WOULD YOU COMPROMISE TO FINISH A PROJECT?

Could you say no to your dreams to finish on deadline and on budget? Or would you commit more time or money? Two readers reveal all

YES ‘We found solutions to make savings and finish on time’

Alison Whear (@adventures_at_number_28_), husband Ross and their two boys live in a terraced house in Hatfield, Hertfordshire

‘If we hadn’t compromised, the work on our house might still be going on and we’d be living on a building site. An elderly couple had lived here before we bought it and the kitchen and bathroom were last done in the 1980s or 90s.

I was pregnant with our second child so we needed family space – luckily we could extend.

‘I had grand plans for bi-fold doors, a range cooker and fireplace – but we had a fixed budget in mind. When we priced up these items, we realised it left us with no contingency. We could’ve chanced it and not had one, but we planned for something going wrong. On the first day the workmen discovered there was a public sewer that we were building on, and our neighbours’ output came through our garden to that sewer. This led to a two-week delay where the plans had to be redrawn and the foundations changed. We carried on, but that used up our contingency. The builders were great and helped us find solutions to make savings and finish on time. We couldn’t afford a six-month wait before going on to the next thing – it wouldn’t have worked with a family.

‘We’ve stuck to a budget and we’re pleased with the end result built through compromise. We’re enjoying living in the house rather than worrying about how to pay for it all.’

NO ‘We’re doing it all ourselves rather than be limited’

Zoe Harris and Jim Rodgers (@workshop. push_sheffield) live with their dog in an Edwardian house in Sheffield, Yorkshire, and are building a workshop in the garden ‘We’re unwilling to compromise on our final vision for our project. We’re doing it all ourselves, and would rather do that than pay someone who would do it in a formulaic fashion and be limited in what they’d be willing to achieve.

‘We bought our house four years ago and have done bits to it, but we’re building a workshop in the garden to start our own furniture-making business. This has to represent our ideas, so it’s an odd shape and the roof has a twist to it. It will eventually be a green roof, hopefully with beehives on top, and there’s a green wall on one side. It’s sunk into the ground to make the floors level and so the building doesn’t appear too high, and we’ve used an interesting timber that we’ve charred.

‘Because we’re determined to do what we wanted, we planned every aspect and wouldn’t really have ever changed. There was some trepidation from neighbours, but the further it’s gone along, the more positive reactions we’ve had. We haven’t rushed: we’ve done it piece by piece rather than compromise on the end product.

‘We are saving money on the labour doing it ourselves, but we’re able to achieve a higher standard of finish – and that’s the same as we’ll do inside the house, though we are further behind with that part. We’ve had the house for four years and estimated it would take us about 10 years. We’ve stopped counting now!

‘Our costs have been purely materials, but if you added up the man hours it would’ve come out as a lot more. I don’t think we would’ve been happy taking short cuts. We’d rather go out on a limb and do it ourselves – it’s just everything takes longer.’

We’ve done the project piece by piece rather than try and compromise on the end product