Week by week home extension planner

Planning a home extension and all the work that has to be done around it may not be an easy task, especially if you don’t even know where to start. Finding a good constructor will probably help as they can give you a general idea of what the weeks of work might look like, but it’s even better to prepare yourself beforehand. Here are our tips on week by week home extension planning. Remember – don’t rush anything and allow change where needed and it all should go just fine.

Week one: the prep stage

Your house will be a building site for at least 10-12 weeks, depending on how extensive you’re planning your extension to be. Make sure that you clear out the access to the building site and that the bricks, blocks and other building materials are delivered close to where they will be needed.

Week two: groundworks and foundations

Your builders should be on site now, digging up the foundations, putting down the pipework and drainage. Remember that Building Control must approve the foundations first and later, when the builders pour the concrete footing down and level it, they need to come and approve again.

Weeks three and four: building the superstructure

Now’s when the base for the extension comes in. The builders work on the damp-proofing layer by installing the drains, digging the trenches for the pipework, inserting concrete lintels into the brickwork and finally laying sand for the damp-proofing membrane. At this stage they will also work on the insulation and pouring the concrete slab for flooring. Remember that the Building Control will need to carry out another inspection here.

Weeks five and six: the walls

Now the extension will definitely start looking like an actual room.

When your builders create the blockwork and the brickwork, they will fit the door and window frames, insulate the cavity wall, fix the new walls to the existing ones and then proceed to working on the internal walls.

Weeks seven to ten: the roof, the doors and the windows

Your carpenter should start working on the roof structure by now, creating the structure for the rooflights as well. Then, they will proceed to laying the roofing membrane, roof battens and the tiles or slates, depending on your choice.

As that gets finished, it’s time to work on the windows and doors, fitting them into the frames that were put in place previously. It’s also the time to put the guttering and drainpipes, plumbing and electrics.

Weeks 10 and over: the finishing touches

The extension is basically complete, apart from the obvious work on the inside. From week 10 onwards, the builders will focus on putting steels and padstones in place, fixing the joins and plastering the walls. It’s important to know that the plastering needs about a week to set before it can be decorated any further.

Once that’s done, it’s time for second-fix electrics like making the sockets live, putting in the switches and lights, laying the flooring and doing any fixes that need to be done. And that’s basically that – a house extension in twelve weeks can be done if you put your mind to it!