9th Picture

Home Sweet Home!

We decided to extend what was previous a Dormer Bungalow and convert it to a five bedroom house back in 2006. 

The problem was we had plenty of space downstairs but only two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Sharan and I had one bedroom and our four girls the other. To say conditions were cramped was an understatement. Also the girls were growing up fast and needed some privacy and space to call their own, which they definitely didn’t have. 

Our initial thoughts were to move to a four bedroom house, but all the houses we looked at were either in the wrong location; bedrooms too small; limited garden space, or out of our price range. We also needed a room downstairs to convert into a bedroom for my mum. As she couldn’t climb stairs, she needed a bathroom with a shower downstairs too.  

As our options to move were limited, we decided to extend our bungalow instead. I had a rough idea of of the design I was looking for and with the help of our architect the blueprints were finalised, submitted to the council and passed. 

Luckily we got our remortgage before the crash of 2008, but that was as far as our luck went.  

So we moved out in April 2008 and the worked started. 

The first few months were fine and everything was on schedule and we hardly had any issues. Then in late August we noticed the work on the house had virtually ground to a halt. After tracking the builder down, we discovered that he was on the verge of bankruptcy, (which is what eventually happened). We lost a total of £42k we had given him in advance payments to purchase materials and labour costs. 

For some that’s not a lot of money, but that sum represented our total life savings at that time, and we had ear marked it to pay for refurbishing the house. 

So after some very tense family meetings, we got hold of the contractors that our builder was using and as they were now out of work; we asked them to finish our house. This made me the project manager. This was possibly the most stressful time in my life!

With no money we had to turn to family, friends and Credit Cards. Lots and lots of phone calls later we managed to collect enough money together to just about finish the work. 

We were now in early October, and set ourselves a deadline to be in the house before Xmas, and with a day to spare we made it. 

As we speak now in Jan 2012, the house still isn’t fully finished. We still have no curtains, or fitted wardrobes and the garden still looks like a building site. 

Our main task after we moved in was to repay all our friends and family the cash they had so kindly lent us. This we have now done, we only have the Credit Cards to pay off now!  

In the future if there’s a choice between moving or extending, I’m definitely choosing MOVING!!

Ammo