Self Build In Ireland

Well as far as i can tell the lads are all dead and gone... noise free nights for the past week, put down poision in the attic and traps... removed three dead mice, found another so full in the dogs nut bag that he could not move ;) poor devil, no poision has been eaten in the last week either.
So went blocking and sealing all holes around waste pipes into the house with spray foam and mortar,hopefully the house is now vermen proof.
Also we seemed to have lots of spiders appearing were coming in around the pipes of the rads, sealed up all those holes the weekend too, some massively crazy spiders, the wolf spider, hopefully this solves all the problems, the other half has now purchased two gadgets... i dunno if they work or not, but the few flies that were in the house lost all ability to fly after about 5 hours... concidence???

Was lying in bed saturday night, and heard scratching in the ceiling above me.... :( Could not sleep for the night, was home alone too had to switch bedrooms to get away from the noise!!! Following morning i put poision in the attic space and a few hours later it was all gone, put down some more and set a few traps nothing got yet, but had a silent scratch free night last night. Just hoping its mice and not the bigger furry variety, must put some poision down around outside too...

Well the seed to the front lawn was set last wednesday and saturday, should hopefully be seeing signs of growth soon. So how much did it cost, and was there a lot of work involved...??
Compared to the quote of €2,950 from the landscaper, as outlined below in another post. We have spent, €240 for bob cat with soil crumbler and stone raker for the weekend (this leveled the site and made it the cake crumb consistency that you are supposed to have, on hindsight the harrow would have done the same job and saved €240), 3 bags 25kg nr 2 grass seed at €60 each, the lawn was harrowed for free, tracks machine to level the place one saturday 8hrs at €40 an hour, after that it was all free labour and very much appreciated :) Took 5 people nearly 5 days to pick stones rake it, seed it and roll it, the water filled roller cost €32 for the week.

Total cost €772

The house across the passage from us up on a hill, was gettin footpaths in they had a dumper outside the front door, handbrake gave way and came down towards our place and across the passage through the front gate. Im currently waiting on the builder to fix it up he claims the gate is on order for the past two months...

Seems like there are people just crawling out of the woodwork lately looking for extra money, or increasing prices that had previously been agreed. Maybe it's to do with the down turn in the economy, but people are getting seriously pushy about it too, i guess we have all come on tough times in the last few months here is hoping the interest rates remain low for another while to come....

As a follow up to my earlier post where we had prices got from landscapers to do the work, we had agreed with the guy doing it for €2,200 as he was a friend of herself, i had presumed that weedkilling was part of his price when i met him recently he told me he wanted €150 extra for each weed kill he had done, €450 and his price was gone up from €2,200 to €2,500, making it €2,950 in total. Even though the €450 for weedkilling was completely outrageous i paid him and told him to get lost if he thought he was getting more work.
With the way the weather has been lately it was very hard to get any work done, so last weekend i got the tracks machine in and we levelled the whole garden, i raised the level of the septic tank and the AJ box for the percolation, and the lawn is now drying out ready to be rotavated before the end of this week weather permitting.We are tackling the lawn ourselves now, so ill keep an eye on cost and see how it compares to "our friendly" landscaper. Herselfs uncle is going to rotavate it and then we are going to have a stone picking party and my uncle is going to spread the seeds and roll it for us.

Link to a great irish gardening website that i have been using, very helpful there.

http://www.gardenplansireland.com/forum/

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In order to try and make the house look a little more presentable on the outside myself, dad and youngest brother have started at the kerbs 150 0f them in all, cost €4.10 each. We had toyed with the idea of using sleepers but went with the concrete kerb, nearly done with them now, waiting for the lawn to dry up a bit so we can actually work on it. Have two prices from landscapers for it one was €2,950 the other €1,600 both to do the same job rotivate it level it and pick the stones, set the seed.

We have been waiting a while for this, been saving up the money to buy it.

http://www.stairscork.com/ got it from this lot as a flat pack for €3,600 incl vat and delivery, carpenter charging €300 to put it in, there is a glass balustrade also included in the price, going in today.

Click on pic to expand the size...

PS...Im not forgetting about my previous post im compiling the figures at the mo.

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.

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...........

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.

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.

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!

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!

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

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.

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!! :(

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.

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!!!

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.

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. :)

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.

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.

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.

Hello all, just a quick post to let ye know we are all still alieve and the house is still being built, i will be updating the blog in the next week or so to bring all works uptodate.

Click on the drawings to expand size!

This is a job we have been putting off for a while, have been looking in shops around the counties at various kitchens, i eventually rang a local lad to come out have a look at it measure it up and price it for me! He gave me a design, and me being a quantity surveyor could not resist but send it out for pricing, went e-mailed it to a few kitchen places flat packs and manufacturers and got my price comparisons together, we went to waterford city then last weekend to a place called kitchen world, have some nice stuff in there showroom and i got James the guy there to price our design Including granite worktop to kitchen and island and the utility room sinks and taps included included he came to €14,800 he asked what would he need to do to get the business, and i told him to give us the utility room for free and he dropped his price to €13,300 and was throwing in a free Bosch double oven. I told him to give me till Monday so i could look at my prices and i would give him a shout, i contacted him Monday and told him i had 2 quotes from his competitors of €7k and €7.4k (for just kitchens) could he match that and i would take the granite at our previously agreed price. We have agreed to purchase the kitchen from him for €12,350 including the free double oven!
The best price i had received from a kitchen fitter was €10,250 this did not include for any sinks and just a standard formica worktop, this means I'm getting the granite worktop sinks and double oven for €2,100!
www.kitchenworld.ie
http://www.kitchenworld.ie/vienna.htm Thats the finish we have chosen

Things have been hectic between work and the house lately,
External works
We have the septic tank and percolation area completed outside, all soil has now been moved off site and the gardens are ready to be landscaped, the well has been drilled and lined hit water at 90feet, they have it lined too,(€2,500) so just come back to fit the pump! We have the front fence done as well, waterford FRS very good work, 6x6 rails and 6x6 posts €22/meter, bought a ranch style timber gate from a local timber yard at €580. The house has been scratch coated and we have a finish coat to the gable and the front of the house, the rest of it is beaded just waiting for good days to get it finished.
Internal Works
The lads have been slabbing the downstairs the upstairs is now complete in terms of plastering and is drying out well, hoping to get the painter in up there next week to give the whole lot an undercoat before we second fix anything. Downstairs is almost completely slabbed and 70% complete in terms of scratch and hardwall, have 4 plasterers there all week. Im hoping all plastering will be complete this day week! I have a security alarm crowd on site too burgolarm, €2,500 for the lot with text message relay!

The garge is now at lath and felt stage and is looking well, we have had to get rid of the idea of having an upstairs though unfortunately. The windows and doors arrived last thursday, ended up going wth munster joinery 24 windows and 5 doors golden oak wood grain PVC windows and teak doors €15,000.
We had planned on going with the swedish aluclad windows an had paid the deposit, when the sent through a revised quotatio 120% greater than their orignal, so i had to cancel it! Place is looking well ow though, soffit and fascia is gone up too black colour house and garage cost €3,500

The inside of the house is ready for plastering and it has commenced up stairs with the hardwallto the master bedroom, paying the plasterer on a day rate so, ill let ye know how that turns out!
So far it is looking well, as it is still drying out, we are hoping to use oak doors and frames so i asked the hardware to supply some bad or damaged pine we are using these as the temporary frame, so it helps when it comes to fittig the expensive stuff later on!

Its almost two months now since i last posted here, things have been hectic, got an electrician on board the local lad €7,700 seems like a good price to me the other one was returned for €14,200! The house is first fixed for plumbing and electrics and we have all internal studs up, we have used foil back slabs in the entire house just to offer that extra bit of fire protection. Between the studs we have used 4" of rock wool; and between the rafters we have used 4" of king span there was a lot of itchy days for the lads fitting all of this!! On the ground floor we have used 6" of rock wool between the joists and the upper floor and all ceilings are slabbed now also, for a bit of extra insulation to the house we decided to buy the king span slab panels with 37.5mm of insulation on the back and we have fixed these to the internal side of all the external walls! They cost me €22 each and we are using about 80 of them! The electrician recommended a chaser for the walls did the whole house for €350, i had planned on doing this myself but he had all the right gear, definitely worthwhile paying for it, id have been a week at it with a con saw and would probably have had no lungs left! :)

Ok things are really kicking ahead at the moment, rang my plumber yesterday asked him to pay a visit see what he thinks and when he wants to start.
Im trying to get an electrican on board too and again there seems to be very few locals in the trade, i have one local pricing it, and a guy from home who works with the lads all the time, so we will see how that all goes!
Spoke to plasterers also the weekend one lad that i worked with during summers at school and college and he will come down from home, we are also thinking of bringing on a second plasterer that works with the lads, both are excellent platerers and i will probably pay them a day rate with my father and harry on site tending them they should finish it in about four weeks.
I must scud the house next weekend a messy job will take the two days to complete the outside of it!
The three lads are on site this week they are forming the chimney cap today to pour that, completing blockwork and internal studs and laying window cills so i can get these measured and on order.
Im hoping to get them started at the garage blockwork towards the end of the week, and once i have the house scudded hopefully the three lads will fall back on scratch coating the house we will pay the plasters to do the finish work then, so will save a bit of money there!

Between work and the site now things are very busy, not able to keep this as updated as i have been keeping it, another week down and the roof is lathed and felted, velux windows and lead are on site, awaiting a delivery of Slates on Thursday these have caused a slight delay, so order early if you need; i ordered them a week in advance wanted them Last Friday or this Monday, but the ship is only arriving Thursday!
The carpenters are off site this week so i have my father and harry at completing block work, and laying all the window cills, and the other lad is erecting and laying out all the timber studs upstairs things are really flying at the moment, the carpenters are back on site next Monday to start the slating, i will hire a teleporter for the day to load out the roof will save on the labour associated with it €170 a day for the teleporter, we will put a few pallets up on the scaffold too.
I was there at the weekend and my Mammy Sister younger brother and my other brothers girlfriend came to site, myself and my brother filled the chimney with a lime cement and sand mix, and the three girls cleaned up and gathered all the bits of timber thrown around the site, all it cost me was a free dinner to all :)

We were using the lads scaffold all along bandstands and a few 9 foot towers that we brought down from Limerick. We decided in order to make things safe speed up work and allow the lads continue there work on site to hire a scaffold contractor to supply and erect scaffold to the entire perimeter of the building, this will allow the lads easy acces for latting felting and slating make things safer and speed up the operation it's €2,500 for a month and €200 a a month for any extra hire after that! For the time we will save with the lads working on blocks and roofing instead of erecting scaffold and transporting it all down form cork i reckon the extra costs associated with it s quite small.

Have added the first weeks work pictures to the slideshow are worth a look.

We were working out at the site on saturday myself dad, and my brother finished blockwork to the sunroom and progressed works to the internal gable looking out to the sitting room floor. I decided to buy a 9 x 9 pine beam to use as the lintel here and make a feature out of it. My father started blocklaying the external gable yesterday, and the carpenters were at the stud walls and cutting out the opes for the velux windows. They asked me to buy some OSB board for the backing of the studs to provide sound and noise insulation and also offers better integrity, i got a further 60 sheets to put on the plywood deck to cut out noise transference and foot traffic to downstairs. Pictures below represent one weeks work for the carpenters.

The roof shape is now complete and all rafters are up, the two carpenters are flying out there. My dad has the conservatory nearly complete. I have only two recent pics i did not want to be disturbing the carpenters so here are two of me doing a bit of block work yesterday!!!! Im just in from there now was cleaning got 5 rooms done, it was well overdue a clean out! Have updated the photos in the slideshow; in the toolbar, and ill get a good few pics the weekend of the roof.

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