Brand new house built in 12 weeks

[soupdragon1]

I've been having a look at some of the other build threads on here and thought I might share my own (if people are interested)

Background.

We actually built the house from new back in 2014 and due to having a time restricted offer on our previous house, we ended up selling our house without even having bought our new place - so we were living with my parents for the duration. Not ideal.

We found a site with planning permission but the house wasn't exactly to our liking but we thought we would take a punt, make some (ok, lots) of changes and then squeeze the builder to build it as fast as he could. We went from foundations to finished in about 3 months which looking back, was a bit mad, as you have so many construction and decor decisions to make during that time.

Key factors we were looking for in the new build.

- open plan living space - centered around the kitchen, but with vaulted ceiling sun room dining (with window seating) and an adjoining lounge area.

- the detached garage would actually be a purpose built outhouse and actually a living space rather than a garage, but looking like a garage from the front view (fully insulated, spotlights, plastered, skirting etc and wired for a potential future home cinema)

- a Master suite - over 30ft long to include bedroom, ensuite and large walk in wardrobe

- a home for the av enthusiast - a separate cinema room with 104" screen/JVC projector/Dolby Atmos sound system and another more discreet lounge AV system, again with Dolby Atmos, but with more discreet speaker sizes - and all rooms would be interconnected with CAT6 and HDMI routing meaning we could distribute audio and video to any room in the house (and into the detached garage if we so wished)

Once we started to design the house (within reasonable assumtion to the previously approved design) we decided to increase the ground floor to 9ft ceilings to create a more spacious feel, vault the ceiling in the sunroom, extend the kitchen area to ensure we could accomodate an island and build above the kitchen extension to make the upstairs kids bedrooms bigger.

Overall, the interior sqft ended up about 2300 and the exterior building was just under 300sqft.

So thats the background. I documented everything with tons of pictures as the build went along so if you guys are interested in my build, I'll dig them out and put them on here with a bit of a walk through/talk through of what we did as we went along. Anyone interested?

[soupdragon1]

Here's a couple of starter pics to give a flavour of what we did...






A couple of 'moved in pics'







Those should give you a flavour for what we did. It'll be a bit of work for me to document the full build but if enough people are interested I'll put the effort in. I'm proud of what we achieved so I'm happy to share.

[soupdragon1]

Venom said:

My wife works for the HCA - one of their key missions at the moment is to prove that you can build houses, en mass, quicker than your regulars like Taylor Wimpey et al manage.

Off site pre-fab/SIPS build is well up there to getting a good product quickly.

How have you found the insurance process? Any problems getting coverage on a house of 'non-standard construction'?

I'm not sure about insurance as we had a building contractor who looked after all that stuff. Although I think that timber frame construction is pretty standard these days anyway? Timber frame was absolutely essential for us to get the house built quickly and for us to move out of my parents house. Any time we wanted a structural change. the builder was able to run it past the fabricator and get us a revised cost within 24hrs. Even when we completely changed the layout at the start, the re-costed price came back within 48hrs which was mighty impressive.

Once we signed off the construction, it was all fixed priced from there so it was good that there were no hidden costs - any issues that arose (weather delays etc) were for the builder to worry about. We then agreed prices for any changes. Eg. How much for a half wall between the garage and the house? He would come back with a price and that would be it - once we agreed, no change. This took a lot of stress away from us from a financial point of view.

You mention about speed of house building. The builder managed to build the entire house, garage and full groundworks quicker than the kitchen provider was able to build the kitchen lol! We ended up moving in with no worktops installed - just bits of board so that we had somewhere to set the kettle and toaster

[soupdragon1]

NordicCrankShaft said:

Do you have anymore snaps of the build process?

At the moment here in Norway there seems to be a bit of a thing for companies popping up that offer pre-fabricated houses, the fabrications process is done at their factories in Lithuania/Estonia and then sent over by lorry, I've watched a crew of 6 guys build the entire outer shell of a house in 2 days.

Also the father in law runs a construction business, bought some land in the mountains and built three high spec cabins on the ski slopes, same process even though it was a bit more bespoke, a team of guys turned up with the lorry with the outside walls and roof. It actually seems like a really cost effective way of doing things.

I've about 1,000 snaps of the build process - will that be enough?!

I've seen a few TV shows with pre-fabricated houses - very impressive how they do it. Even the tiling can be done before the house is put together - mental!

[soupdragon1]

Well there seems to be a bit of interest so I'll carry on with the thread and update what we did.

I guess a good place to start would be the actual floor plan.

I'm sure I have the actual plans tucked away in a file somewhere with the elevations etc but here's something I threw together on excel to give you an idea of the layout we went for on both floors.

The yellow shaded area's are where we deviated from the original plan. You can see the kitchen is only a small area of about 70sqft and the area above (kids bedroom) also extended by the same. These 2 areas didn't exist in the original 'approved' plans but because the extension was at the rear of the house, and it was only bringing this section level with the rest of the rear, it wasn't a problem planning wise.
This small extension only cost us about £6k extra as we did it before any work had taken place. It would probably cost more like £30k if we decided to retrofit down the line so a massive benefit doing this straight away, rather than later.

The other yellow area's upstairs is basically a reconfigured section to make our 'master suite' so that the bedroom flows into the ensuite and then continues on into the dressing room. Its designed in such a way that the dressing room can be made into another bedroom (door into landing is already installed but deactivated and hid behind wardrobes) and the ensuite could turn into a jack and jill ensuite between the 2 bedrooms.

The reason for this design is to maximise flexibility if we ever sell the house - you could make this an extra bedroom if you had a big family for example. The cinema room and/or formal dining room are easily made into bedrooms as well as they are basically spare rooms - the right hand side of the ground floor is more than sufficient for day to day family living. And then we made a cutaway space in the main hallway/landing which runs 18ft from floor to ceiling. Due to the only light in the hallway coming from the front door and its 2 side windows, this lets more light into what would otherwise had been a dark hallway with very little natural light.

As I go through the build, you will see lots of examples of meticulous planning and design to ensure the house is a home. This goes right down to having outdoor electric socket beside the outside tap - no need to run an extension cable outside when I can just connect the power washer to the outdoor socket and the water feed is in the exact same place.

Things like Christmas trees, light etc....where will they go and where do we want power for them? I have power above my kitchen cabinets which is controlled by a lightswitch so when its christmas, you walk into the living room and switch the main lights and the Christmas lights come on from the same wall socket.

We didn't leave any stone unturned when it came to how we want to live in the house - whether it be from an AV point of view or a 'useful' point of view, the house was designed from the ground up to suit our family (and subsequent family if we ever sell it)
Poor wifi in the garage? Not a problem - there is a sealed tube that runs from the lounge, under the patio, into the garage and has HDMI and cat 6 which will connect it to the broadband switcher which feeds from the router and goes all around the house

But anyway, thats all for later. It might take me a while going through all the steps and I'll update as and when I've got time, but here are the floor plans to get the ball rolling

(pics in next post)

[soupdragon1]

[soupdragon1]

was8v said:

What was the cost sq/m for that spec and doing it so quickly?

Going to be doing it myself very soon. However I don't need to be so fast as the plot is in the family and we have a house....

I wasn't going to mention price for a little while into the thread and was going to let people have a guess first

For example - part of the planning was a rough render on the outside which is in keeping with neighbouring houses. I'm not a fan of this type of render to be honest but on the otherhand, its very cost effective. This frees up money to spend on the interior so while the kerb appeal isn't exactly my preference, the interior has some nice luxury touches.

But I'll come to all the soon enough hopefully!

[soupdragon1]

For those interested in doing their own build on the future, a couple of key points worth noting.

For best bang for buck, a square house is the cheapest per sq ft design you can do. If you think about it, if a perimeter costs £X per ft, the biggest internal sqft space you can get for a given perimeter is always going to be a square shape.

Roofing is very expensive, so a simple square design is always cheaper. Lots of dormers etc look nice, but add to the price.

You'll note that my house is completely square. Now let's be honest, square is boring. Fact. We broke it up with a front porch (not shown in my floor plan) , we added a sunroom as well as a bay window at the side to help break up the square shape.

In summary, if money isn't a concern, that's great but if you need to maximize space per £££ then the above tips will help.

Last point is high ceilings. This is a really cheap way to add space to your house and add a bit of character. Our sunroom is roughly 12x14 and to vault the ceiling versus a flat roof, it was only another £600. No brainer and in one of the pics I posted earlier, you get a glimpse of the effect.

The whole ground floor was upped from 8ft ceilings to 9ft ceilings (roughly 15% higher)
When we asked for a cost, I was thinking if it cost under £10k to raise the ceiling height we would do it. He came back with a bill for £1.5k (yes, the decimal point is correct!)
Looking at it another way - we see in 3 dimensions, not 2 but people always think of floor space, sqft, but that's not how we perceive space. Higher ceilings create a more spacious feel overall. Effectively, we created an extra 15% of cubic space downstairs for only £1.5k.

We also went for a cutaway at the front door so instead of having more landing space, we have an 18ft high 2 storey feature at the front door which creates a spacious feel to a relatively narrow hallway. You'll see this in later pics.

But if I was to advise one thing, 9ft ceilings in the ground floor make a huge difference, 15% more space for little cost. It also means you can have more height for light fittings too, which accentuate the height as well

[soupdragon1]

garyhun said:

I would suggest, wherever possible, that everyone builds their own.

The stress, pain and ultimately the pleasure and reward are like nothing else.

I'll hopefully be doing another once my current place sells. The fun and excitement of designing exactly what you want (planners permitting) is also pretty amazing.

I read your 2014 build - stunning in every aspect. Are you still in that house or did you move as the last post on the thread was 2014 and you had mentioned you wanted to sell?

[soupdragon1]

So after agreeing the layout, specifications and prices with the builder, it was time to dig the founds, pour the concrete and get the construction started.

Week 1
Pic from the front porch and into the hallway.



And from the dining room corner at the rear, looking to the front. You can see while we were hammering out the house details, the builder already had his team crack on and get the garage (outhouse) started



On Good Friday I was off work but the builder and his team, the crane man, the timber frame team, all worked the bank holiday to get my house started. I wanted to see how it all was put together so I popped round to the site at 11am and they were well on their way, erecting the frame. This is the cinema room directly in front and the porch just to the right



View in the front door. You can see the dining room wall hanging from the crane and getting slotted into position



The jigsaw puzzle continues...pic from sunroom into kitchen



I then took a run to the local park and came back at tea time to see where they had got to and the 2nd floor was started. This is the left side, dining room left and cinema room right. Up above, is the master bedroom left, ensuite middle and dressing room to the right


This shows the sunroom and bay window

And this the the back, dining right, utility middle and kitchen to the left


Not bad for 1 days construction - most of the house frame in place already

[soupdragon1]

Collectingbrass said:

OP, what was the lead time to get the panels on site, did you have to commit before the groundworks started?

Also, how much extra did the easter weekend work cost?

The lead time could be anything from a couple of days to a couple of weeks depending on the supplier -ours was local (I live in N Ireland) and I was very impressed with how quickly they could quote any changes to design, along with how quickly they managed to supply it.

For groundworks, you absolutely need to have the design finalised as changing and digging more trenches afterwards will just add additional cost. I guess you could maybe change some internal walls a bit after the groundworks have started, but the externals need to be quite precise in terms of frame design matching the founds.

The Easter work was normal price - no extra charge. I was quite surprised when the builder told me they were starting to do the frame on Good Friday. He had a few big projects lined up for after my house was built so I guess it was in his best interest as well, to get my house built to enable his team to move onto the next projects.

[soupdragon1]

Harry Flashman said:

This is a great point. We have just moved to a house with 11 foot ceilings on the ground floor and 9 foot ceilings on the main floor. It is technically only 10% bigger in square footage terms than our old house, but literally feels 50% bigger.

It's Victorian, so the heating bills will be aggressive due to the volumes - but in a proper modern house, this can be managed.

Square footage is really only a piece of the equation when determining how a space feels.

Great thread - more please, as well as tips about what you'd do/notdo if doingi t again!

It makes more of a difference than you would think, doesn't it!

If you ever watch any of those house refurb/buying/selling property shows - any house that has high ceilings or aspects of raised heights at certain points - people will ALWAYS remark on it. When you build a house from scratch like we have done - its by far and away the cheapest way to add extra 'space' to your property and it leaves you more space to have nicer light fixtures, add picture rails, high windows and that type of thing as they all help accentuate the feeling of extra space. If you build from new, unless you have a restriction on peak height of the building, I would STRONGLY suggest to think about putting in higher ceilings. I'm so glad that we did, and it only cost us £1.5k for 15% more cubic space - that was quite an easy decision

[soupdragon1]

So week 1 and week 2 were basically foundations, frame and roof. I was away and unable to get the roof building pics unfortunately but you'll see it in later pics.

Week 3

Once the design was finalised, the builder had obviously ordered the windows as in week 3 - the windows were in, roof was on, and house was water tight (relatively - not completely finished but well started)

Then the block building commenced. As mentioned earlier, to suit the planning and neighouring houses, the plan was going to be a rough grey render finish over the block.

Windows installed. Timber frame was already sitting waiting with the correct space for each window so it was a simple matter of taking them out of the packet and attaching to the frame of the house. Windows were installed in one day - really simple job


You can see here better how the window attach is a simple process - put window in the space, bring block work to required height, add window sill and thats that


Lounge side

Cinema room side

Left side

Edited by soupdragon1 on Tuesday 5th September 16:38

[soupdragon1]

So in the space of 3 weeks, we had went from a spare piece of land to a piece of land with a house shaped object constructed on it.

The builder is obviously very experienced at timing all the trades in to match up with each other - but there was still a lot of pressure on us at this point. With everything moving so quickly, we had decisions to make - and fast. We had already been to the kitchen designer which made us feel super organised. But then the reality hit in.

Builder contacted me to say 1st fix plumbing and electrics are going in next week. Oh bks!

Where will the TV go - where will the kettle go - where do I want all my speakers - I want to network the house and interconnect everything - where will our bed go - do we want sockets either side of the bed for table lamps - do we want outdoor lights - where is the bath going - toilets - sinks - showers - heating control switches - light sockets - spotlights - garage connection - do you want lights over the island - oh st!!! I'm not ready yet. After putting pressure on the builder to build the house quickly, all of a sudden is was me under pressure - and that is just a very short list of questions needing answered - there were hundreds more!

I felt pressured at this point as the whole idea was to have everything so well thought out and everything to be where you want it - but once it dawns on you how many decisions you need to make very very quickly and not wanting to screw it up - all of a sudden I'm under pressure.

So I spent the weekend sitting on the site - in the part built house, going from space to space - trying to visualise a 'home' when all I could actually see was wood, brick and dirt. That was a tough weekend

[soupdragon1]

Equus said:

I'm assuming that the blockwork shown in the above photos is to be rendered?

Out of interest, what led your decision to use rendered blockwork, rather than a renderboard or renderlath fixed directly to the timber frame?

Due to rendering in neighbouring houses, we had to go for the same grey rough render exterior otherwise we would have had planning issues so it wasn't even a decision for us. It was the builders idea to render the block and I'm not even aware of the other options you mention. We never gave it much consideration to be perfectly honest.

Some of you may question the use of pvc windows. I did give consideration to aluminium windows but due to both the expense and the fact that the rough render is never going to be a beautiful look, it made sense to spend the money getting the inside to look great. We always had planned to fit shutters anyway, so any benefit from aluminium windows from an aesthetic point of view were very small versus the outlay on cost.

[soupdragon1]

PhilboSE said:

Focal Sib XL and Sib speakers side and rear in the cinema room and a JVC projector.

Ah, you know your focals then

Being piston heads, I'm sure a few members will be familiar with focal brand due to their car audio heritage.

The surrounds are good speakers but its the front 3 where I've got the best quality. These are 30th anniversary special editions with the 'W' sandwich drivers that are normally reserved for the high end models, but put into this midrange model as a one off. Amazing clarity with nice clean bass and fantastic midrange.

[soupdragon1]

Next update is the garage/outhouse. It was never going to be a garage as I had planned to put a concrete base in the back garden to house a couple of sheds. They would take care of storage space and to use the garage as something more exciting - a home cinema, a gym, or maybe a den for my son once he gets a bit older.

My last garage was the same - it wasn't used as a garage - this is what I did with it



A golf simulator. I got some 'indoor bowls' type flooring which acted as a putting green. I also added light rough to the rear to practice chip shots.



Putter collection for practice



Doing the golf simulator made me realise using a garage to store stuff was such a waste, hence having a concrete base made in the garden for shed space which would open up the option for another room in the garage.

Getting started


And rendered


Roof ob

It's around 20ft long and 14ft wide





And then starting the interior.



Later on, we had spotlights in the ceiling, skirting boards installed, painted and then wired for a home cinema. Considering we had a cinema room planned for the house already, this wiring was done 'just in case' as we hadn't decided what to do with the space at that moment in time.

So that's the little garage story. Will continue with the actual house update tomorrow

[soupdragon1]

PhilboSE said:

Don't want to derail the thread (nice house BTW) but yes I've got a set of the Focals in my junior room. Upgraded to XTZ Cinema Cinema series for my 7.1.4 setup which are awesome.

Which focals have you got, the sibs or the 800 series?

Good choice on the XTZ's - I've not heard them but they get universal praise - 10/10 on one of the reviews (trusted reviews I think) and right up there with some of the MK range by all accounts. I'm sure you must be delighted with your set up

[soupdragon1]

Original Poster said:

Cannot wait for more!

Won't be long - I'll do the next update this evening when I've a bit of time!

[soupdragon1]

So the block work continued at a rapid rate....





You can see the slate roof and pvc fascia. We went pvc as while wood looks better, after 5 years it's shot to pieces and with the sunroom position etc, would be really awkward to repaint.





You can start to see the benefit of vaulting the ceiling and the height benefit I mentioned earlier.



At this point, I was also able to get upstairs on the ladder and have a look around.
We are right at the edge of a large town but with greenbelt front and to one side so a semi rural location.



As mentioned earlier, lots of decisions to make on 1st fix electric and plumbing. Things like electric sockets outside are really useful.



More on this in next post.