Maintenance of the house
Pointing, window frames, rot, gutters and painting, surveyed and planned instead of postponed.
Maintenance is the job most customers arrive with and the job that gets postponed longest. Postponing is expensive: rot in a window sill costs a few hundred euros if tackled in time and a new frame if tackled late. Loose pointing on a south-west elevation lets water through into the cavity, and you only notice on the inside.
We do maintenance as a survey with a list: what has to happen now, what can wait a year, and what is cosmetic. Those three categories are kept apart, with an amount per line. You then decide yourself what happens this year. That is a different conversation from a single total in which you cannot see what is necessary and what is not.
Along the Vecht and in the peat villages two things are structural: rising damp in old brickwork without a damp course, and tilting through settlement in houses on strip footings. The first can be treated; the second needs monitoring before anything is repaired cosmetically. Filling cracks in an elevation that is still moving produces the same crack within two years.
- What the survey gives you
- A walk round of about ninety minutes: elevations, window frames, roof edge, gutters, roof covering where that can be done safely, and the crawl space. Afterwards you receive a list with photographs, a short description per element, a category (now, within two years, cosmetic) and a price. That list is yours, even if you have the work done by somebody else.
- Rot and window frames
- With rot in a window sill the question is always the same: repair or replace. The line sits at roughly one third of the profile. Less than that, and an epoxy repair with a timber insert is cheaper and lasts fifteen years. More, and replacement is cheaper over time. We state that judgement per frame instead of proposing the most expensive option as standard.
- Work inside a protected village area
- In Maarssen-Dorp, Breukelen, Loenen aan de Vecht and Abcoude, houses inside the protected village area (beschermd dorpsgezicht) are subject to rules about appearance: pointing has to come back in the same colour and profile, and window layouts are fixed. That makes maintenance there more laborious and more expensive, and it is not an item to economise on: pointing done in the wrong style can only be put right by raking it all out again.
Roughly what it costs
Price ranges for this area, so you can see whether your plan and your budget meet before anyone comes round. Each line states what explains the difference between the bottom and the top of the range.
| Work | Range | What explains the spread |
|---|---|---|
| Extension, single storeyper m² of floor area, shell through to finished | € 2.000 to € 3.200 | Foundation on strip footings or on piles, how much glass goes into the rear wall, and the level of floor, ceiling and services. |
| Loft conversion, full storeyper project, terraced house | € 45.000 to € 85.000 | Whether the party walls run down to the foundation, whether a fixed staircase has to be added, and the thickness of the insulation against the headroom you want. |
| Dormer to the reareach, around 3 metres wide | € 8.000 to € 15.000 | Width and window layout, whether roof purlins have to be interrupted, and whether the roof boarding and insulation are renewed at the same time. |
| Opening in a load-bearing wallper opening, 3 to 4 metres | € 4.000 to € 9.000 | The span and therefore the weight of the steel beam, how easily it can be brought in, and how much plastering and painting follows. |
| Complete bathroomper bathroom of 5 to 8 m², excluding tiles and sanitary ware | € 12.000 to € 25.000 | Moving waste pipes, the condition of the existing floor, and whether the ventilation has to be replaced. |
| Kitchen, building work onlyper kitchen, excluding the kitchen units themselves | € 4.000 to € 10.000 | Whether a wall has to go, how far water and waste are moved, and whether an extraction duct to the outside is installed. |
| Repointing brickworkper elevation of a terraced house | € 3.500 to € 7.000 | Height and therefore scaffolding, raking out by grinder or by hand, and whether a lime mortar is required inside a protected village area. |
| Rot repair in a window frameper affected spot | € 250 to € 900 | How far the rot has gone and whether the profile can still be repaired or the section has to be replaced. |
All amounts include Dutch VAT (btw) and apply to houses in this area. They exist so you can judge whether your plan and your budget meet; they do not replace a quotation. After the survey at your house you receive a fixed price for the work as described.
How it runs, from the first phone call to handover
Nine steps. Each one states who is there, how long it takes and what you pay at that moment. On the steps where money actually changes hands, the amount is set in the heading face under "What you pay" and the step number is filled in. Handover is called oplevering in Dutch, and it is the step your contract will refer to.
Step 1: Phone call
You call, or leave a callback request. We ask about the type of work, the year the house was built, the place and roughly what you have in mind. By the end of that call you know whether this is work we take on and whether your budget and your plan meet. If they do not, we say so there and then.
- Who is there
- You and the work planner
- How long
- 15 minutes, within one working day
- What you pay
- Nothing
Step 2: Survey at your house
We come round, measure up, look in the crawl space (kruipruimte) and the loft, and assess the foundation, the structure and the connections to the existing house. For a loft conversion or a structural opening we establish whether a structural engineer (constructeur) is needed. You hear on the spot which price range is realistic.
- Who is there
- You and the site manager
- How long
- 45 to 90 minutes, within two weeks
- What you pay
- Nothing
Step 3: Quotation with a fixed price
You receive a quotation (offerte) with a fixed price for the work as described, a list of what is explicitly not included, and provisional sums (stelposten) for items you choose yourself. No figure in it is an estimate: what the quotation says stands, as long as the work does not change.
- Who is there
- We supply it, you read it
- How long
- Within five working days of the survey
- What you pay
- Nothing
Step 4: Design, calculation and permit
Only where the work requires it. Drawings, a structural calculation, and the permit application (omgevingsvergunning, the Dutch building permit) with the municipality of Stichtse Vecht or De Ronde Venen. If the permit is refused, the project stops and you pay for this phase only, at an amount stated on the quotation in advance.
- Who is there
- Draughtsman, structural engineer and the municipality
- How long
- 4 to 12 weeks, depending on the procedure
- What you pay
- The cost of this phase, named separately on the quotation
Step 5: Planning and start date
The start date is fixed in writing, with a week by week plan and the days on which it will be loud or dusty. Materials with long lead times are ordered in this phase, so the job does not come to a halt halfway through waiting for a window frame.
- Who is there
- You and the work planner
- How long
- 1 to 2 weeks
- What you pay
- Nothing
Step 6: Work starts on site
Day one: fencing, floor protection, a place to unload, and demolition. From this day there is one site manager who is your point of contact and whom you can call directly on working days.
- Who is there
- The site manager and the crew
- How long
- Day 1
- What you pay
- First instalment: 30 per cent
Step 7: Shell complete
Foundation, structure, brickwork, roof and window frames are in place and the work is wind and watertight. This is the moment you can stand in the new space for the first time, and the last moment changes are possible without demolition.
- Who is there
- The site manager walks it through with you
- How long
- Depends on the job, usually after 3 to 6 weeks
- What you pay
- Second instalment: 30 per cent
Step 8: Services and fit-out
Electrics, water, heating and ventilation are installed and tested. Then plastering, floors, tiling and painting. This phase is quiet but long; it is the phase in which people get impatient and in which the weekly plan matters most.
- Who is there
- Installer, plasterer and fit-out crew
- How long
- 2 to 5 weeks
- What you pay
- Third instalment: 30 per cent
Step 9: Handover and snagging list
We walk the work through together and write down everything you see, however small. In Dutch this step is the oplevering and the list is the opleverlijst. That list is cleared within fifteen working days. Only once every point on it is signed off does the last instalment fall due.
- Who is there
- You and the site manager
- How long
- 1 to 2 hours, points cleared within 15 working days
- What you pay
- Final instalment: 10 per cent, after the snagging list is cleared
The payment schedule
Nothing is paid in advance before work starts.
Each block in the bar is as wide as its share of the contract sum (aanneemsom). The pale block on the right is the final 10 per cent: it only falls due after handover (oplevering), once every point on the snagging list has been dealt with.
| Instalment | Share | When |
|---|---|---|
| First instalment | 30% | The day work starts on site |
| Second instalment | 30% | Shell complete, the work is wind and watertight |
| Third instalment | 30% | Services tested and fit-out complete |
| Final instalment | 10% | After handover, once every snagging point is cleared |
| Together | 100% |
The cost of drawings, the structural calculation and the permit sits outside these four instalments and is named separately on the quotation, so you can see what you would be out of pocket if a permit is unexpectedly refused. The total being paid in instalments is the contract sum, called the aanneemsom in your contract.
Questions about this work
Does the survey cost anything?
No. The walk round and the maintenance list with photographs and amounts are free and without obligation, and the list stays yours even if you decide to have the work done elsewhere.
Do you take on small jobs?
Yes, provided they are picked up in a survey. We do not take on stand-alone half-day call-outs, because they disrupt the planning of jobs already running and that comes at the expense of customers who already have a start date.
Can maintenance be done in winter?
Pointing and exterior painting cannot be done in frost or persistent rain; that work runs from March to November. Rot repair, interior work and gutters can be done all year. So we deliberately plan maintenance lists across two seasons rather than cramming everything into spring.
More about this work in this area
Maintenance on a house in Maarssen, Breukelen or De Ronde Venen breaks down in practice into four recurring items: exterior painting, rot in frames and sills, pointing and brickwork, and gutters and roof edges. In this climate exterior paint runs on a cycle of five to seven years on the south and west elevations and seven to ten years on the sheltered side. Pointing on a 1970s elevation lasts thirty to forty years, which means the houses in Maarssenbroek are collectively due now.
For a terraced house, fully repointing one elevation usually sits between 3,500 and 7,000 euros, depending on the height, the scaffolding needed and whether the old pointing has to be ground out or cut out by hand. Repairing rot in a frame sits between 250 and 900 euros per spot; replacing a complete frame between 1,200 and 2,500 euros including glass and finishing.
It pays to bundle maintenance. Scaffolding is a fixed cost that does not scale with the amount of work: having the painting, the gutter and the pointing on the same elevation done in one year means paying for that scaffold once instead of three times.
Talk through your plan
Calling is quickest and takes fifteen minutes. If you would rather be called back, choose a time slot that suits you.