To make something beautiful and long-lasting on a tight budget, I had to economise in lots of ways. One was by managing the project myself. Other (saner) people would pay their architect to manage it or hire a building firm that takes charge of the whole thing.
This meant lots of decision-making, learning, planning, finding tradespeople, paperwork and most of all it meant the buck stopped with me. I had to create a super-long list of everything that needed doing and then I had to make sure everyone did it in the right order. It’s a lot of juggling.
Here’s a list of some of the MIY stuff and my advice:
Juggling trades
The hardest part is finding great tradespeople. I needed a general builder, steel fabricator, glazing supplier, plasterer, electrician, plumber, flooring fitter and stove fitter. I knew half of them already as friends and the other half came from personal recommendations from friends and via a local Facebook community page. There was no Googling and hiring strangers, thankfully. It wasn’t just a case of hiring and budgeting; I also had to understand the work well enough to schedule everyone to come in the right order, on the right dates. And to make sure nothing was forgotten. Max the architect helped by giving me a breakdown of a similar project, while everyone was patient in talking me through their work and explaining the lingo where necessary.
Party Wall admin
If you have a good relationship with your neighbours, you can often do this part for free yourself. But your neighbour can insist on you paying for a surveyor if they want to. Our neighbours are lovely, and we only have a party wall on one side, so this was thankfully straightforward. I did it all myself. You can find the relevant paperwork at www.gov.uk/party-walls-building-works
Planning permission
The biggest delay to the build was waiting for planning permission. We started out thinking we could just apply for Prior Approval, which is cheaper and faster. But that was refused so we went back to square one. We didn’t lose anything apart from time. And the revisions did lead to some design changes that I don’t regret, for example having the patio low down rather than raised.
Building regs
Big structural work like this rightly requires Building Regulations approval, to ensure it’s safe for everyone now and in future. You pay the local council a fee but you don’t need to pay anyone else – your fee covers all their inspections and each time they visit they tell you what stage they want to return. We quickly developed a good relationship with our buildings inspector and they were helpful with practical advice many times during the build – they are experts, after all. In between inspections, I was careful to photograph key stages just in case we needed to document them later (or remember where a pipe was buried!)
Design
My friend and architect Max Dewdney did the initial design, liaised with the structural engineer, got us through the planning process and advised on some details later on. But because I was the person liaising with the builder and other trades, I was often left making design and budget decisions. How big should the windows be? What proportions for the roof? What materials? I would have made some of these decisions ultimately anyway, but because I was managing the project myself, I had to research each one thoroughly to choose the best option and understand the implications of each decision – everything has a knock-on effect. The most memorable one was deciding on the proportions of the asymmetric roof. I had an idea of the shape but I needed to give the builder precise measurements of where the apex should be. In the end, I resorted to A-level maths, scrabbling around in my brain to remember how to do quadratic equations, to resolve how long each side of the roof should be if I wanted the windows to all be the same size and look right.
Thames Water
Like many rear extensions, I also needed permission from the local water board (in my case, Thames Water www.thameswater.co.uk/buildover) because the extension would be above a sewer and we’d have to move a manhole. They require drawings, and most people pay an engineer to do this, but a friend pointed out that they don’t really need a technical drawing. So I asked my builder to explain what we were proposing and then I sketched it myself, in coloured pen on top of a printout of the architect’s drawings. I still had to pay the £299 flat fee to Thames Water but I saved a fair bit – the sketches were accepted and they only took me 15 minutes.
Planning ahead
By far the hardest part of my buck-stops-here job was planning ahead. I needed to understand, in detail, everyone’s job in order to figure out what order people needed to be on site. And if timings slipped for any reason, I had to rejig everything. Spreadsheets and piles of paperwork helped, but a lot of it was stored in my poor bonce. You have to be really organised and, even then, it’s really hard work, definitely not a job for the faint-hearted!
