Dear Santa, for Christmas I'd like a build cost that's on budget...

And as the year draws to a close, Peter the Architect is sending out a note to our prospective contractors to expect the tender pack immediately in the New Year and Mike the Quantity Surveyor is counting bricks and roof tiles.

Alan and Liz most heartily wish our readers a very Happy Christmas and all the best for 2015. We hope you're enjoying the blog - if things go to plan, this time next year we will be posting a picture of a much bigger tree in a much bigger house. Happy Christmas!!

How much?!??

I took all our quotes in to the Quantity Surveyor this morning; the revised tender pack came out to us all from the architect this afternoon, so in a couple of weeks we'll be able to answer that key question...

Milestone achieved... fizz going into fridge

From the Test Valley Planning Dept website - permission!

Building pack received today

The draft final (if you see what I mean) spec/building drawings pack plopped fatly onto the table today - so our homework tomorrow is to go through them all and make a list of any changes we require... Rather disappointed that we haven't heard from Planning yet - contrary to my earlier post, it's actually Tuesday when the statutory 2 months are up so we hope to hear maybe on Monday. Today we've been taking advantage of the sunshine to get outside - Alan's wrestled the last bit of the front hedge into submission - or possibly the other way around! Even more importantly, I've put some hooks up so we can mount the fairy lights on the front of the bungalow. Next door has set the standard - as Dan is director of a lighting company who design and install lighting systems for shops such as Harrods, we're not going to beat that, but the trusty twinkly lights will go up shortly. Meanwhile the other next door have invited us round for dinner tonight so we're off to don our party frocks.

If you can't stand the heat...

...stay away from trying to commission a kitchen, as the saying goes. This is the big area which doesn't quite have a tick in the box yet. Not because we don't know what we want! But there are some contributory factors. Firstly, as is the way when you know exactly what you want, you can't quite get exactly what we want from any of the kitchen providers we've found so far. Secondly, and more interestingly, we have a range of quotes for the units which vary from under £3K to over £13K, which are all basically for similar construction decent quality non-flat-pack painted wooden shaker-style units. There are some frills - some are oak and some are just 'wood' - but the cheapest is oak and as far as I can see literally the identical units to one of the more expensive ones. The worktop quotes vary by a similar factor - but the expensive worktops aren't matched with the expensive cupboards, of course. So now I'm going through the process of trying to get genuinely matching quotes, and it's proving ticklish. I was amused yesterday talking to Peter the Architect when he said we needed this complete so that the builder could calculate his margin:'He needs to know if it's £40K or £15K'... I pointed out that a) our error bars were narrow and b) all were set below his bottom level... This is what one of the suppliers thinks it will look like: