Building my dream home and then paying it off!

DFB35

It's time for an update! I have been busy on the house front, clearing the garage and getting gardens under control. With the garage I am almost there.. Just one more trip to the tip and need my hubby to see if he wants to put a few bits I found in the Attic or bin..

Front garden is done! I tried to do it as cheap as possible (just in case it gets ruined by the upcoming building works!). So we took a bush out ourselves, I've cleared the over growing plants, we have some climbing type which spread across the whole thing and is a nightmare to remove! I struggled with the roots the best I could (injuring my palm in the process :mad:). Then we put the weed sheet down and bark wood chips, about 400 litres worth (£6 odd per 100l). But the end look is good, clean and tidy, we did keep some plants so it's not too bare and fingers crossed those weeds and climbing plants etc dont come back!!!

Back garden needs some more work, all I'm doing there is keeping the bushes under control and will start moving some back from where the extension will be. Other than that we will need to hire someone to push back the beds and take out this "feature" we have in the middle. Then we will leave it to lie the lawn after the build. As I'm sure the grass will definitely get ruined.

Right now re the build! As I was in the front garden most of the Saturday, one of the neighbours caught me and advised that they are looking into a party wall agreement they want done. This will be something we would have to pay and provides extra insurance just in case (as I understand it). I've been googling and it looks like it can be £500/£1000 cost to us, there are some scary stories as well but I'm trying to stay positive. Also I'm thinking the other next doors might want it as well..
Spoke to our chosen builder, who advised us to ask our architect about it and to check who will be doing building regs and to ask about the manhole. So something for hubby to do on Monday.
Other than that we are still waiting for the planning, once this is granted and we have the party wall agreements in place we could potentially start in November / December - this is assuming all goes through with no issues. The builder estimates the build itself to take 3/4 months which sounds amazing to me! I am prepared for the worst haha was thinking more like 6/8 months myself (so let's see who will be right hope it's not me!).

As it stands so far we spent - £1800 for the architect, £176 to put for planning, and now £?? For the party wall agreements all before we actually start building. Hope this is helpful to someone

DFB35

Oh completely forgot! We went to have a look at some kitchens last weekend, it was a very strange experience as I always imagined myself with a traditional style kitchen but we surprised ourselves by really liking the modern type with no handles, smooth glossy type cupboards!

Also we didn't have arguments and more importantly we totally agree on the styles we don't like! So I'm taking this as a good sign. I am starting to panic a bit about the money as everything will add up! When talking to the builder yesterday we are seeing if there's somethings we can change to save some money. The obvious things are having the normal roof rather than a skylight (as that would pay for the kitchen pretty much ) but honestly we can't make any concrete plans or changes just yet as no planning permission.

I'm feeling a bit down and anxious to be honest (and wishing we just bought a ready made house!), but I think it's just me as even the little things seem to scare me and push me over the edge, and I think the neighbour with his party wall stories has unsettled me. Really he should have spoke to hubby as even though it looks like I rule the roost I do like to hide behind him sometime haha

PurpleFairy26

Lovely update, so glad things are progressing. Seems like you could be writing my diary, our extension quote is similar to yours and we have a manhole to move too. We're a little behind you but will probably be here about 4 years by the time we get started (about 18 months we think)

We've had one builder quote as a guide to see if we needed to scale back at all and will now get a couple more, someone was recommended to me on Saturday so will be calling him tomorrow.

Fingers crossed it all goes to plan for you. Keep us posted. How lovely to be DF (apart from mortgage) too

DFB35

My first mortgage payment has come out and the new balance is £279,697.96p.... I'm still too scared to put it on my signature haha (denial)....

I can't wait to start making overpayments and see it going down though, for the first time I actually have access to mortgage online banking so it will be great to see the immediate impact.

But first we need to build our savings back up and make sure the building costs don't spiral out of control before we can start with the serious overpayments.

DFB35

Ok not been on here for ages and as you might guess it's not good news!

To try and keep it short, we had to put a stop to the extension plans altogether and look to doing up the inside the best we can/ minimal cost to get the house up to scratch and then we will see what to do. Maybe move somewhere bigger. But definitely no extension.

It all came about because we couldn't get one side of neighbors to agree to the party wall agreement. We got so far as the stage to carry out a survey at their property, because they wouldn't agree, we would have had to appoint a third independent surveyor, which would mean ££ of course. But our architect went in to survey it first just to see what are their issues and as it turned out there was a complication with the boundary wall we would have been building on to. Basically to carry out our original design would have meant most definitely disturbing their lean to/ conservatory type structure.

Our architect advised us to appoint legal representation as himself he couldn't carry out this survey properly and there was a talk of possible asbestos in the neighbours structure. Basically a nightmare.

We were quite gutted, understandably and also this all came to light nearly a year of coming and going and making plans and designs. Thing is as soon as we moved in 4 years ago, we have been mentioning the extension to the neighbours and they have not expressed any concerns, which was why we didn't even think it be an issue and was a bit of a shock!

Anyway moving on and forward

As we had the money ready, we have decided to spend 30k to do up the house and make it nice and liveable, as we were putting off so many things over the years due to thinking that we were going to extend. Not wanting to mess around, and already fed up of waiting for nearly a year! We made some decisions pretty fast, ripped out the old kitchen and put in the lovely modern clean lines kitchen in cream, with black tiles and work tops and installed lovely tiled floor throughout to hallway. We put in new outside doors, which made a huge difference to the look of the house and have new windows which will hopefully make a big difference to the mound situation in the smallest room.
But the biggest change we made, was to knock through the wall between bath and toilet and to install a lovely bathroom with a bath (as only big enough for shower in there before). As you can imagine that was stretching the 30k, with windows& doors coming to 13k, kitchen 7k, appliances 1k, bathroom 1.5k plus tiles/materials 1k and labour for kitchen/bathroom 6k. Also living without a kitchen we spent a lot on takeaways, but all in all I think we did pretty good! We also did some smaller jobs ourselves, decorated kids rooms, and painted hallway.

All that's left to do now is paint the house on the outside, installing windows damaged the paint a tiny bit, but it needed doing anyway. And we need to do the garden properly including a patio, which I worry will be expensive. Both these jobs have been put on the back burner for now as I'm reluctant to take anymore from the remortgage money. We will save up for this instead, but hoping to do this by next summer.

Other little jobs left are repainting the dining room and the only two rooms we not touched were living room/ master which we will redecorate in the next couple of years (meanwhile they still look pretty decent).

So here we are in a "new house" but not as we imagined it!

We have returned 28k (10% maximum overpayment allowed) with the next 10% due in September. By my calculations it will be 24-25k. And then the final 50k once our two year fix is over in September the following year. I will make damn sure we will return the money and not spend more on the house as 30k was plenty, otherwise we won't get it back in resale values. I'm surprised how strict I have been having the remortgage money there and I've honestly not been tempted, I really believe spending the year before on debt free wanna be board changed my attitude to money for life!

What is in for us in the longer term, I honestly don't know! When we first knew we won't be extending we wanted to sell straight away, just of the mere fact that we are not really happy with the neighbours as you can imagine! But daughter is doing her GCSEs so decided to stay put, but once she finish next July who knows?? One thing for certain there's no extending this house, and if we buy somewhere in the future I have gone complete 360 and want everything already extended/done as lost my trust in it a bit.

But for now I will enjoy my new kitchen and bathroom
Oh and the fact that my mortgage is not 280k but once we return all the money will be closer to what it was, crudely speaking 178k, but will be less as I'm not counting the usual monthly payments.

I want to hang around here for a bit but might start a new diary to reflect our change of plans!