Six months on, no splashback

Nothing much to report on the house front. Teia was due to come back this week and do the splashback and make a start on the cabinet but is still tied up on his other job. Two colleagues of mine have had extensive building work start and finish on their homes the last few months... while our job is in limbo, waiting for those last few days of work to happen.

The main problem is that our job hasn't been effectively project managed from the get go. The general day-to-day issues Teia took care of himself, but the architect would normally oversee things to ensure the job ran smoothly. As our budget was under £80K (ie peanuts to most architects) we didn't really benefit from any useful input after the drawings were done, except for a few emails to suppliers.

If I was to do this project again I wouldn't engage an architect in the same way as it was an ineffectual use of our money. If you have less than £100K to spend you're better off buying the drawings from the architect then paying for hourly sessions when you need them. It's extremely unlikely this would add up to 15.5%-20% of your budget (most architects charge this as their fee). I was told this advice before we started this project and chose to ignore it.

Also, the drawings and costings weren't foolproof - the lighting was left off (quite a major oversight) and a sliding door was drawn into a load bearing wall which meant we had to redesign how it worked. We naively thought that using an architect would mean the entire job would be costed accurately and there'd be a tiny margin of error, and it would get done in a set time frame.

Hindsight is a marvellous thing isn't it?

Bill of what?

Img wallpaper.com

This photo illustrates some serious demolition. The quote we had from the 2nd builder for 'demolition work' (ie removing the back wall downstairs, and removing a couple of non-load bearing interior walls) was in the region of £12,000. The quote from the 3rd builder for the same was less than half this sum.

The 2nd builder has been chasing our architect for payment of the invoice, despite only issuing it a few days ago. The architect sent a very good email back: "Your estimation was for approx 8 hours of work which was agreed but I understand you expended considerably more time. You thus should have informed the client immediately as such dramatically increased time thus cost expenditure was not authorised. Furthermore the costings took significantly longer than expected: we anticipated this work to be completed by the end of May yet it was only recently delivered. I suggest you explain this when discussing the settlement of your invoice with the clients whose email addresses are included in this email: FYI WHAT_architecture is the agent of the client not the invoicing party."

Awesome. He's right. And it's VAT on top, so instead of paying £360 we've been invoiced for £634.50 and in effect are paying for him to quote as the so-called Bill of Quantities hasn't actually revealed any quantities - we're none the wiser about how much MDF, plasterboard or how many nails are actually required!

Rob is going to email requesting a proper breakdown as we're paying for it, and it will be useful when ordering items for the build.

"Chill the f*ck out"

Sound advice from pic above, discovered on fabulous image bookmarking site www.ffffound.com

Rob had a meeting with Anthony (the architect) and Amy (the assistant) yesterday and hallelujah, we have made some progress.

Our friend Teia is a recently retired musician who's now a builder and he's submitting a quote for our build. Yesterday he had a look round the property, and dropped the keys back to Rob during the meeting with Anthony. As Teia drove past the café windows Anthony had a glimmer of recognition... and when Teia walked in they immediately recognised each other, having played football together in the East End in years gone by. What are the chances? London's pretty massive with 7m people (or more?) living here.

I should mention that both Teia and Anthony are both New Zealanders (as are Rob and I) and both have Maori blood. I am keeping everything crossed that Teia's quote isn't hair raising so that we can have the "Bro-Team" working on the project (that's a wee kiwi joke…).

Rob and I pored over the schedule of work over lunch today which listed what exactly is going to be demolished and then built.

This document really would've been useful a few months ago as I think most builders would've preferred to quote knowing what it is they actually need to do. If you've ever look at architectural drawings without any explanation to hand you'll know how confusing they are. Oh well, you live, you learn...

Proposed middle & top floors

And here's how the top two floors will work spatially - note the reconfiguration of the bathroom and the new wardrobe.

We're meeting with Anthony the architect tomorrow morning so I'm sure to have more updates over the weekend. The plan is to go to Ikea tomorrow night and check out potential kitchen options - Friday night is actually the quietest time to go. Not sure if I feel motivated enough to face it yet but maybe after talking to Anthony I will be.

Floor plan and plans...

So this is when the juicy stuff starts. (Btw if you haven't already figured this out, you can click on any of the photos on these pages to see them at their actual size.)

Here is the rough floor plan as drawn by the real estate agent. Having paid £1,000 for a full measured survey by the architect's firm the difference is quite significant - thank goodness we hadn't ordered any kitchen units etc based on this drawing.

It's useful here though to explain what we intend to do. Firstly, on the ground floor half the garage is being reclaimed as living space. All the walls dividing the bedroom 3 and utility room (the grey shape near the stairs) from the hallway are coming down. Basically it's open plan. Then we're wacking off the end wall and building an extension 4m into the garden (NB you don't need planning permission if your "conservatory" is under 50 square metres and in our borough this is being extended to 70 square metres sometime soon). This downstairs space will house the kitchen and dining room with the washer/dryer going under the stairs. We'll keep half the garage as storage and the cloakroom as a cloakroom (aka a downstairs loo, for people who refer to cloakrooms as places where you might hang a coat). The extension will have solid walls but bi-fold matt black doors (as per Pierre Koenig) and a matching glass roof.

The middle floor is losing it's kitchen and a wall's going up to separate the space into two: one will be a "family" (games) room ie: massive TV and a PS3/Wii/X Box (still TBC) and the other space is the spare room/home office.

On the top floor we're losing the en suite shower, and making the bathroom a rectangle shape. Adding a Velux as mentioned earlier. And putting in a built in wardrobe in the main bedroom (which backs onto the bathroom) after ripping out the one you can see in the photo below.

Phew.

Getting inspired by Koenig

How very "Wallpaper*" - 8 years ago I was on a press trip in Helsinki (for another publication) when I picked up a really cool diary with photographs by Julius Shulman.

It was packed with retro era photos of buildings that I loved. Fast forward to 2008: I was in the Tate Modern today and bought a book about the work of Pierre Koenig, who was one of the architects who worked on the Case Study Houses project, making modernist experimental homes for Americans in the 1950s and 60s. Julius Shulman was the photographer for the Case Study project, hence the familarity of the Koenig images!

The Koenig book will be pored over tonight with pages earmarked for discussion with our architect.

It's difficult to define inspiration usually, but in this case I think the Case Study thing is perfect as some of my other favourite architects & designers (Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames and Eero Saarinen) were also involved.

It's also difficult to get the look you want on a relatively teensy budget but that'll be the challenge...

We have the keys

Well it's all getting pretty real. We had the offer accepted on October 30th, and exchanged contracts on December 21st. Then the keys were released after completion on February 11th. I got a bus to the real estate agent who kindly handed over a box of keys without even asking for ID - I could've been anyone!

We had four days to wander round inside the now empty and clean shell of our new house, but after a brief meeting with Anthony the architect we went to Florida for a week.

The thought of shelling out for two mortgages for the next few months is beyond scary. And each week that passes I find out that something else has to be done which takes time. The latest is a party wall survey and contract, so that we can do our extension legally, without upsetting our lovely neighbours. The time period is anything up to a month and the quotes ranged from £200 + VAT to over £1,000. I've just emailed the neighbours to see if they could recommend the company who would've done their party wall contract.