How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

Depends where you are.

But the floor insulation spec is a joke; wrong material (‘celotex’ type PIR insulation is a bitch to fit well between wonky old floor joists) and 50mm is way too thin to be doing much of anything. You want a minimum of 100mm PIR, or 150mm mineral wool/wood fibre/hemp etc.

You deffo want a vapour permeable airtight membrane underneath, and on top, of the insulation, taped to the edges with airtight tape. Without this, it won’t be airtight, and will get wind-washed, reducing its efficacy. If you’re going to the trouble of ripping up floorboards to insulate, get it done properly and never have to think about it again.

As others have mentioned the materials costs look a bit odd.
£20 materials to remove the old door.
£91 for pointing?!

Looks like it could be conveniently calculated as the materials deposit is basically 50% of the whole quote?

SE London. So expecting a London premium but some bits still seem ridiculous to me - since when was "insurance" a separate line item for 1.5k? I expect trades to have PI insurance but that's a cost of business...

I did think I'd read that celotex wasn't ideal for this. Tbh I worry that if that's what they suggest, they probably aren't the best people for the job. So they seem pretty pricey but still not giving signs they'll be great?!

I would think that ideally you'd remove and refit skirting board when the whole floor is up and stuff is done to walls anyway, instead of adding 9mm strip.
Maybe it's more work, but you could hide parts of the channels for speaker cable behind skirting and floor/wall transition definitely looks cleaner without the little strips.

That part they did discuss - skirting looks original (so 100 years old) so they suggested an extra panel (up to where the contours start but then scribed to the floorboard) would be neater than pulling it all off, risking taking all the plaster off the wall.

Not sure speaker cables through the skirts will work as they need to go round a fireplace - I'd thought we would run those into the void under the boards but then I don't see why that's £900 of chasing into the walls...

Yeah, the fact that removing things has a materials cost is a bit strange as there's also a separate line for waste disposal. If it's just that £20 to remove a door that seems a bit fishy I'm not going to argue about that if the rest of the quote seems in the ballpark.

I don't think this will be the final figure anyway, I need to talk to him about some of the decisions he's made for materials because he's not asked me which doors I'd like for example. He did the same when he redid the bathroom, just quoted me for what he'd do with the space, rather than asking what tiles/fittings etc I wanted. He had some good suggestions to make the most of the tiny space so I didn't have to change much but if I'd left him to his own devices I would have ended up with some really crap tiles. I was happy with the job in the end though so I'd trust him to get a good result with a bit more input.

I was happy with the job in the end though so I'd trust him to get a good result with a bit more input.

certainly an intangible which is worth a (hard to quanitfy) premium

My thinking was that if you route channels you have to replaster anyway
Replace or preferably refurbish skirting just looks neater, but of course there's loads of factors.

Yeah fair point - I'm not sure that part makes sense if they're also charging for chasing cables and making good - it feels like they're charging twice (plastering the whole room is one of the options, why would we also need to make good the chasing?)

I need to get another quote or two although reckon it might be difficult to ensure they are actually comparable since this includes a bit of a shopping list of things to do...

Can’t stress this enough: removing floorboards, insulating and making good is a proper cunt of a job and something you only want to do once. Making sure it’s done properly, by someone with experience, using appropriate methods and materials, is essential imo. You really don’t want to go through the disruption and stress only to end up with a draughty floor and/or slowly rotting joists.

I’ve posted my cheapskate method for insulating our suspended floor in this thread a few times; I’d find someone who’s happy to do this or similar.

Yeah I agree ta - difficulty is just finding who that person is... I'm not convinced I've got the one based on this quote

Can anyone recommend a structural engineer (SE London) to do some basic calcs for removing a load-bearing wall?

Not necessarily. I just bond and then easy fill over chasing.
That’s not a bodge either.

Has anyone laid click cork flooring with an underlay?

We have concrete beams with concrete slabs floors on top so noise travels. I want to try reduced this a bit. Figuring 11mm cork will help but wondering about something dense underneath also.

Yes. We used the recommended underlay from corka. it was extremely dense, and the people who did our kitchen loved it. It is cork specific and claims "excellent" acoustic performance. It's certainly a lot quieter downstairs than the adjacent wood flooring (of course) cork is quite soft too which I imagine helps a lot. Haven't got an AB test to compare it to, but, happy.

Thanks that looks like what I had in mind. Which cork flooring did you use, I guess corka? I was looking at cortex and wicanders. I emailed them asking their thoughts.

Yes, we had the cork from colour flooring as well. 18 months in, still very happy with it.

http://tzgpartnership.com/

Very interesting about the history of the fitted kitchen.

From such humble beginnings...#40k

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/nov/12/damned-kitchen-inventor-fitted-frankfurt-margarete-schutte-lihotzky

99%I did a good episode on that

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-frankfurt-kitchen/

Happy with cork flooring in kitchen decision? I'm debating it

Our L-shape from Magnet was less than half that, with solid wood doors, neff/bosch appliances and a quooker hot tap. No island though and didn't include worktop (recommended by the designer to go elsewhere).

Still ended up approaching the mythical £40k with new floor/ceiling, lighting and outside door though.

Unequivocal yes from me.

Check out b&q, the more expensive Kitchens in their range. They're really good value.

It seems like our patio doors question is going to come around a bit more quickly than our kitchens question now - and a bit quicker than we thought.

We have a 4m x 2.1m opening.

Do we want:

• two big sliding panels
  
• slide and turn doors
  
• French doors
  
  

I really don't know. I like the sight line of big sliders and I don't think we'd want to open the whole thing up anyway.

I've heard (and read on here) that the slide and turn doors can be quite hard to open up if you just want to throw the cat out of the door or nip out quickly.

I can't find any French doors I like so they're probably not a good option.

What do we want?