in a plastic bowl.

Security is something to be aware of as we had someone break in probably looking for tools, scrap copper taken from the back and stuff dumped in our skip. Speak to the builders about keeping the site secure. Make it clear that tools and scrap metal aren't to be left visible at the end of the day. Get a cover or tarp to go over the skip. We found half a skip load of builders rubble dumped in ours (luckily they had left some junk mail in with it so we went to the address and gave then the choice of paying half the skip cost or finding all the rubble back in their front garden - they paid)

If you treat it a bit like indoor camping then it can be fun for a bit. Also it's a good excuse for a barbecue!

DFB35

LadyGnome wrote: »

We didn't move in until the work was done as we decided to keep our old property to rent out. We were doing a full back to bare bricks refurbishment as well as ground floor and loft extensions as the house hadn't been touched for decades. Let's say conditions on site were basic at times as the only running water was a tap outside so the loo was flushed with buckets of water. We barbecued quite a lot when we working there.

Practical situation - can the fridge be moved or will it be okay where it is? If you have meals in the freezer that can be microwaved then you can manage without a cooker. Washing up can be done in a plastic bowl.

Security is something to be aware of as we had someone break in probably looking for tools, scrap copper taken from the back and stuff dumped in our skip. Speak to the builders about keeping the site secure. Make it clear that tools and scrap metal aren't to be left visible at the end of the day. Get a cover or tarp to go over the skip. We found half a skip load of builders rubble dumped in ours (luckily they had left some junk mail in with it so we went to the address and gave then the choice of paying half the skip cost or finding all the rubble back in their front garden - they paid)

If you treat it a bit like indoor camping then it can be fun for a bit. Also it's a good excuse for a barbecue!

Wow that's unbelievable! So cheeky, glad you sorted it though....
But honestly it's putting me off
I found out on Friday someone at work is doing what we planning and they were moving out as couldn't cope with it any longer :eek:

But on the other hand I know it's going to be so worth it! I just need to really prepare myself for the worst, for example would the rooms we not doing anything to be touched? I imagine not so we can just shut the doors on the rest of it? And move everything we don't want damaged into those rooms?
I can put a fridge in the living room for example. And the microwave and slow cooker I suppose.

We are still waiting for the drawing plans at the moment so not too late to change our minds :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

DFB35

PurpleFairy26 wrote: »

Hi DFB35 were doing similar to you so have subscribed. We've got some draft plans drawn up and have builders coming this week I gave a diary too over on DFW, maybe it would be better here as we want to be a mfw too. Looking forward to having your journey.

Hi PurpleFairy, any update on yours? Will you be living in the house during the extension?