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Oooh, an non-US renovation thread! Bookmarked and will be watching your thread from down under, as we just purchased a house with the intent to renovate. Please keep posting - especially on costs if you're comfortable - because it has been hell trying to find good ballpark figures for how much anything costs in order to set a realistic budget and contingency.
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Jul 3, 2017 01:59
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 07:32 |
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Yay for updates! I was afraid that the thread had died but glad to see that's not the case. Out of interest, exactly how much of the construction detail did your architect handle and how much was left up to your builder to figure out as the build went? One common theme that I'm coming across in my research is the more detailed the construction drawings are, the more expensive the design phase, but it has the benefit of minimizing cost blow outs and errors during the construction phase. Being a bit of a control freak, I'm really liking the idea of working it all out in advance but I'm also getting a lot of "oh you can just get a good draftsman to translate the architectural design into construction drawings, you don't need an expensive architect for that"...
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Sep 4, 2017 00:47
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Jaded Burnout posted:In goes the new joists, I was away for this so the builder sent selfies It looks like you were living on site during the whole demo and build? What was that like? How much time did you actually spend on site overseeing the reno?
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Sep 18, 2017 12:41
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Those bi-folds look amazing! That's a pretty good price you got, considering the amount of glass and steel in them (those frames look heavy duty).Jaded Burnout posted:I've decided to go with a floating engineered oak floor downstairs and probably the same in the upstairs hallway. Got some samples on order! How are you going with getting quotes? We're in the middle of looking at flooring for a small apartment renovation and it's been weird. We're still in process of getting the construction drawings done so all the flooring places are like...come to us when you're a month out from actually getting the floors done. I get that they need to see the sub-floor to quote accurately but I mean, come on, how else is a person supposed to go around getting a ballpark quote ahead of the whole drat project.
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Oct 13, 2017 00:47
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That is some scary growth in 10 days.Jaded Burnout posted:As for quotes, most trades I've found will have a standard square metre estimate, which can usually be found online. For example extensions are ballparked at £1,200.00/sqm, tiling at £40/sqm etc. We ended up deciding on luxury vinyl plank because of the waterproof and easy cleaning aspect. The high end products which are baby safe run about $50-70/sqm AUD supplied and ~$120/sqm installed. The annoying variable is that those ballparks are all based on caveats on how level the floor is (something like 2mm across 4-5 sqm) and then they charge you $$$$$ extra if they need to level the subfloor. I've heard that there are self-levelling compounds that could be used instead? I'm having trouble understanding why levelling costs so much if there's magical self-levelling products that can get you about the same result (or is the self-levelling product a lie?). On the floating floor bit: finding stuff that can be installed on stairs was surprisingly annoying. Many products I came across just didn't have stair-compatible accessories (e.g. stair noses). So we're pretty much picking the products by process of elimination. I'm in Australia so the main price comparison websites I have to work with are these (posting for any other Australian goons): https://www.homeimprovementpages.com.au/c/cost https://www.archicentreaustralia.com.au/resources/cost-guide/ https://www.archicentreaustralia.com.au/resources/cost-calculator/ - this is actually really good to start with if you're at the beginning of the project
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Oct 20, 2017 13:45
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Congrats on getting the boiler working! That stuff up by the builder must have been annoying to find. Is it pretty much inevitable that no matter how much due diligence you do in the tender process, that something gets messed up during construction? Also, out of curiosity, with the bits and pieces that you've been doing, how much of it did you know how to do going in and how much did you just research along the way?
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Nov 7, 2017 13:12
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Congrats on lighting and wiring getting finished! Surely the end is in sight. Will you be done by the end of the year? On that note, are you doing the project management of the renovation as well or is your builder handling that for you?
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Dec 1, 2017 12:11
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Jaded Burnout posted:What is "done"? It's a serious question, because in some ways it'll never be done. I have been thinking about this and I think "done" for me is when all elements necessary for current state day to day living are completed (i.e. not temporary solutions). Weirdly, I think this means if permanent stairs and doors are not installed I would call it "not done" but painting/skirting boards I could live without and therefore would call "done".
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Dec 2, 2017 11:49
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Jaded Burnout posted:Are you going to do the painting/skirting after you've fitted the carpets? After you've put all your furniture in place? I'm guessing no, so the painting at least is on the critical path to furniture, and furniture is part of day to day living. Doing it this way, I think you'd run the risk of just never finishing the painting. My parents decided to do a refresh of all their internal paintwork themselves. We are almost 12 months on and they've done...3 rooms out of a gigantic house (maybe 15%?). ETC on the remainder is unknown. Jaded Burnout posted:Oh my loving god. I have just spent the last hour trying various pieces of gantt software and online tools (with bonus google sheets attempt) and they are without exception frustrating pieces of poo poo. loving hell. This, immediately after the concluding sentence in your previous post, made me nearly fall out of my chair laughing. Did you try Smartsheet? We use this at work, it's not free but I think you get what you pay for. cakesmith handyman posted:I've not used performance/project tracking software that beat a well designed excel sheet. In theory, I agree with you. In practice however, Excel sheets are riddled with errors (most minor, but once in a while, one will be mission critical) - I mean I know non-Excel software has bugs as well but the way Excel works makes it just so drat easy to mess things up. And I say non-Excel software because an Excel spreadsheet basically IS software. It's just usually developed by people who aren't software developers... Jaded Burnout posted:I'll probably write something if I have some spare time. One of the tools I've found most useful for this project is a simple cashflow projector I wrote to let me experiment with different payment schedules for all the work being done, so I could confidently sign agreements without going into the red at any point. This sounds fantastic! Would this be something you'd be happy to share?
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Dec 3, 2017 11:43
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Jaded Burnout posted:Sure, but bear in mind it's literally the simplest thing that did what I personally needed, and is completely untested and unsupported. I can share it via PM if you like since it's hosted on my personal github and I don't want to make it too trivial to link this account to that. That'd be fantastic! We're a ways off from starting but I've been slowly working on building out the budget/cash flow forecasts so this would be great. We were also looking at mattresses today - have the online mattress start ups cropped up everywhere in the UK also? There's so many in the US and Australia that I was skeptical. Then one of them got a partnership with a major department store for demo floor space so we went in to try it. Our current mattress feels like a cloud but somehow this one felt like an even better cloud. I am pretty sure we're going to end up getting a new mattress.
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Dec 5, 2017 12:16
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Jaded Burnout posted:It seems I cannot PM you. Huh. I just remembered I don't have plat. Oh well! Your recent reporting of events (the floor sanding, oh dear) makes me even gladder that we decided to get our architect to manage the whole thing. I was a little skeptical before because the dollars look significant at the beginning but I can see why that might be penny wise pound foolish. How much of your own time would you say you are putting into this to research things and stay on top of everything? Went back to page 1 to check if you had already answered this but couldn't find it - what was your experience in getting builder quotes back and trying to compare them? We just got 2 quotes back for our apartment renovation. One came in at $89k, the other came in at $189k. Both of them totally ignored the instructions from the architect in terms of submitting their quotes on a line by line basis. First guy did a line by line quote but didn't use the line items the architect requested so we are immensely confused about what lines like "carpentry - $12,000" entail. Second guy sent in a two-page document that gave an overview of exactly what works would be carried out under what headings but then gave one number in total so we have no idea what a reduction in scope would do in terms of the costs to build. We're now trying to get a third builder to quote in order to figure out whether the first guy missed a bunch of stuff or whether the second guy is just way out for whatever reason... Jaded Burnout posted:In other news I had a 7x7ft mattress delivered. This is a good thing. Turns out, though, doorways are 6 foot 6. Did you have to fold the mattress to squish it through?!
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Dec 13, 2017 12:18
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Only just checked back in recently - yay for updates, it looks so close to being done! We recently picked our builder on the basis of the pretty impressive tender package they submitted - the fully itemized quote was in a reasonable ballpark and their package included a couple of pages of references from past customers. We had some back and forth on excluding things once the quoted number came back to stay in budget and they were so just responsive and willing to accommodate. They really blew the competition out of the water and I have high hopes, but I'm wondering if that's because they're in the "let's win the work" phase and then it'll all go to pieces once the build is underway.Jaded Burnout posted:Every trade I've spoken to while picking up the pieces has told me how difficult the previous builder was to work with, and particularly to get money out of. They've all washed their hands of him. It's been a while since I read the thread so I did a quick skim to see if you'd gone into detail about how you selected the builder, but if you did I must have missed it. How did you pick this builder? I'm assuming he must have given you clean references to start and this other stuff is just coming out of the woodwork now. Also, how are you feeling about the builder now? When I asked previously, you seemed to still be giving him the benefit of doubt: Jaded Burnout posted:It wasn't too annoying because it was fairly easy to fix, should hold up over time, and is in an easily accessible spot.
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May 22, 2018 12:26
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Jaded Burnout posted:Thank you. I did indeed watch this with my husband when we decided we were going to embark on a renovation. After we got through the movie, we also decided we were not going to try and live in the property during the renovations.
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Jun 1, 2018 13:35
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 07:32 |
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Jaded Burnout posted:Alright so as of last post here is where we are with the rendering, just the gable end to go (and no money to pay for it) You're so close but so far!!! This is my nightmare, being stuck mid-construction without the funds to continue. Sorry you have to live it.  Do you have plans for after October?Jaded Burnout posted:It's like I'm the only one here with any goddamn attention to detail. This. This gets me every time. Sometimes the detail isn't even like a tiny detail, it's like a blindingly obvious detail. Jaded Burnout posted:Even if you do have the time you can't physically watch work in four rooms at once. And for me at least the work I was watching was often beyond my ability to tell good from bad. Do you think you would have benefited from engaging an architect to help you oversee the build, especially with inspecting and signing off at the key milestones? I think the information asymmetry is honestly the worst thing.
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Jun 18, 2018 06:43
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