Standard will help you save money as a self builder

In The Self Build Garden Room Guide eBook and our newly launched set of sample plans, we talk about making use of standard size materials. We talk about how choosing a size for your garden room that makes full use of sheet materials will minimise any waste and in turn save you money. We also suggest that you look to use standard size doors and windows.

We are currently working on three more sets of sample plans looking at how you would build different size and styles of garden room. As part of this process, we are forming a document that looks at the price to build each of these example rooms.

As part of our research, we have been comparing the price of sliding doors online. We wanted to compare the price of a standard set of white sliding doors 2100mm high x 2400mm wide. We found this standard size of sliding door to be priced at £639.99. We then went on to compare the same width of door, i.e., 2400mm but 100mm shorter. Our thinking here is that by saving some height in the door, it would give us vital millimetres to play with when building under 2.5 meters. So, we got an online price for a set of white sliding doors 2000mm high x 2400mm wide; they came in at £949.10.

So, by using a standard size set of doors we could save £309.11 – a not insignificant amount on the overall project cost.

There are instances when paying this extra for a custom size is well worth it, because of the flexibility it offers you in your design, but if you are budget conscious – standard is the way to go!