Signed up

Just back from holiday yesterday and signed on the dotted line today... we have a contract now to pay huge chunks of money to our builder every month for the next 8. A bit scary but nothing ventured... etc.

He starts to rip it up on Monday morning. Stephen will be there with his camera no doubt.. pics to follow.

VAT VAT VAT!

From 4th, January 2011, the VAT rate goes up from 17.5% to 20%. This will increase the price of our renovations of course - I haven't found anything yet that decreases them! We need to get as much paid for before then as we can!

Ideas Part 1

I have lots of ideas of how I imagine our new house. As they say - pictures speak a thousand words so I am going to publish some pictures here. Some ideas might have to change but here goes...

The doors

White, flat and shiny (?). had thought eggshell (?) but maybe gloss. There are no skirting boards here, I have read somewhere that walls are more easily damaged if u don't have them, so I think we will. However in tiled areas, I would use skirting tiles:

The door handles, something like this:

The Stairs

I think that glass up the sides and plain white plaster upstairs on the landing might be an option:

Hubby likes the open tread, but as our stairs are not going to be attached to a wall, I imagine we would need a "spine" to support them. That's what I'm not keen on, don't like too many bits! Decisions decisions...

Demolition Averted

While the merits of a complete demolition and a rebuild cannot be denied, there are one nor two issues with such an approach.

Issue 1: The house is mortgaged and I can't believe that our friends in the bank would be too happy with us knocking the house down. In fact, the terms and conditions pretty much state that we should not devalue the house at all. Would demolition temporarily devalue the house?

Issue 2: We really want to get started as soon as possible. We've been waiting far too long already. Demolition will introduce a major delay to the work whereas a straight extension/renovation can get underway on the 2nd August.

So the decision as to whether demolish or not was quite straightforward in the end - we're not doing it.