How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

No way an equivalent new build would be cheaper. Also it would be an embodied carbon and resource extraction disaster. We need to make it easier to retrofit, not demolish.

It's pretty easy to retrofit, just not aesthetically pleasing. A guy on my road has slapped 20cm of insulation on the outside of his and rendered over it. Looks like a brand new house. Do that all the way around and sort the roof insulation and you're golden. The house just looks like a dull rectangle with none of the original features. And is still crumbly and crap on the inside!

If you're talking about fully gutting and retrofitting a bog standard 3-bed Victorian terrace to 2023 new-build regulations using common construction techniques and materials (requiring petrochemical-based insulation on all external walls and suspended floors, new windows & doors, extensive airtightness strategy, chimney stack work etc etc), and extending the loft and ground floor (requiring shit-tons of concrete and steelwork)...

...the total cost will be higher, and embodied carbon neither here nor there, compared to a modern timber-framed replacement of equivalent total volume, with cellulose/wood fibre insulation, timber-framed glazing, efficient infrastructure (MVHR etc).

I don't know that you couldn't. Would the council really say no? None of the houses on my street are listed or protected.

Feast and famine with Lewisham Council rules and engagement. Some poor sod has been trying to build an actually ok looking Passivehaus on some empty land near us on Wellmeadow rd and it's been denied planning twice due to a single complaint on the grounds of visual impact from a neighbour on the other side of the allotments - I kid you not.

Not allowed to build anything new of quality here, but HMOs you go right ahead!

Does anyone have any ideas / inspiration for wall hung vanity units? I like the look of some of the things on 'tikamoon' but have no idea of the quality (and no showrooms to see in person) and would be useful to have some comparators, but my google skills seem inadequate to the task!

https://www.tikamoon.co.uk/art-baker-solid-teak-vanity-unit-115-cm-2440.htm

the current 'platonic ideal' (unit not sink)
https://zlite-web.s3.amazonaws.com/product-images/images/large/494-10V-BN_RS_2.jpg

Funnily enough I just spotted an end of terrace rebuilt in full bongo eco spec (judging by the two Mitsubishis on the roof). Quite tasteful cement colour render, modern take on a bay window etc. Not on street view yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if Kevin McCloud had been round a few times. 106 Lilford Road

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I'm seriously at the point of selling our house because we just can't fucking work out how to actually make our build happen. It's fairly complex and involves a full rewire, replumb, reroof, new heating system, new kitchen and bathrooms, new windows, some internal rearrangement, plus a timber extension on top of the existing single-story garage. So we're looking at over £200k+VAT. We've been working with an architect who got us some preliminary drawings that were enough to get some builders on board, but he now appears to be unable to continue with the project so we're left with not enough detail to finalise a load of decisions or costings (which only ever seem to go up from the original estimate) and the only option appears to be to appoint an independent QS to administer the contract, which will cost us another £15k, which we can't afford.

Genuinely at my wits end with this, how do people actually get these projects going?

Either have the money, or do it in stages.

Yeah do it in stages and try and do bits yourself in between

Having endless money to chuck at it would be ace but, failing that, how does doing it in stages resolve the issues? Genuinely curious because there's almost nothing in our house that doesn't need sorting, so it's not clear how we'd do it in stages.

You make money between stages, would be my guess.

I know I often say this in jest, but have you run the numbers on moving instead of improving?

Quarter of a mil in cash is quite a lot of money and projects like these will eat all your spare time.

Even with interest rates as they are what does £250 + your current value + borrowing headroom - fees buy you?

Now:

• reroof
  
• rewire
  
• replumb (is this definitely needed?)
  
• new windows (depending on cost, and how many will remain)
  
  

Later:

• garage extension
  
  

Even later:

• internal rearrangement
  
• new heating system
  
• new kitchen
  
  

Even later still:

• bathrooms
  
• new windows (or do these at the beginning if replacing existing ones that will be kept is relatively low cost)
  

Fair question but the answer is nothing that we'd fancy being in or that would work nearly as well for us. Our place is pretty special in terms of location.

Fair enough.

Then the question is, do you have the money or not?

If not, you've got to shift your mindset - you have your own home in a location you love. It might not be exactly how you want it to be but creating unachievable expectations will only get you down.

Either way, right now it sounds like you've hit an impasse that isn't time critical. Take the week off from thinking about it and anything at all connected, focus on yourself(ves) then come back next week with fresh eyes.

Maybe too late but we got these:
https://yourtiles.com/zellige-white-gloss-6-5cm-x-20cm

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spend the money on improving the fabric (insulate insulate insulate + new windows), services (rewire/replumb) and the two powerhouse areas (kitchen/bathrooms) and forget about adding any new mass, if possible

This is a good prioritisation though I would probably do heating system at the same time if you're going to be chasing walls etc for electrics / plumbing.

What, if anything, can you do yourself?

Unfortunately it is quite time critical as we might lose our builders which would be the mother of all arseaches. Our architect pulling out of this has royally fucked us.

You may be right about adjusting expectations though. We've previously considered much more limited options for improving the house, but none of them make much sense as they'd all be things we'd want to replace with a better solution at some point. So it wouldn't be doing it in stages so much as doing a fairly complete build before pulling a load of it out and rebuilding it in a decade or so.

Yeah its a cashflow issue isn't it. So for us, the kitchen definitely needs doing but we can live with it being fairly scrappy for a couple of years.

So we did the floor insulation/floor sanding, various other home redecorating ourselves, got an independent plasterer in to do a few rooms that needed it, similar for a plumber and electrician to do various bits. Lived with a shit bathroom for a year but now have builders in putting a new bathroom in and doing stuff like changing room configuration and getting rid of a chimney breast (we are saving money but doing all finishes ourselves except tiling). Theres still tons we need to get done but we don't have the money so thats going to wait until we do.

So for your thing as Hugo7 said, it might be better to try and work it out sectionally. So instead of doing a full rewire and a full replumb etc maybe get people in to do a couple of rooms at a time as work like that is pretty invasive so you want to do it at the same time as the other work. If you do the finishing yourself (floors, painting coving etc) then you can save a lot

Windows you normally want to do before invasive work as it can disrupt the finish and you might end up having to repaint the whole wall but maybe that can wait until next winter?

Reroof: do you definitely need a full reroof? You might be able to patch it and extend the life by 5-10 years before you shell out for the whole thing...

Etc

Have a floor suggestion request and not sure if this fits best here/home diy/home owners threads but I’ll ask anyway and happy to be directed elsewhere.

Had a prefab garden building delivered late feb (concrete slab laid, building assembled on top, damp proof course and concrete screed poured inside). Overall building is 6m x 3m, with a partition to provide a 3.5m x 3m shed/mini gym, and a 2.5m x 3m home office. Floor is dried out and it’s all wired in, so I bought some commercial gym 1m x 1m x 15mm rubber floor tiles for the shed side and they’re great. I’m at a loss on what floor to go with in the office side given there’s no insulation in the floor.

I’ve been tempted to go with more of the rubber gym tiles for some insulation, which I could either leave as they are or cover with vinyl/lino. I don’t think laminate would work as I can’t really fit skirting to tidy up the edges.

Anyone got/seen anything similar? Suggestions?

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Yeah, it's sort of that. So much of our house needs redoing (it's barely been touched since the 50s) that we know it's going to be uninhabitable for a while, so we know we'll have to be out for a bit. But there doesn't seem to be a sensible way of doing only part of it. We seem to be stuck in a situation where we can't get firm answers in what different options (e.g. ASHP Vs boiler, metal vs. single-ply roof, natural vs. synthetic slate + many other choices) so we can't make the necessary decisions to get the build to budget where we can do it.

It seems to be more a problem of project coordination, we just don't seem to be able to get a decent grasp of all the hurdles to clear and all the information to get together to make it happen, which is why we might have to pay someone £15k just to make it all happen.

Are you wedded to the builders? It seems like losing your builders is the thing that’s pushing you do to it all in one go, but nothing you’ve listed seems like it can’t be done in stages.

Yeah Hugo did a great breakdown there.
Get the base right, plumbing and electrics, have a long term vision and work to it.
An example is how we did ours, when we got the extension done I explained how we wanted to remove the bathroom, and when we rejigged the bathroom I explained how we wanted the loft done so by the time we came to that, 5 years later, all the pipe work was in the right place. In the mean time I’ve been doing as much of the diy gubbins as I can, painting, flooring, putting in built in storage etc.

find £15k then or cut down your ambition, or sell. It sounds like the idea of doing it incrementally isn't something you'd consider.

Also your architect is a dick.