Good value for interior fittings in N.I.?

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Bamhan

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We are at the stage of starting on the internals of our house and have heard from our electrician that there are mega savings to be had on things like solid wooden flooring, doors etc in Northern Ireland, even taking into consideration transportation.
Does anyone have any real evidence that this is the case?
Has anyone any web sites or links or any experience of purchasing items like skirting boards, doors and floors in the North.
We are interested in finsihing the house to a very high spec and things seem to cast an arm and a leg here.
I would be interested in travelling to the north but first obviously I need to do my homework so we can target specific companies.
Any info would be greatly appreciated.....
 
You may not need to go north. Our neighbours converted their attic recently and sourced most of the materials from down home (Kilkenny/Carlow direction) and said that this saved them a lot of money compared to getting the stuff in Dublin.
 
Bamhan said:
We are at the stage of starting on the internals of our house and have heard from our electrician that there are mega savings to be had on things like solid wooden flooring, doors etc in Northern Ireland, even taking into consideration transportation.
Does anyone have any real evidence that this is the case?
Has anyone any web sites or links or any experience of purchasing items like skirting boards, doors and floors in the North.
We are interested in finsihing the house to a very high spec and things seem to cast an arm and a leg here.
I would be interested in travelling to the north but first obviously I need to do my homework so we can target specific companies.
Any info would be greatly appreciated.....
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We looked around for good quality wood flooring and got a fair bit of information about quality, etc. Purely by chance, before we had made any decisions we saw an ad in Buy and Sell for the quantity of wood we needed in pitch pine. Someone who had a lot more than he needed was offloading it. We got it at a very good price and are delighted with it. Since then I saw a few ads for similar or larger quantities of solid wood. It's worth checking out.
 
Do bear in mind that timber flooring advertised in Buy & Sell may well be stolen goods.

A few years ago, the joker who laid our hardwood timber floors was seen (by 2 people) stealing quite a quantity of timber from our house (unoccupied at the time). We later found out from friends that he apparently does this as a matter of habit, and he has a bit of a reputation for feigning surprise when the original quantities of timber ordered (on the basis of his calculations) are insufficient to cover the space to be laid :(

It never occurred to me previously but Buy & Sell would be an obvious sales outlet for this gangster and his ilk. There are not that many genuine people out there who are left with large quantities of wooden flooring that they do not need as flooring retailers are generally happy to accept returned unopened boxes of timber.
 
any decent supplier will accept returns of most products, including timber flooring, if they are in a full pack, especially if still sealed. So I can't see any reason why someone with a supposed legit surplus would sell in the Buy & Sell unless they wanted to charge a premium or couldn't return it as they had stroked it.
 
Hi Bamhan,
I'm building a house in Leitrim and have done a lot of costings on timber etc. both here and in the North. By far the cheapest for timber in the South is B & G Hardware in Bundoran, unless you are VAT registered, in which case you can get stuff from the North VAT free. We used F.R. Cathcart in Enniskillen for timber and found them very competetive. They also do doors etc.
 
Berlin said:
unless you are VAT registered, in which case you can get stuff from the North VAT free
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If you (as a business) are VAT registered then surely you can reclaim VAT on purchases made on behalf of the company regardless of the source (e.g. NI or RoI)?
 
Bamhan, I would recommend getting on the web and searching for outlets in the North. I'm based in Dublin at the moment but I am from Tyrone originally so when I go up there for a weekend I always price similar goods. Recently I priced solid oak flooring plus adhesive and underlay from Brooks (a division of Brooks Thomas) in Cookstown, County Tyrone for around STG£20 per square yard incl VAT. In Dublin I saw semi-solid flooring priced at €35 per square yard incl VAT. That was in Des Kellys who are quite reasonable (for Dublin!). You could easily pay more than that. I don't know if that included adhesive and underlay but I doubt it. Go figure.
 
Hi Clubman,
Technically you can only reclaim VAT on purchases for business purposes. In practice however, many suppliers in the UK will supply VAT free regardless of the purpose.
 
I got all the tiles for our house in Belfast - the tiles we were looking for are only available in Tilestyle in Ireland (sole distributor status) but David Scott in Belfast is sole distributor for NI. Taking currency conversion and shipping (£35) into account we had savings of approx. 25% which is alot on 4k of tiles.

And I have never been to Belfast - dealt with them only by phone - they said alot of people do similar and they have couriers delivering into Dublin every day.
 
Berlin said:
Hi Clubman,
Technically you can only reclaim VAT on purchases for business purposes. In practice however, many suppliers in the UK will supply VAT free regardless of the purpose.
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When you supply a VAT number I presume? Wouldn't this be dodgy for the company involved (e.g. how would they account for the goods purchased on their accounts or during a financial or stock audit)!?
 
I bought two light fittings in Belfast when fitting out my house and the two came to about 120 euros. I was amazed when I was walking through the lighting section in Arnotts and found the exact same light fitting for 170 euros!!!

We bought a lot for the house in the North and what I found was that if it wasn't cheaper it was probably the same price.
 
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