Our new project House (and rock cave houses)

[Austin_Metro]

Agreed. Even if only more arseing about I the landrover.

[fttm]

Another yup , keep the updates coming.

[Hugo Stiglitz]

Wow, amazing what a trim to the grass does for the place. If for updates.

[Siko]

What a great thread! Love the house and the Landy too

We're not too far away from you and also have some rock caves in our field, ours were mainly used for farming and there are holes cut into them where beams had been fitted making semi-permanent animal shelters etc.

Keep the updates coming please!

[5harp3y]

This thread is epic!

[TimmyMallett]

You'll be needing 400 of these







but on reflection, one of these may be more approriate

[Some Gump]

TimmyMallett said:

You'll be needing 400 of these..

I love that. So clearly designed by a man child.

Just look at the thought process. Imagine being in that design meeting.

We should build a war robot, like a terminator.
Shiny, kind of like mechwarrior but with more bling.

And we should call it something cool. Like james bond cool. But more.
What's more than bond?
YES we'll call it 008. That's one better.

But with guns.
2 guns!
Guns that swivel, like ed209 in robocop.
Yeah, that's kick.ass.
You know what would be even cooler?
Rocket launcher.
And a gatling gun.

(Pipes up at the back) you know what would be even cooler?
[Hard stares at the intern]
Maybe..
Maybe the gatling gun could have a gun on it?

Welcome to the firm, Kevin, you just passed probation!
(Mumbles from old hands) in 4 years time, we'll be reporting to him!

[CTO]

Evening all

Been a bit quiet on the posting front as not a huge amount of significant progress happening at the moment other than continued land clearing and arseing about in the Landy. Wondered whether it was getting saturation point but if people are still interested then I am happy to keep updating…..

So, where are we currently.

Planning is in and has until the end of the month to close public consultation. Four out of five of the statutory consultees have responded in favour of the planned work although the highways bods want some sort of plan setting out where plant will access the site, where the trades will park and where deliveries will be made.
The highways peeps have also requested that the plan sets out frequency and timings of site access….. seems a bit overkill for a couple of trannies full of builders but if that’s what they want, we will provide it quite easily.

We have had one public comment back from our lovely new neighbours who gave it their full support!

Work on the garden has continued and on Monday I gave it a final brush cut /flail mow for winter. The bottom of the sloped garden behind the house is now clear, as is the electricity pole. I also found some beautiful sand stone steps from the house to the garden..

Brush cutting passed without injury, the flail mowing not so much.
Firstly I reversed off one of the garden terraces whilst going in reverse and nearly rolled the thing over, I then tripped over a step (again while in reverse) and the thing nearly rolled over me. On the latter occasion the dead man’s handle saved the day and I ended up with only a barked shin.

So, some pics;

Rear garden clear to the bottom;


Newly discovered steps;


Gave the garden to the right of the house another once over


And a pic of my mate looking knackered, the terraces I reversed off and “Christine” the flail mower…



And that’s about it for updates. Been a busy week, the OH and I decided last week that this year didn’t have quite as much going on as it could, and got engaged. Not ones to rest on our laurels we then moved house (again) this week.

We are now in our third house of the year having sold both of our others to fund this project. This will now be our final place until we move into the completed project and it’s nice to finally feel some permanence and settle for a year.

So done with this……


And next stop;


And to get away from all of it for a bit, I decided to fit a new speedo cable to the Landy today.


I think the snapped end of the previous cable remains in the gearbox drive though as however much I wriggled it about I could only get the tip in…..


So, I gave up and went off roading instead

We are meeting with the builder next Friday to discuss plans and also with a heating person to discuss the various benefits of LPG/Ground Source heating and electric boilers…..

Walking in the cycle lane of life

Cheers all,

[Norbury90]

CTO said:

Been a busy week, the OH and I decided last week that this year didn’t have quite as much going on as it could, and got engaged.

Big congrats! You don't seem to do things by halves!

[Fermit]

CTO said:

Evening all

Rear garden clear to the bottom;

That's some acreage, now you can see it all! How many is it roughly? (apologies if mentioned somewhere, not re-reading 14 pages to check!)

[CTO]

Thanks Norbury

Fermit, not actually sure tbh. The previous owners mentioned it being about one acre. The general consensus from trades and landscapers etc that have been to visit is that its more like two….

Even our neighbour who has an absolutely stunning smallholding/farm with about ten acres was shocked when he came round for a mooch about and said he didn’t realise what was there

At some stage I’ll get round to measuring it. Need a trundle wheel (anyone remember those from primary school)

[jeremyc]

CTO said:

At some stage I’ll get round to measuring it. Need a trundle wheel (anyone remember those from primary school)

All you need nowadays is Google Maps.

Use the 'measure distance' function to draw an arbitrary shaped enclosed area and it'll tell you the total area.

[IanA2]

CTO said:

Thanks Norbury

The previous owners mentioned it being about one acre. The general consensus from trades and landscapers etc that have been to visit is that its more like two….

We have an acre, your plot looks around twice the size of ours.....

[CTO]

Evening all!

Hope you are all well?

So, some advice please from the resident experts.

Currently we are doing the figures on whether to extend the house or whether it is more cost effective to knock the whole thing down and rebuild at 0% VAT.

VAT is currently going to cost us circa 50k and then we have the cost of all the interior “undoing” work to rebuild most of the house.

5%VAT may be an option but there are issues regarding the emptiness of the property (or otherwise) for the preceding two years….. of course…

So, the advice I previously had was that for the work to be zero VAT, the new property would have to be a completely new footprint with new foundations etc and all the work associated.

However; a brief review of the Buildings and Construction VAT notice 708 seems to tell me different…

Specially section 3.2.1;
[i]A zero VAT qualifying building is constructed if it’s built from scratch, and, before construction starts, any pre-existing building is demolished completely to ground level (cellars, basements and the ‘slab’ at ground level may be retained) - see paragraph 3.2.3

the new building makes use of no more than a single facade (or a double facade on a corner site) of a pre-existing building, the pre-existing building is demolished completely (other than the retained facade) before work on the new building is started and the facade is retained as a condition or requirement of statutory planning consent or similar permission - see paragraph 3.2.3[/i]

Now, to me that reads as; we could knock the thing flat and use the slab/extend the slab and build a new build on the extended footprint, or, as an alternative, we could retain the front facade (to keep the character of the house/planning officer happy) and demolish everything back from that facade and build backwards…. Almost as if the front of the house is a film set (crap example but you get the idea). Either option would qualify for zero VAT..

Anyone more learned and familiar with the regs than I able to sense check the above/offer comment?

Cheers all,

[prand]

2 pence from me: knocking the house down is a good idea if you want to save money and build a modern spec property. Its not such a good idea as you won't retain any of the physical history and the timeline of the original building, and the overall site, which is of some significance. Leaving the facade would probably cost you more trying to match and join brickwork front and back, and stabilising and refurbing the frontage, prob better off knocking it all down. Friends tried to keep the front on their house, ended up knocking it all down anyway, which was an expensive decision halfway through their build!

Edited by prand on Monday 6th December 22:19

[CharlesdeGaulle]

I know it's easy to say when it isn't my money, and I am conscious of the risk of sounding like a pretentious pseud, but I think to knock it down would be a terrible thing to do.

We haven't seen much of the house itself yet, but you appear to have a historic house in an 'important' historical and local setting. How replacing that with a new build is going to improve your custodianship of the property is beyond me. Your property is all about character, don't lose it.

(It's not really my business, but you did ask!)

[Mark Benson]

prand said:

Friends tried to keep the front on their house, ended up knocking it all down anyway, which was an expensive decision halfway through their build!

Someone in my village tried to do that and after all the expense of carefully removing the rear of the house, the front collapsed and had to be rebuilt....

[Jobbo]

CTO said:

the new building makes use of no more than a single facade (or a double facade on a corner site) of a pre-existing building, the pre-existing building is demolished completely (other than the retained facade) before work on the new building is started and the facade is retained as a condition or requirement of statutory planning consent or similar permission

I read that as the facade being retained only qualifies for 0% VAT if it is retained pursuant to a planning obligation to keep it. If you simply incorporated it into a new building and got planning consent for that, unless there was a specific condition about retaining the facade it wouldn't count.

Having said that, I'm sure the comment above about it being more costly to retain the facade would be correct anyway. And would the existing cellar/basement/slab/foundations be sufficient for a new build? If you're going to build an entirely new house on the plot you may want to realign it or move it elsewhere within the plot; or have a larger floorplan. Probably best to start imagining what you could build with a totally clean sheet. But I guess by that point the £50k VAT saving is smaller than your build contingency so in if it were me I'd be back at square one

[CTO]

Thanks all, and CDG; no worries re the direct view being shared. It’s not far off our own thinking, just looking at the various cost factors…

There is the 50k vat saving but it isn’t only limited to that as there will be significant undoing works which may exceed simply knocking the thing flat, extending the foundations etc and rebuilding.. whether that is cost neutral given the works that would be undertaken or exceeded is what our builder needs to work out..

Hopefully the above makes sense. The idea of retaining the front is losing its appeal though for multiple reasons, some of which are mentioned by posters in the comments above this…

If it were knocked down to the slab though, presumably the subsequent build would be at 0% VAT and wouldn’t be required to be an entirely new footprint (it would be substantially different anyhow)

Cheers all,

[TheJimi]

Can someone explain to me why renovation incurs VAT, yet a new build wouldn't?

Knowing nothing about such things, the concept has just blown my mind.