What they mean when they say it will cost [£xxx]

planning, housebuilding, pre-project

Why the cost is a mystery

So when we planned to do the work initially, we’d asked for the first fix to come in at around £150k for both the loft conversion and the rear kitchen diner extension.

The trouble with this is that you aren’t able to get builders quotes to find out the actual cost until you have been through:

  1. Design with the architect
  2. Planning permission /permitted development with the council
  3. Structural requirements with the structural surveyor
  4. THEN build quotes with the builders

At which point they tell you confidently (and consistently to be fair) that it’s going to cost an arm and a leg more than you had quoted at every opportunity up until now… not ideal.

In our case this meant going back to the drawing board as £250k (plus fittings and VAT) was just not realistic given the ceiling on the road and not planning to live in the house for the next 30 odd years to play catch up.

Luckily the architect was pretty accommodating on scaling back the extension drawings.

Recommendations

  1. We had believed it would be cheaper to have a builder in to develop the whole house at the same time for efficiencies of scale. Turns out the opposite is true and the more you can break it down into the subcontractors directly, the more you will save.
  2. Some people must clearly not question the cost as the builders were sometimes surprised we went back and asked how they were justifying the overall cost as it seemed excessive in some parts. I can only assume this is relating to the project management aspect in coordinating many different trades, and relating to the point above.
  3. If the loft conversion is coming out at way more than you thought (all the 3 quotes we got came out around the £70k mark) check with a dedicated loft conversion company. We did and had a quote for £45k for practically the same work. I cannot comment on the difference in quality obviously but we had used them before and they did a perfectly good job so it was useful to know.

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