Two years ago my wife and I discovered that we were having another baby and after the initial elation that we both felt, thoughts quickly turned to where on earth our new child would go. Our house was already busting at the seams and we had to make a decision as to whether we would move or stay and extend. After much deliberation, we decided that we would stay in the house and have it extended, a job that went very well.
There were many things about the extension that caught me by surprise and perhaps I hadn’t quite understood just how big a job it would be. If you are about to have your home extended, here are some of the things that you need to anticipate.
Heavy Machinery
I knew that construction equipment would be involved in the project but I had not realized quite how much I would see. During the process we had diggers, overhead cranes, huge cement mixers and all other types of huge industrial gadgets. For this reason I think it is important that you always do your best to keep the neighbors in the loop as to what is happening because those heavy duty vehicles can cause quite an amount of noise and chaos.
Rising Costs
From my experience, I would advise you not to pay too much attention to the prices which you have been quoted as almost everything seemed to run at a higher price. Materials would alter in price, jobs would take longer than anticipated leading to more labor costs and all other manner of things took place which caused us to fork out more. My advice would be that your budget is only 80% of what you can actually afford to spend, giving you a 20% buffer on your finances.
Outages
Rightly or wrongly, we decided that we would stay in our home whilst the contraction work was being completed, a move which saw us effectively living on a construction site for the duration. I was already prepared for the fact that there would be things lying about and the potential risk of dirt and debris in the air. What I hadn’t accounted for however was the amount of times the power was cut or the gas or water went out. Even if you are aware of the possibilities of this happening, you can guarantee that it always happens at the worst possible time.
Chaos
Even a well organized building site looks like something truly chaotic and I most certainly wasn’t ready for the sheer amount of mess and rubble and general mayhem that I saw whilst the project was going on. This may sound a little naive but I genuinely never thought that the job would create so much mess, just make sure that you are not only ready for this, but that you also have a team who like to tidy up after themselves.