Costs/Budget/ Overall position!

This post has been coming for a while and im sure there will be plenty of you very interested is seeing this! It should be up by saturday.Final Draw down of the mortgage is due this week have a few people to pay and will have all the figures together then.

Garage door Installed, Protect the pets!!

Well we have two new additions to the family that needed a house to live in so we had to buy a roller shutter door for the garage and put up a dog run, the door was 8ft tall 16ft wide fully insulated roller shutter including remote control for €1600 incl vat black in colour from Autoroller kanturk, my job at the weekend is to try and figure out this pet safe job to go around the site! Picture of the two...........

Living room taking shape

Fish Tank Wall entrance Hall

The fish tank finally passed its water test this week after much tooing and froing and building the tank, the inital test months ago failed and the tank gave way! We filled it last saturday, got the water tested and the amonia levels were sky high, we treated the water in the tank chemically and tested it last week and it failed again, our local pet shop supplier was at odds to explain it, as we tested the house water and that was fine, but to cut a long story short, we had to empty the tank, 240litres of water out of the office give it a good cleaning and test it again which we did, we now have 5 danios :) living very happily in the tank and we will be adding to this for the next few weeks.

Kitchen up and Running

Solid Oak doors, with a formica worktop, local kitchen maker supplied and fitted for €8,200. We are very happy with the results. As always click on the pictures to expand the size! From previous posts you will see we had intended on going with kitchen world, but i reapproached the local kitchen fitter about 4 months after initially talking to him, downturn had started to hit, and he matched there price his previous best was €10,400 so it is worth having a go! The bonus of going with the local lad was that he installed it also, kitchen world would only recommend a fitter, plus carltons are well known for their after care service if there is any problems. The lack of granite is one of the lack of funding cuts we had to endure!! :( Granite was working out between €4,200 to €6,800 were the quotes i got for 7 metres 600 deep and an 1100 island with undermounted sink.

Fireplace and Stove living room

http://www.fpscentre.com/contact.htm we bought both of these here: €2,250 for the fireplace and €1,750 for 12kw nestor martin stove supplied and fitted, has turned out to be fantastic. All companys seem to be the same on prices when it comes to these.
Click on picture to expand size!

Stone cladding and In wall fish tank entrance hall

Posted about this stone on boards earlier, drove to roscrea for it one day in the company car! Wanted 12sqm thought "ah ill fit that in no hassle" i got there and they asked "what ya drivin" then started laughin "well im taking it after driving down here" the front of the car never touched the road on the way home :) the cladding cost €39.99 from http://www.wesellstone.com/PageProducer.aspx?Page=1. We put it up ourselves using tile adhesive looks great will post pictures of it soon. The fish tank then was a major piece of engineering and design we decided to custom build it between myself and my brother. Its made out of acrylic plastic, all large tanks are these days, and fixed with a solvent cement from america http://www.duboisi.com/diy/BNdiytank/bndiytank.htm we followed this guys instructions. Got the plastic delivered from meath have enough to make another tank still had to buy the full sheet. Put it all together and let it set for a week and filled and tested it, started to leak and then creak. We had to get a steel frame made up for the outside of it for support, stainless steel looks good filled it and tested it for three weeks no sign of anythin!You can now see from the entrance hall into the office through the tank it looks great makes for a good feature. Picture of the tank under construction!

Tiles, tiler and tile Prices

As we have 5 bathrooms and tiled the kitchen floor and entrance hall there was a considerable quantity and cost of tiles we sourced the tiles from three different shops:-
Kitchen floor tiles, right price tiles €5.99 a yard
Entrance hall tiles and main bathroom marble and limestone €20.99 each from Irwins Castleblaney
All other wall and floor tiles BTW waterford during sale €12.99 - €24.99
Total cost of tiles was €4,950
The tiler priced the job at €22a yard for marble and €14 a yard for ceramics, his total cost was €3,400 although he did try to argue that he had meant to tell me his price was €4,300!!!! There was €1,200 on materials on top of this grout seals and adhesive!
Total cost materials and labour €9,550

Material sourcing for second fix carpentry

Example of doors skirting and architrave
I am going to compile a list and contact details of all suppliers and contractors i used on this job and add it to the tool bar on the side here, but i thought this aspect deserved special mention as it comes up a lot. The doors engineered oak i sourced from FR Cathcart in enniskillen fermanagh for €53 each i drove up and down a van the same day took them all with me. The skirting door frame and architrave i got from cranwood in newry county down, they delivered to ardmore for €8 and were fantastic value.

http://www.cranwoodindustries.com/
http://www.frcathcartltd.com/

We also went to irwins floor and tiles in castle blaney county monoghan, looking at hardwood floors and although we decided against them the value and range is fantastic hardwood floors from €14.99 a yard, we did end up buying tiles from them marble and limestone slabs, delivery is extra they have a list of recommended drivers cost €150. The laminate floors we got in thos Bryans in Fermoy 2 differnt kinds both €6.99 a yard.

Second Fix carpentry

Well i got the two lads who did the roof, back to do this for me. They are from down home, but stayed in an old cottage up here during the weeks they were completing the work. They had to put down timber floors in every room upstairs and downstairs with the exception of tiles to the kitchen entrance hall and all bathrooms, we went for mostly laminate as we had spoke to several people about solid or engineered timber and they all spoke about how easily scratehed and damaged it is, so we decided to use laminate and down the line put down solid timber in some of the rooms. The two lads were four weeks at the second fix there was a lot of work there, as they had to batten with 3x2 all the ground floors and ply on top of that and then floor on top of that, all the doors frames skirting architrave shelving to office and four walk in wardrobes, beams in the sitting room and so on it cost me €12,000 which seems to me as maybe a bit expensive it was the finishing of the house that proved the dearest and most time consuming part of it, it was at this stage that the size 4,350sqft really started to tell on our pockets!! :(

Second Fix electrics

All our lights and fixtures we bought in cork lighting up the kinsale road, we found fantastic value there and they have a great range of stuff. We got the chandlier for the sitting room there for €250 display model in closing down of old shop sale saw it for sale in another shop for €750. We got our wall lights there 16 of them for a €10 each on sale in another shop for €62.60. Kitchen dining room hall and landings for €120 each we had been looking around a long time for lots of this stuff and they had exactly what we wanted and at very very good prices. Our electrican got his cert into the esb around november and they were out two days later to connect us up, they are very quite at the moment and the cheque had not even been cashed and we had power connection fee to esb is €1,750. Our electricain is very busy locally and we are currently working on it in the evenings gettin it done bit by bit. In order to help him out i hung all the wall lights 24 in total, another day will have him finished, but there has been no major setbacks with the electrics and charlie has done a very good job, there is a small bit of money to come off the final bill as we did not go ahead with the apartment up stairs in the garage.

Add on for plumbing

When we first went about getting the system filled with water so we could get the rads going there were a few unfortunate leaks the first one was fairly big resulting in water coming down through several of the ceilings letting them stained looked like the damage was done to the qualpex pipe between the floors by a drill bit, there was also a second one of these the following week when we filled the cold water system. We were lucky enough that the two leaks were accessible from the attic, if they had been under the floor we would have been in right trouble. Down stairs last week, there was a leak under the bathroom floor, it meant we had to take up three tiles, turns out there was a screw in the pipe, and the front bedroom ensuite pipe was leaking for the hot supply it would have meant far too much disruption and uprooting to find this leak so we had to blank it off, resulting in that room never will have hot water in the sink, our poor guests!!!

Second Fix plumbing

We purchased our sanitary ware all locally at no huge costs, we got 4 pumped grohe mains showers for €250 in tom currans dungarven, We got all our sinks and taps in designer zone in dungarven, they had a half price sale one weekend stuff was very cheap for very good quality items taps for all bathrooms €70 each sinks averaging between €120 and €260. Picked up a second hand belfast sink for €100 for utility got the tap for that in the local hardware for €40 kitchen sink remarkable value circular sink and unattached sperate circular drainer in the island for €44 euro in b&q and a tall swinging hose tap from designer zone for €180. Shower trays and toilets from hardware supplier Paul flynn for average of €100 each. Got the shower from paul too a triton t90 si for €245. We also got the jacuzzi bath 16 jets from designer zone the weekend of their sale for €1750. The plumber actually only finished up his contract yesterday so it was a drawn out affair, but its complete now and makes life a little easier, we must still finalise our price its 26 rads condensing oil boiler solar hot water tank three zones booster pump in garage from the well, plumb 5 bathrooms and kitchen. in and around €16,500.

Garage Progress Roof and plaster

The garage was roofed lathed and felted by my dad and the lads the week that they finished up on site full time in late july, after that most of the work was done at weekends between myself and dad, we slated the garage. I got a local guy for two days to plaster it for us also, as it was not worth the while gettin the lads who did the house back down. We put up a temporary door to keep the wind out and stop any potential damage occuring. The lad who plasterd the garage did so for €200 a day and was tended by my future father in law. :)

Undercoat paint to internal

We gave it about 4 weeks drying out before i moved in the painter, it was a lad from down home and my younger brother came up to do it! 16, 5 litre buckets of dulux white emulsion matt as it was going through a sprayer the painter said it should be a good quality paint, he finished coated all ceilings and one coat to all walls took him two days and cost me €400 for labour, the paint cost €600 and i hired the sprayer from frahers in dungarven for €70 a day, fantastic machine does a great job. The sockets or rads were not on at this stage so it was just a case of walk in and spray just cover windows with cardboard! No second fix plumbing or carpentry in the way either so that speeds the whole lot up.

Plastering completeion (28/07/08)

Well the 28th of July plastering was complete to the house, it was the lad from down home that i used to work for another plasterer that works with him and the lad that works with my dad from time to time i was paying them €150 a day and it worked out very well for a house its size it only cost me €11k and was complete in three weeks, a day rate can be very helpful when you have someone on site releated to you keeps everyone honest! :) It also takes the uncertainity out of it for the plasters as long as they know what they are gettin at the end of the week, sometimes with priced work they go in higher to cover any potential problems that might pop up. Materials cost will be posted as a link in the toolbar in the coming weeks im going to analyse the whole lot there.

Im Back

Hi all,

We are back from the wilderness well its been a hectic 15 months since we started the building of the house on the 14th of Jan 2008, i have neglected the blog for the last few months, but have maintained my diary and am now going to bring the whole lot back up to the current moment in time, and let everyone know where we stand in terms of completeion budget tracking, material sourcing, prices, bargins relationships and work :) Its been and still is an enjoyable but at the same time challenging ride, which we are deffinitely ready to finish with now!!!! We moved in last Friday even though there is lots of work yet to be done, but you will see from the next posts here what we have been up to in the last few months! So hope ye enjoy and that the information is helpful to everyone.