Front garden/driveway renovation

AdrianC

The kerb alone will be a good chunk of your original budget.
http://www.bournemouth.gov.uk/Streets/DroppedKerbs/DroppedKerbs.aspx
Site visit - £110, then £145 per kerbstone, plus £170 PP if you're on a classified road - which it looks like you are. But you'd probably need PP anyway for that work.

Add in just the disposal of all that waste earth - there's a few truck loads there - and you're probably north of £2-3k - BEFORE you even start to contemplate any of the rest of the work. And that's if there's no electricity feed or drains or phone cabling in the way.

adonis10

AdrianC wrote: »

The kerb alone will be a good chunk of your original budget.
http://www.bournemouth.gov.uk/Streets/DroppedKerbs/DroppedKerbs.aspx
Site visit - £110, then £145 per kerbstone, plus £170 PP if you're on a classified road - which it looks like you are. But you'd probably need PP anyway for that work.

Add in just the disposal of all that waste earth - there's a few truck loads there - and you're probably north of £2-3k - BEFORE you even start to contemplate any of the rest of the work. And that's if there's no electricity feed or drains or phone cabling in the way.

Makes sense. I'm new to all of this so literally have no idea of the cost. Making the 315k for the house not so appealing after all.

DaftyDuck

I'd say you'd have little change from £15,000, if you did a proper job of the retaining wall and drainage. That's pretty close to the house to go removing the supporting soil, unless you use someone pretty darn good. Who has used a structural engin

moneyistooshorttomention

Rain_Shadow wrote: »

Knock on their door and ask them who did it. They'll probably tell you, and then you can compliment it and enquire 'roughly how much it cost'.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Has the dual purpose of helping you to check out some of the neighbours too if you do decide to go ahead.

But...yes...I would be expecting a BIG bill for that and be worried about ensuring proper support for the house (that retaining wall).

adonis10

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Has the dual purpose of helping you to check out some of the neighbours too if you do decide to go ahead.

But...yes...I would be expecting a BIG bill for that and be worried about ensuring proper support for the house (that retaining wall).

Which retaining wall? The one at the right angle on the current driveway bit?


Ok, well I'm knocking this idea on the head. Can you think of any other cost effective ways of flattening out and extending this driveway?

DaftyDuck

Both walls. At the moment, your two thousand tonne house is held upwards by eight feet from road level by a thousand tonnes of soil. You remove five hundred tonnes. It rains heavily, softening the soil in front of your house, causing liquifaction. Think brick on a Victoria sandwich cake. Whathappens to that lovely soft middle section, and what happens to your house? Do it by all means, but get it done by a reputable firm. And insured.

adonis10

DaftyDuck wrote: »

Both walls. At the moment, your two thousand tonne house is held upwards by eight feet from road level by a thousand tonnes of soil. You remove five hundred tonnes. It rains heavily, softening the soil in front of your house, causing liquifaction. Think brick on a Victoria sandwich cake. Whathappens to that lovely soft middle section, and what happens to your house? Do it by all means, but get it done by a reputable firm. And insured.

Very good point, this is all a learning curve.


Looking at the picture of the one where it has been done, what do you think they've done to get around that issue?


Pardon me for being dumb, but I really am new to this sort of thing.

silvercar

Interesting that the one on the left still has a shared drive with the far neighbour, whereas the one on the right is more independent. I would guess that they didn't work together on this.

What have they done to support the house? I would guess the wall at the back of the parking area is very deep - vertically and horizontally.

EmmyLou30

Block paving a driveway alone would be £3k let alone the rest of the wall. I'd budget at least £10k for the whole job. It'd surely add that in value with off road parking though wouldn't it?

adonis10

EmmyLou30 wrote: »

Block paving a driveway alone would be £3k let alone the rest of the wall. I'd budget at least £10k for the whole job. It'd surely add that in value with off road parking though wouldn't it?

Well, I'd like to think it would, after all it is not only very aesthetically pleasing, off road parking is valuable, especially on a busy road such as that one. My only worry is that because we are buying at the top of the market, any added value will be wiped out when the next crash happens. However, that said, I guess we'd just have to wait for it to rise again before selling or, alternatively, move to a more expensive place which would, in theory, have fallen by more than ours (in absolute terms, rather than as a %age).


Now I have a more realistic idea of price I think I(we) will approach a couple in the road to see how much they paid and then get some provisional quotes. Fortunately we have a big deposit so holding back 10k and adding to the mortgage wouldn't be the end of the world. Get some monthly overpayments in to reduce the extra amount borrowed.