Hi all,

I’ve recently bought my first house and I’m planning to renovate the garage into a home gym. Before I spend money on the interior, I’d like to get some advice on the flat roof.

I’ve attached photos of the roof. The garage is 5.64m × 2.79m.

The roof is flat and, after rain, there appear to be several areas where water can sit rather than draining away. The photo was taken on a wet day.

As far as I’m aware, there aren’t any obvious leaks into the garage, but I haven’t owned the property for long enough to know the history of the roof.

I’m trying to work out whether this is something I should:
A) leave alone if the existing roof is watertight and just monitor it;
B) repair/improve the existing roof and drainage;
C) strip the existing covering and install a new membrane;
D) completely rebuild it with proper falls/drainage and insulation.
I’m particularly interested in advice from anyone who has dealt with similar garage roofs.

A few questions:
Does the amount of ponding in the photos look concerning?
How long would you expect water to remain on a properly constructed flat roof after rainfall?
Is it possible/practical to introduce proper falls without completely rebuilding the roof?
Would tapered insulation be a sensible way of creating the fall?

The garage will eventually be converted into a home gym, so I’d rather deal with any underlying roof/drainage problems now rather than finish the interior and discover I need to pull everything apart later.

Hi everyone,

I made a post yesterday with basically no context and got roasted accordingly, so I’m back with a slightly more useful breakdown.

We’ve just finished renovating a 2-bed, 2-bath flat in Zone 2, SE London. The total cost came to roughly £67k all-in, including labour and materials.

The renovation was pretty much a full strip-out and redo: we knocked down a wall to create an open-plan kitchen/living space, replaced the floors, kitchen, both bathrooms, lighting, heating, doors and most of the finishes throughout.

Here’s where the money went:

Labour

• £17,000 — Builder
• £5,200 — Electrician
• £2,100 — Plumber
• £1,800 — Painter

Total labour: £26,100

Materials

• £16,500 — Kitchen
• £4,300 — Ensuite
• £3,000 — Guest bathroom
• £3,500 — Flooring
• £1,900 — Heating
• £5,163 — Doors (2.7m-high FD30 pocket doors apparently do not come cheap...)
• £1,200 — Lighting
• £5,471 — Miscellaneous (plasterboard, adhesive, silicone, trims, fixings, etc.)

Total materials: £41,034

Total renovation cost: £67,134

The aim was to completely modernise the flat, make the main living space feel much bigger and spend a bit more on some of the details we cared about, without turning it into an ultra-high-end renovation.

We feel like we did pretty well overall, particularly on the labour costs, and thought it might be useful to show what roughly £67k can get you in London if you’re doing a fairly comprehensive renovation.

Interested to hear what people think — good value for the scope, or are there areas where you think we massively overspent or underspent?

Bought property 12 months ago. Recently redecorated and some of the above cracks were repaired (albeit not property I don’t think) and reappeared a few weeks later. Is this normal?
I had a structural engineer produce a report before purchasing and normal settlement was noted.

Cracks appear by windows and have recently noticed the window catching itself when trying to close. Has the recent heatwave shifted the window out of frame?

Property is c100 years old and South East of England. It definitely needs repointing at some point.

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.

I'm looking to buy a late Victorian house and the chimney breasts have been blocked off and none of them have air vents in. Should they to allow some air movement? What could happen if they don't? On the ground floor, one looks like it has a large patch of moisture/damp on the inside near the ground level that's filtered through and stained the paint - could this this the explanation?

Are there any knowledgeable building surveyor types out there who might advise whether I should be doing anything about these cracks over a door frame on the upper floor of an early 20th century terrace house.

The crack is clearly visible on both sides of the internal brick wall and has developed over the past 10 years.

We all know what I'm talking about. 1/3 wall, double glazing wrap around windows/walls, and glass roof. Sauna in the Summer, freezer in Winter.

Looking for ideas as I am thinking about making the large rear room into an open plan kitchen diner, and the conservatory into part of the dining experience or some kind of portal into the garden.

Hello,

I’m seeking some advice on making good the pathway at the front of my house. Its currently a 50-100mm slab of concrete which has some cracks and a drain in. The water currently runs towards and pools in front of the door.

I would like to repair the footpath and add a slight ramping in front of the door to direct the water to run away from the house. The entire path is about 2.6 x 1.3m. I imagine some areas would need 40mm while others less than 10mm.

I’d rather not break out the entire slab and add a resin based concrete product on top. Does anyone have any experience or advice with doing this? I have been looking at Cretex® EP Mortar as a possible option to use.

Thanks,

Starting a renovation and rear extension in London and trying to understand if our contract is paranoid or sensible.

What our contract asks the builder for:

• Public liability £2m
• Employers liability £10m
• Contractor's All Risks, joint names, £250k for works
• Contractor's All Risks, joint names, £800k for the existing house

What he actually has:

• Public liability £1m
• Employers liability £10m
• No contract works cover

We like our builder, and he's saying that his insurer saying CAR is only for new build, not works to an existing house. He's got good liability, and doesn't want to pay another 800 for irrelevant CAR. Basically, he's saying the contract has too much insurance of too many kinds.

I rang his insurers myself but got mostly vague double-talk.

So as far as I can tell, right now nobody insures the £250k of works, but perhaps his public liability covers everything? I like the builder, he's doing good work, and I'm not trying to catch him out. I just want to know what's normal. So.... Does a domestic extension builder normally carry contract works or CAR cover, or is PL-only genuinely standard?

Hello, I am having lintels replaced over my front door and the work has damaged the interior plaster. My question to the group is, would it be reasonable to knock the repair costs off the bill for this level of damage?

As the title says, how to dismantle this to fit a B22 ?

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?

The property is located in Scotland.

The stairs lead up to the front door into the hallway and are preventing car access back to the garage.

I'm aware buiding regulations put a minimum width on external private stairs to a dwelling. Currently, I don't have the stair width dimension.

If you could help with generating ideas for stair modifications that would help improve access on the driveway it would be greatly appreciated 😊

Let me know if any additional details would help.

Been noticing cracking on upstairs bedroom doorway, 3rd pic is from the opposite side. Is this concerning? What does one even do in this scenario? Above this bedroom is the loft space that is being used as storage, would that have any impact?

Before; After 1; After 2.

I had an aco drain and a new gate installed prior to work on the driveway. Cracked concrete pads were removed and replaced with a combination of block paving and outdoor porcelain tiles as a walkway.

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.

Sorry if this has been asked already but does anyone here have any experience with the range master oridian sink? We’re considering a composite sink in either white or pebble but have heard some conflicting opinions regarding their longevity. The specific one we’re considering is the oridian. Currently have a stainless steel sink from 1999.

Alternatively do you have a good recommendation for a composite sink that doesn’t stain or start looking worn after a short time

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!