WE'RE IN!

26th of May was our moving date. We had the help of our [old] neighbour Dave, sister Jules and a very efficient Polish man and his Van. It was a boiling hot weekend so sweaty work but fortunately we got almost everything across in two goes.

It's been 3 weeks now and we have set up a couple of the bedrooms, Nick's office and the main living area ... everything else is still in need of unpacking and arranging but all in good time :-) Last weekend was spent laying 200m2 of turf - our strategy for simple weed free gardening this year. We can tinker around with flower beds etc in the months and years to come.

And, the verdict so far:

The heating system is taking a little getting used to, we already managed to lock ourselves out of the hot water controls by putting it into holiday mode accidentally and we've decided we'll get the extra hot water loop hooked up (it was installed but not connected) - hot water will be constantly moved around the loop so it is quickly available at all the taps. At the moment we are having to run the taps in the kitchen and main bathroom for some time before the hot water comes through. 

If I could go back in time I'd order slightly bigger shower enclosures and maybe have a planting bed between the greenhouse and the path and if I had a magic wand i'd move shops a bit closer and the A14 further away but ...

The spaces feel great, the light is just fantastic and all the natural finishes look and smell fab (shame we have to mess up the clean lines with all our clobber but we're not really the minimalist sorts).

Being able to open up the folding doors to the greenhouse, the sliding doors from the main living area and the back door out to the patio is amazing and really blurs the inside/outside divide. Temperature-wise on the scorching hot days when we first moved in, while the house didn't feel exactly cool we opened up the rooflights and a few of the downstairs windows and the air moved through the house very nicely keeping everything feeling comfortable. Since then we've had a lot of dull and rainy days, some even rather cool and the house has stayed warm into the evenings and we've been able to throw open the windows during the days.

The oven and hob are very good to use although I still need to buy a couple of new pans for induction cooking. The larder is working well and I have plenty of space in the kitchen for everything except all my herbs - i'm still thinking about that one. Our old dining room table works very well as a kitchen table and we just need to fit a shelf above it for the microwave. The yellow kitchen got a last minute re-paint and is now a more mustardy, rather than lemon yellow.

Still loving the hall and landing with our gorgeous wall, and all the beautiful views from the house, and the feeling of privacy with all the mature trees and hedges.

... I can safely say WE LOVE IT.

Lucky you can't smell the newly dredged pond! The back garden looks great with turf down with the 2 fruit trees provide the perfect place for a hammock and some good shade. 

Bewley lives in the field just over the road. Chris who owns him is on holiday this week so I took him out for a hack today. I really did feel transported back to my teenage years in so many ways - weird!

Fabulous family, right on our doorstep. Mum, Lawrence, Rachel, Iris and Jasper with Nick this afternoon. 

Welcome message change

New welcome message:

Welcome friends and family. It took us nearly 5 years, but here we are ... with a whole new house! This blog records the journey of the build which began in August 2011 and finished (for the most part) in May 2012.

I may pop the odd post on here over the summer, there is still a garage to build at some point, but as you may have noticed I've somewhat run out of steam!! Hopefully see you all round. Love, Kate and Nick x

Replacing:

Welcome friends and family! We've been planning our new house at Girton for the best part of 4 years and we're finally onto the build. The end is in sight and we're looking forwards to seeing you all in the summer for a BIG PARTY. In the meanwhile I'm managing about a post a week here with pictures and descriptions of progress. My spelling is bad - I apologise now.

Old post finally published.

Written on May 18th:

Nick and I are on site today for the first time this week. The landscaping is looking good with the paths around the house finished - the driveway is taking shape and the patio at the back of the house is just waiting for us to supply some more paving slabs. 

The levels around the front of the house have been a bit tricky to sort out because we have to be careful to keep the finished level well below the wood structure. Not a problem at the rear where the ground falls away from the house but here, at the front the level is higher.

Nick sorting out a light shade I bought from a antique shop last year - it has a sprung pulley thing so you can lower the light. The table has been donated to us from my grandfather - it was the table in his office at Trinity college, we can either have it as a small round table as it is here or extend it with a central section to seat 10! Behind Nick on the left you can see the new induction hob in it's box and on the right the huge fridge. Nearly there. 

All our pictures are at the house and I have been putting them around the place trying to decide where they will go. Good fun!

The sand goes down for the driveway. It's a great shape - I love the island with the pear tree in it.

Posh Pics

Nick and I visited site today to meet Ian before he heads off on holiday next week. We had a quick look through his final bill to check costs for the extra bits we've added on along the way - extras will add about 5% to the bill. Not too bad we thought and it means we've spent about half our contingency fund here and the other half went on re-building the rammed earth wall (roughly speaking). So we're more or less on budget.

Nick drew up a snagging list at the weekend - basically checking all the rooms and interior for any bits that need anything doing, gaps for caulking (filling) mostly, a couple of doors adjusting and that kind of thing. He and Ian talked it through as well.

Tom and Graham were setting our clay brick paths, working through the drizzle. We looked at concrete bricks which would have been quite a bit cheaper but Rigeons had a good deal on the clay bricks and they have the advantage over concrete in that they hold their colour, where the concrete will eventually fade to grey.

Our architects have commissioned a photographer to come and take lots of nice pictures of the house so they can use them for their promotional material. We'll get copies too so great news for us. Tim Rawl is the appointed man, he made his first visit to the house on Monday afternoon. His focus for the day was the stairs, earth wall and hallway and said he would visit again on a couple more occasions as the year goes on to get more pictures of the exterior once the landscaping is complete and settled. I managed to get the upstairs hoovered and the cobbles sealed just in time. Here's a few of his pics:

Mud and Landscaping

It's been raining for weeks but fortunately the slippy clay mud has been replaced by a layer of compressed hardcore which makes getting round on site a lot easier and cleaner. It's possible to imagine the final drive and paths now - they're going to look great.

The house has been shut up all week with just a few electrical bits to fit, but Ian is waiting on us - we have an outside light on order that still hasn't come and luckily Nick tried the hob out last week and discovered I've bought the wrong one so that needs changing too!! The electric ceramic hobs look just the same as the induction hobs and the model numbers are all very similar. Not much of an excuse really as I managed to ignore a confirmation e-mail clearly saying electric ceramic hob. but hey.

Nick is trying to sort out our buildings warranty with a company called Buildzone which involves a survey and giving them lots of information about the structure/finishes etc. I have been mostly working although I was on site yesterday - I bought another hob, a fridge and spent the afternoon scrubbing floors!!

The balcony rail is pretty much finished and the greenhouse floor now looks lovely and clean and the cobbles have had another going over with the brick acid so they are ready to seal/oil.

Stairs and landing looking all finished and nice. 

Project cam time lapse videos and extra pics ...

Nick got the time lapse pictures working and has posted on you tube:

Movie 01 - Slab.
Aug 30 - Sept 11, 3 hr intervals. 0:27 mins.
Piles already in: clay board laid, steel work assembled, shuttering assembled, slab poured.

Movie 02 - Rammed earth wall mark 1.
Sep 14 - Sep 27. 3 hr then 1 hr intervals. 1:48 mins.
Glass foam base fitted, shuttering assembled, ramming, scaffolding assembled, more shuttering, more ramming, shuttering comes off, wall falls down, earth cleared.

Movie 03 - Rammed earth wall mark 2, SIPs construction.
Oct 14 - Nov 5, 1 hr then 30 min intervals. 3:04 mins.
REW2 shuttering & scaffolding in place, ramming of 1st 2.7 metres, scaffolding for SIPs assembled, REW2 pt 1 shuttering removed, ground floor SIPs and 1st storey floor and gable ends assembled, REW2 pt 2 shuttering and ramming.

Movie 04 - Cladding.
Jan 9 - Feb 9, 30 min intervals. 2:41 mins.
Breather membranes, battening, slate roof and western red cedar boards.

These are just some extra pics as it's been a couple of weeks since the last post.

April showers

Today (and most of this week) has been april showers and very claggy clay on site as Ian gets going on the landscaping.

Hardcore arrives for the driveway and paths around the house. Steve is sealing the windows ... in the rain, up a ladder. Yucky.

Paul constructing the balcony railing - made from Iroko wood it will match the juliet balcony on the right. The shutters on the SW facing bedroom windows have been fitted and look really good.

Green tiles have been added to the yellow kitchen, the hallway floor is done and you can see the shingles in the draught lobby in the background. Nearly there!

These are the jute carpets going in the bedroom. It's a natural fibre therefore recyclable, biodegradable etc and is quite soft under foot. I'm slightly underwhelmed by the beige colour (seemed nicer in small sample, looks flatter - the colour that is - than I thought it would in a larger area) but I think they'll go well with the theme of the house - natural browns against the white walls. Our stuff is going to add a lot of colour. We have sisal carpet for the landing, a coarser fibre - hardwearing and a slightly richer colour. Can't wait to see it all in place.

And finally here, the bathrooms are complete. Showers and fancy mirrors in. We got rather attached to the idea of demisting mirrors following a hotel stay recently and found these ones online encorporating LED lights too. Not sure they match the reclaimed sinks but we're not overly bothered about everything matching (as you've probably noticed). 

Last bits

We had a great break in Scotland last week :-)

And so back to business this week with the great journey of the last bits underway. Showers and kitchen are in, the carpets have been laid upstairs and balcony rail is almost finished. Nick and I sanded our last floor on tuesday so the interior is almost, mostly, more or less finished! We still have tile floors to clean, reclaimed doors to paint, cobbled floor to sort out but these and lots of other smaller tasks not in the contract for the builders to do will no doubt go on for quite some time.

The landscaping is outside our main contract so that will pootle on over the next few weeks, but we are looking to get the house signed off and the main contract completed soon. To get building control sign off we need certificates for gas and electrics, the (wheelchair accessible) ramp to the front door has to be in place and we must provide a screen on one side of our balcony so we don't overlook mum and dad's lawn (part of our planning conditions).

We also have to provide our air tightness test info (house closed up and put under pressure - leakage measured). I talked about this in an earlier post: For regs we must achieve less than 10 air changes per hour, best practice is to get under 5 and we were aiming for less than 3. The SIPs construction is by nature airtight but there are still plenty of opportunities for gaps at all the junctions and we found quite a few gaps in the shell to plug so we weren't sure what we'd get. Our specification stipulated less than 3 and Nick and I have stayed on the case doing a final round of the SIPs shell with the expanding foam as well as pointing out (harping on about) where we think there are weaknesses. Ian has installed a separate air tightness membrane inside the shell and it's all paid off because we got the test back at 2.4 which is a very good level. Hazzah!

Rear left: Paul. Front from left: Graham, Ian, Tom (Ian jnr), Steve. This is the core team who have been on the job throughout. All very lovely people. There's been a few other regular faces - Mike the decorator, Steve and Gareth on flooring, Daniel the heating engineer, Shaun and Paul the plumbers and Trevor the sparky.

Still a month to go!

We thought we might be done for the end of March but not quite. Actually it shouldn't be another month for the house interior - there really isn't much left to do.

It's the Huxley family annual excursion next week (Scotland, Ullapool - yaaaay) and we're hopeful we can think about moving when we get back. We've agreed with Ian that the landscaping will be completed after the contract and house has been signed off.

Paul turning his hand to hanging shingles. Camtile did the roof and shingles outside but Paul is doing the last bits in the greenhouse and the draught lobby.

New shingles arrived a couple of days ago. They had run out just before the outside was completed. You can see here the last bit at the top left is newly completed and the change in colour from the rest of the facade which has had just a few weeks of weathering.

The ditches and pipes at the back of the house are starting to look a bit more organised. The rainwater tank has been commissioned and is working. The overflow has had to go round the pond to a soak away at the bottom of the garden. 

The utility room getting a frame for a work surface and some cupboards and shelves. The toilet behind the door is working using from the rainwater tank (although the water in there at the moment is actually from the well at number 1)

Nick and I have both been very busy trying to choose and buy all the remaining bits needed for the house. Nick has been on lighting, which is no small task, and I've been trying to get everything in for the kitchen. I think we're mostly there although we probably could have done with getting the online orders in a couple of weeks earlier to allow for any problems. 

Floors

Flooring is definitely the flavour of the week so it's getting it's own post. Nick and I have been working hard getting the wood floors sanded and finished - last one to do tomorrow. The quarry tiles are all down now and the bathrooms have had the cork laid. The carpets will only go down when everything else is done.

The reclaimed materials caused us yet another headache when it became clear we didn't have enough of the maple to finish the hallway. The reclaim yard were a complete pain in the bum and tried to charge us for more even though they had short changed us on the amount so I managed to find another source (determined not to give Morways more money) and we should be ok to finish. To anyone thinking of using reclaimed stuff remember to stock up on time and patience before you do!

We sanded the main room floor on Friday. All the wood floors are being finished with a couple of coats of Osmo hardwax oil which is very easy to apply and nice natural stuff. It's been useful having the flooring guys around whilst we do all this as they've given us lots of tips on how it should all be done. They mentioned that some professionals use a squeegee to apply the oil and since we had a large area to do we got ourselves a squeegee. It leaves behind swoosh marks and the odd blob if your not careful but I think i've got the hang of it now. It gets the job done really quickly and the main room floor is looking very lovely (or it was before the workmen moved back in and made it all dusty and dirty again!)

Quarry tiles in the greenhouse. I've cleaned the quarries in the utility room with brick acid which removes morter marks and tough stains. They've come up nicely so I'll do the same in here at some point. There's no underfloor heating out here - we had darker tiles put in with the idea that they'll catch the heat of the sun better warming the space and therefore preheating the air before it comes into our house via a wall vent. 

Cork feels a bit retro to me as a look (to go with our avacado tiles!!) but it's good stuff. Sustainable by it's very nature, requiring little processing with a lovely warm colour and very pleasant feel under foot. 

As promised, a picture of the sanding kit. Nick working the horrid little edging sander. You have to keep your finger pressed on the go button otherwise it automatically stops which means it's quite hard to get comfortable when shoving it around. It's surprisingly heavy and always pulls in one direction. Yuck. 

Photosynth

I've been having a fun time photographing spaces in the house using a new app on my phone: Photosynth (thank you Jeremy). It lets you take a lot of pictures of one space and then automatically stitches them together to make a panorama.

The upstairs landing.

View from the greenhouse through the main living area to the hallway and stairs.

Paul hanging shingles in the greenhouse, Graham and Tom tiling in the kitchen and Gareth and Steve (or half of Steve here in the picture!) fitting the hallway flooring.

Citrus Chiffon 2

I didn't have the time or inclination to get tester pots and try out colours for the kitchen cupboards so I satisfied myself with matching colour swatches to the green tiles I have. Hmmmm. I spent a while trying to decide between various shades of cream/yellow and not wanting to be too pastel or heritage I plumped for something bright: Citrus Chiffon 2. I thought I was applying a little restraint as I peered at the 1 inch square of colour next to my tile but it turns out that in a large area Citrus Chiffon 2 is really very yellow!

It was a glorious couple of days for painting earlier this week (20 degrees plus, blue sky, sunshine, etc) and a thoroughly pleasant job. Nick and I have contemplated our very yellow cupboards and can't decide if they're going to work out or not. Time will tell.

Fitting of the kitchen starts monday. The steel work surface into which the sink will fit is arriving early in the week - it's been manufactured by my crew mate's wife's dad - he's a metal fabricator and offered a much better price than the online companies who make these things. It does mean I've had to specify it in detail so I have fingers crossed i've got it all right. The walnut work surface is on order, I've purchased the sink, tap and oven so just the hob and fridge to go.

It's been hard trying to decide whether to go for a gas or induction hob. We have, and I very much like using, gas, but the induction hobs do sound good and we'll have free electricity while there's daylight.

Whilst we were on site painting Ian and co. were installing the rainwater tank. The small digger was not enough for the job so a larger one was brought in and a huge hole dug. We have set up project cam at the back of the house last weekend as that's were all the action is at the moment but unfortunately not in time to catch the digger in the hole moment!

The garden at the back of the house is now full of trenches with pipes and drains going in all directions. Ian has spent the last two days trying to sort out the rainwater tank overflow - it was supposed to go into the pond but the pond level turned out to be higher than the overflow so he's had to dig more trenches round the pond and create a soak away at the bottom of the garden. It looks like a scene from the first world war back there at the moment.

Here is Nick with the draught lobby glazed screen frame which arrived on Wednesday. It looks lovely but has created Ian another conundrum for the week - how to get it in the house! Unfortunately opening of the sliding doors at the back of the house isn't big enough so he either has to take the sliding doors out of their frame, or cut the screen and reassemble in the house. It's looking like the latter option at the moment.

News flash (and pics)

I am sure you will have been on tenterhooks waiting to see what would happen in the courts regarding the feed-in tariff case. Well ... you can relax, the news is just in ...

The Supreme Court has refused the government permission to launch an appeal against the Court of Appeal's decision. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17490096

So, the solar energy bods have won and the early reduction in the tariff (before the end of the public consultation) has been deemed illegal. The government cannot appeal and will have to pay according to their original promises. As we got our installation completed before March 3rd (on March 2nd!) we'll be eligible for the original tariff. This decision also makes the 25 year term of the feed-in tariffs much safer. Good news for the industry and of course us.

As this is a nice short post I'm tagging a few extra photos on the end of it: -

Drains being dug at the front of the house.

Glorious texture.

A freebee from the reclaim yard lovingly restored by Nick.

Felt like the blog has been ignoring the wall of late so here's a reminder pic.

Sunshine and Sanding

 Week 32 has seen the end of our scrubbing days and the beginning of our sanding marathon. We finished off cleaning the last of the tiles today (in glorious sunshine) and have also sanded and oiled our first of the wood floors. It was Nick's office - the smallest room - we did this weekend, about 10-11m2. I reckon we have about 60m2 to go! All the floors at Stanley Road have been self sanded so we are familiar with the kit and process. It's dusty, hot, noisy work but if you have all the right stuff (ear defenders, goggles, good dust mask) it's not so bad and it's such a pleasure to see the floors finished.

We've hired the kit - the main sander is a thing like a cross between a lawnmower and an upright hoover with a large sanding wheel at the front and a dust catching bag behind (I'll get a picture when we do the next lot), then there's the edging sander which is a a very heavy duty circular sander with two handles on either side. The main lawnmower sander pulls you along the floor so is relatively easy to use, the edging machine is like an angry beast that is constantly trying to get away from you and all my muscles are aching from shoving it around!

Before ... 

... and after. The second coat of oil is still wet here so all looking a bit shiny but we've chosen a matt finish so once dried it just looks like the natural wood. This room is oak, pinky biscuit browns - gorgeous. The large living area downstairs will be maple so a paler cream colour. 

Nick perched on the finished pile of quarry tiles - playing with our heating touchscreen controls. 

Looking out of the bedroom door/window at the back of the house. There'll be a juliet balcony across here so sleepwalkers/children can't hurl themselves out of this 1st story door so easily. In front of the pond the hole for the rainwater harvesting has been dug in the wrong place! Where the hole is now will be our lawn and the rainwater tank will be off to the left of this picture.

The greenhouse is still waiting for it's glass roof. The floor will be finished with the final batch of quarry tiles and the walls are to have shingles fitted.