r/HomeImprovementUK

Sorry, bit of a rant about an Anglian window / door home visit.

Bloke turns up, full attitude from the second he walks in, telling us what he’s going to do without even listening to what we actually wanted. Then he points at my Wife and says, I take it only one of you work, just because she was sat on the sofa.

He then starts banging on about how we’ve apparently come to the best company, instead of the rubbish local ones before finishing with, you don’t know what you want, I'll tell you what you should have.

The whole interaction took about five minutes before I told him, cheers mate, you can leave.

And honestly, I should’ve noticed the signs earlier, because he’d already tried calling during the day, three times, each one claiming he couldn’t hear me because of my bad signal, even though I work from home and use my phone all day without any single issues.

Think we dodged a bullet with this one.

My kitchen is probably at least 20 years' old.

About 20 cabinets/drawers, and the carcasses are in good shape. I like the shape of the kitchen, and the worktop is proper black granite, so solid and not cheap. No appliances to replace (many have been replaced and are fairly new), no need to change sink, extractor etc.

However, the doors have an obsolete style and some of them have been damaged by humidity (MDF/wood has expanded). Current doors seem basically to be MDF with laminate.

Based on the above, it would seem reasonable to just replace the doors and leave the rest as is.

Looking at the companies specialising in this, lots of negative reviews, either because work was not done properly, or cost was almost the same as a new kitchen (despite the actual doors costing less than half of the bill). Lots of companies with different names/websites seem to be actually the same companies. Many of them are just franchise, and seem to outsource installation to local freelance contractors, so I guess quality varies a lot.

I don't mind spending on the work, but if replacing doors is more than 50% of a new kitchen (with possibly issues), may as well go for a new kitchen after 20 years.

I can see online that it's possible to order quality made to measure kitchen doors for cheap, but I won't have the DIY skills to change the end panels and other elements of the old style/colour. Changing just the doors would be ugly.

Any opinions? I guess the question is: can we really achieve a good result by replacing kitchen doors at a much cheaper price than a new kitchen?

Hi guys,

We just recently completed a SE London (Zone 2) flat renovation and I wanted to get your thoughts on numbers and whether we could have improved anything throughout the process.

All in the renovation has cost us around £68,000. This is labour and materials. I am not including furniture which is another 5k on top of that.

We did a full gut and renovation on a 73sqm 2 bed 2 bath on the the second floor with no lift. We removed the wall between kitchen and living room, 2 new bathrooms, new floors, new doors, new lighting, basically everything is new.

The £68,000 is divided as follows.

£17,000 Builder (He did 99% of the work)
£5,200 Electrician (full rewire, new light positions, sockets, etc)
£2,100 Plumber (both bathrooms and sink / dishwasher connections)
£1,800 Painting

Labour costs total £26,100.

Materials were around £42,000. We didn't cut many corners, with a custom kitchen, a 3k pocket door, engineered wood and tiles that we probably didn't need to spend that much money on.

Let me know what you guys think! Curious to hear if we over or under spent in some areas.

Hi all,

Looking for a sense check on a building quote for a bungalow in East Anglia.

We've paid £19,833 + VAT (£23,800 total) for the following works:

• Building Control fees included
• Scaffolding and skips
• Remove structural wall between kitchen and dining room
• Supply and install steel beams to structural engineer's specification
• Two of the beams to be installed as high as possible into the ceiling
• Remove chimney and structural wall between dining/living room
• Install additional steel structure to support the existing roof purlins following chimney/wall removal
• Remove and dispose of all demolition waste
• Supply/install new roofing felt, battens and roof tiles to match existing following chimney removal
• Fireline plasterboard around all new steels
• Plaster/skim all affected areas
• Supply and install a manual VELUX 3-in-1 (1880 × 1180mm) including flashing kit, roof tiling and making good
• Enlarge an existing 1.2m window opening to approx. 2.6m and install customer-supplied bifold doors (cost of bifolds themselves is NOT included)
• Making good to all affected areas

Structural engineer's fees are not included, but Building Control is.

Total: £19,833 + VAT
£23,800 including VAT

For those in East Anglia / Norfolk / Suffolk / Cambridgeshire, does that sound about right for the amount of structural work involved in 2026?

Interested to hear what others have paid for similar knock-throughs, chimney removals, steelwork and VELUX installations.

I live in West Yorkshire, England and currently getting a front and rear biggish loft extension done, costing lower 6 digit figure. This is being done under 2 applications, planning permission and permissible development. An architect and structural engineer was appointed and local council building control was appointed.

There are some deviations that the builder is making to the structure build. I understand sometimes there are several correct ways to do things.

First one is that I requested, removal of chimney breast. This is a detached bungalow but we took that decision after the plans etc. The two that concern me are:

- He has made some changes to the steel and added some extra steel that he mentioned was necessary to make the structure robust.

- The steel isn't supported on padstones as the structural engineer suggested. The builder claims steel shims are enough and padstones aren't needed as the bricks are strong. Secondly there isn't enough space for padstones to go under steels. There is no way to see this myself as it is now covered by mortar but he said I will show you when additional steel is put.

I spoke to the building control and they started warning me that any alterations to drawings should be submitted again. Also mentioned it is my my responsibility to ensure the building control visits happen.

The builder is progressing very fast and is assuring me he has booked in control inspector visit for tomorrow. He advises me against speaking to council as it panics them. He says he knows the building control inspector and he would be ok once he explains it and that I can also ask any questions to the inspector when he is here.

Is it all ok and am I just panicking or my worries are correct? The builder is a good well recommended, polite guy who has done lots of work around here. Which also means he has his own set ways he has developed over years, right or wrong.

I am genuinely interested to understand if my feelings are unreasonable.

Background, we live in a nice estate. Don't really speak to the neighbours. The people to the left of us are a bit odd, but fine, in their 70's. Detached plots.

The part of the front garden of the neighbours (to the left) runs adjacent our driveway. Their house is at an angle so they have a triangle of land Infront of their window up to their front door which is along side our drive.

They never cut back their shrubs, I end up doing it as it encroaches. Fine, I don't mind doing it too much as I'll stay clear of our cars.

I have CCTV on the garage covering the driveway (he's so old and doddery I'm not even sure he's noticed)

Now over the past week the neighbour has been spending a lot of his time on our drive measuring up. Now I'm assuming he intends to put a fence in.

1. Is it not neighbourly just to knock on the door and explain when he intends to do? Seeing as he is doing all of this from my land.

2. The only way he could dig posts currently, is off our drive as his garden is so overgrown with shrubs. Again will be interesting to understand how he navigates this.

3. It gets hellish windy, he had a palm overhanging our boundary which was getting worse and worse overhanging our car/falling over. He very very reluctantly removed it about 2 months after requesting, citing it was at his parents house at one time. I can't imagine he'd do the best of jobs installing a fence, so potential issue with that falling on the car.

I haven't said anything yet, as they haven't actually done anything apart from a lot of measuring and leaving screwdrivers in the ground.

Is it reasonable to ask what he intends to do, and if so at what point of this process...wait until he starts digging?

We started a small garage conversion (90s home - garage is ~8x12). It’s being turned into a room and a commode. The builder’s quote was ~9000£. It was an incredibly low quote and this builder had done work for another family we knew so we engaged them. But their progress is incredibly slow. They may show up 2-3 times a week do some work but it doesn’t seem like things are progressing. The amount was split to 5 payments and we’ve made all except for the final payment. And my understanding is that that happens only after completion. Are they deliberately stalling the work coz there is no more money coming their way. Should we offer them more to hurry things up? As I said the initial quote was much lower than we expected and we do have some money kept aside. Is this normal? How much did it cost others for such conversions?

We're currently going through a loft conversion and having an issue with our now installed stairs - we're really stuck on how we might resolve our issue and what a reasonable solution would look like.

A bit of context: we have exposed floorboards throughout our home. Our existing stairs are stained wood and have no stair runner or carpet. When we had our stair survey done ahead of new stairs being installed, we were given the option of having standard fixtures or having the stair company match our existing stairs (for an upgrade). We opted for the upgrade in order to ensure everything would match.

Ou stairs were installed, and we realised the risers that were installed are just plain ply, and not pine to match the rest of the stairs. When questioned, we were told they didn't realise we weren't going to carpet the stairs and didn't know that this should match.

Our questions now are:

- are we reasonable in thinking that if we paid an upgrade for the new stairs to match the old, that the expectation of the risers to be in a matching material is valid?

- the stairs are now installed and the stair company is saying they cannot be changed. Their solution to make these match is to provide iron-on pine veneer, that will be glued to the ply risers. Is this an acceptable solution?

From what I can gather from online veneer will be an inferior finish and more likely to catch or rip in a high traffic area such as stairs (vacuuming, being kicked etc.). Also, veneer is usually applied under specific conditions in a factory to 6mm ply or MDF and then installed as one, so the option of them applying the veneer directly to our ply stair risers would mean that it wouldn't be as good a finish as pre-glued?

Ideally I'd want it to be replaced with solid pine - more of a like-for-like - however I'm guessing this won't be possible now?

Or realistically do we have to accept that it's been installed incorrectly, can't be changed, and instead see if we can get a reduction on the price due to the error and just change our plans for how we were going to finish the stairs?

At this point I don't really trust their opinion as it feels like they're trying to convince us to go for a quick and cheap fix, rather than trying to rectify it properly. But I also don't feel like we know enough about the options to make the right decision without help.

Are we being reasonable? Is veneer a good solution after all? Are there other options?

When stacking a washing machine and tumble dryer where are the sockets positioned? I have read that the plug sockets should be on the adjacent wall and accessible without needing to pull out the appliances but every picture I see I cannot see any gaps down the sides with visible sockets so people must be plugging them in behind the appliances.

I would appreciate your insights if I am missing something here!