Digitalquill

We have finally managed to get our planning application submitted following the delays of the planning enquiry. Hopefully we will get a quick response. I thought that I would post some images of the plans. I will not post the full plans but there are some good images of what we are looking at doing so I have shown them below.

Orangery Kitchen Extension Rear Elevation

I am rather busy at the moment working at another of our properties, getting it ready for sale, but when I get some time I want to re-work the project plan as we now know the maximum time that the planning application process will take as the Planning committee have to give a decision within 8 weeks of receiving the application.

As I have said before, if the plans are drawn up, and the go-ahead comes early all we need to do is pull the whole project forward the relevant time, but it is critical that I know this plan as there are lead times on ordering certain items, underfloor heating, kitchen units, hardwood floor etc.

Finally some good news on the project!

I thought that I would give you all a sneak preview of the plans I have been doing for the re-development of our kitchen. As you may have read before on this blog, this is going to be a sizable project, but not one that can not be managed, and the results will hopefully be stunning.

Currently our kitchen is showing its age, and is simply not functional. We could simply change the units and rearrange things in there a little to try and make things work a little better, however, whatever we do will never actually make a great kitchen simply due to the size and shape of the room. You will never get the work triangle that so many people talk about and you can never get any decent length of continuous work surface.

What we are looking at doing is removing an inner wall between the kitchen and part of the backroom/dining room, removing the half width conservatory and extending out fill width to where the conservatory currently comes to.

We will then have an orangery roof and some large bi-fold doors which will open up the kitchen and dining room to the garden, bringing in light to the kitchen.

Here are some pictures from my CAD designs to give an idea of the results.

The problem we have is that although the distance from the end of the current kitchen and where we want to extend to is within the allowable 3m for planning, the rules seem to state that the measurement is taken from the furthest original wall which will mean that we will be coming out around 5m. Although this should not be a problem as really we are only replacing what is already there with one unified building, it will need full planning permission which of course takes time.

I am told that East Yorkshire Council currently look at 2-3 months for the planning process, this means that we really do need to get on with the project and get it moving. I have drawn up a project plan and gantt chart with all the work listed from packing up the kitchen to re-packing the new units, however the dates on this plan are currently very subjective as we have a great deal of unknowns.

As I said in my last post we are waiting for suppliers to come back with quotes before we can really start to bottom things out in terms of the plan and the possibilities, but with my estimates we are looking at the end of August for the completion of the project. I am sure that this will slip as weeks are going by and we are not actually getting anything underway, but hopefully once we have all the information for us to look at we can start to push to the plan.

As you may already know we have been planning a re-development of our kitchen and dining room. The plans for which have developed greatly over the last few weeks. I have invited three companies to quote for doing the main structural work. This is where the frustrations have started, we are keen to get the work underway as soon as possible as we are facing perhaps a 2-3 month planning application process, however, we need to find out what is possible and the cost of the build before we can decide to go ahead with spending money on the planning application.

We have had several visits from representatives of the three companies, all bringing their builders round to have a look at the project, which when all said and done amounts to the building of two walls, manufacturing and fitting an orangery roof and fitting some bi-fold doors, not the most complicated build that there has ever been.

I have been chasing quotes from those companies for several weeks now and the frustration is beginning to show. Without those quotes we can not progress any finance, planning applications or further the plans in any way.

I intend to chase them all tomorrow and give them a deadline of the end of the week for their quotes, meaning that this weekend we can look at the feasibility of the project with real facts and figures to look at.

Currently our kitchen at Hillcrest is almost unworkable. It is fairly narrow, lacks storage space and lacks any flow and any usable work surface space. We have decided that something has to be done about it, however, a simple ‘new kitchen’ will not rectify the problems we have with the kitchen.

While changing the kitchen tap I found a newspaper packing the kitchen unit, after taking this out I found it was printed in 1986, making the kitchen 24 years old! It is not as bad as it sounds, the units have dated well and are in very good condition for 24 year old units so they must have been good quality, however, that confirmed that it was time to start a fresh.

I mentioned in an earlier post that we are having problems with our boiler. These were going to be solved in the kitchen plans, currently the boiler is on the kitchen wall, which does not make any sense when we are struggling for storage space. Although we have not decided that we will have to do the boiler sooner than our kitchen plans allow, we are still taking the decision that it should be moved out of the kitchen to provide the extra space for an additional wall unit.

As I mentioned, simply replacing old units for new units just will not provide us with any significant advantage, so we decided to look at taking a wall out between the kitchen and dining room to open it up into a kitchen diner, and then extending the conservatory ac cross the whole of the back of the house and opening up the wall into the conservatory so that it was all effectively a single room. We had plans drawn up for this and we feel that this really does work well. It will give the kitchen dining room (which we hardly use currently) and conservatory a new lease of life and effectively make them the centre of the home.

In addition we love to entertain and have dinner parties. Currently I am cut off from guests while cooking, in this new scenario guests could be seated in the conservatory or dining area while I was cooking meaning we could all talk and relax in the better living space.

This is all very well in theory, however, in practice there are several problems to overcome. In my experience (although limited in terms of building, I do have quite allot of experience in house renovation and development) I do not this this is a big job. The wall that is to be removed is not load bearing, a couple of walls will need to be built and as such footings put in place and we would like a large opening door system on the conservatory, the roof on the kitchen will be removed and replaced with a sloping roof with sky lights in it. In terms of the building that will be it. In my opinion this is something in the region of 3-4 weeks work, however, a builder has quoted 12-16 weeks and £60k which is simply not practice for us, nor can we afford such a figure, especially bearing in mind that this was simply for the building work, no electrical, plumbing, internal finishing or kitchen units.

Once we add on the extras, and any inevitable slippage or things that we have not considered I would expect that figure to be around the £100k mark. Although this will put a great deal of value onto the property, I doubt that it will put £100k onto it.

We are therefore at rather a standstill on the project, unsure where to go and how to proceed. The only solution I can think of is that I do much of the work myself, or find a builder who does not think that I was born yesterday.

I maybe of course underestimating the scale of the work involved, however, I would have to be drastically underestimating it to get to where the builders think it is.

This is all very frustrating as I wanted to get on with these plans this summer, and as such need to get rolling with the planning department and building reg applications.

We have been having problems with out boiler for some time now, the problems have come to a head with us only have a partly working boiler which does nothing very well at all, giving us lukewarm water and a heating system that continually requires top-ups of water to keep it going.

Although we have long term plans for the kitchen we have put those on hold for the moment due to money grabbing builders who seem to think we are made of money and want a gold lined extension building! We were going to replace the boiler when we did the kitchen but with things as they are we have had to re-think. I will post more about what our plans are regarding the kitchen in the near future.

Currently the boiler is on the kitchen wall, and as we are struggling for space in the kitchen it makes sense to try and fine another location for it. The downstairs toilet seems to be the obvious solution.

The downstairs toilet is very dated and showing its age, however, for not much cost I will be able to replace it and update it, however, in order to get the boiler in as well I will be blocking up the window, which we never use anyway keeping the blind down all the time. This being so it will be a larger job than it should be, something that I will have to do over several weekends. I intend to get the window bricked up next weekend, this will mean having the window out, maybe even the toilet and sink out to give me access.

I will also be taking down the ceiling, firstly because it is artexed and I hate artex and also because I am hoping that I can grab an inch or so to allow extra room for the boiler.

The first problem I have is finding a compact cloakroom suite, maybe even corner basin and corner toilet.

I mentioned in a post on the 22nd January 2009 that I had taken the decision to cover my tenants with the Land Lord Cover from British Gas. at that time I said I would update you as to how it goes, and as promised here is an update.

The monthly payments cover a yearly service and safety certificate for the property, something that is a legal requirements for land lords to have. The first years cover is now over and as such the second services are also now due. It is down to the tenant to book an appointment for the service and the safety certificate update. This has proven to be a failing, not really with the cover it’s self but with  how it actually works in reality. If the tenant does not organise a time then the do not have the safety certificate for which the land lord is legally responsible. As such I believe that it should be the land lords responsibility to tell the tenant when the booking is and if the tenant can not be at the property for that allotted time then the land lord should have access to the property for the service and gas safety certificate to be done.

I have however been very pleased with the service, I have only had reason to call them out for two separate incidents, firstly a boiler which would not stay on and secondly a burst radiator. These where both dealt with swiftly and all under the cover at no extra expense to myself including a new radiator.

All in all I would recommend the service both to private home owners and Land Lords, however if you are a land lord make sure that you manage the process and ensure that you do not take your responsibility for granted.

If you are interested in more information on the British Gas Cover click here

I have just taken out the British Gas Landlords Cover for one of our properties that is about to be rented. I will be trialing it over the next lease period (probably 6 months) to see how it performs.

It covers me for Gas, Gas Safety Cert, Plumbing, Drainage, Electrics and electrical safety. Which means that I am left dealing with general maintenance which suits me.

There is a monthly cost to the cover £29, however this is tax deductible and as things stand with how precious time is for us at the moment, this is  an investment to get time back more than anything else.

I will blog in the future about how it goes.

As a landlord I have been researching many aspects of property rentals, from legal requirements, to insurance, mortgages and agents who run fully managed services. I have noted that there are rather few sites with provide all these resources in one place that are also aimed at people like me who dabbles in this rather than someone who has 100′s of properties.

I am therefore wondereing if there is an opportunity to create such a resource.

I am laid in nice deep bath, soaking my aching muscles after a hard morning clearing gardens and garages at a rental property. Hopefully Monday will see it going onto the market and we will again have a tenant in the property very soon.

I wonder where other people blog from. I usually blog in my office at home, sometimes sat in front of the TV, but I don’t see why with today’s technology why one needs to be limited. I do have an Orange Mobile broadband dongle which I use quite often when I am out and about.

I was recently searching for domain names,  someone suggested ontheblog.com a play on words… unfortunately it i taken, although there is no site there.

I wonder where the stranges place anyone has blogged from is. Post a comment if you have any strange blogging habbits!