A day and a night

Nick is away for a couple of days so I was on site at 9 yesterday morning to meet with Ian and the plumber(s). They are finishing off the first fix and wanted one or the other of us to be there to ensure all the pipes are in the right place before they are all covered up with plasterboard (see plumbing extra post below). It was quite a busy day on site and I had intended on getting an afternoon nap before my night shift but that never happened :-(

Our sliding folding doors were also installed and they look great, matching the Greensteps windows very well. Paul and Steve were working on the bargeboards and soffits (roof timber details) on the South East side of the house - I think the plan was to get the guttering up today and then take the scaffolding on this side of the house down tomorrow. Ian needs it removed as soon as possible so the greenhouse can go up and he can get  the site hut thing that he's been hiring off site as it's not needed any more (currently stuck on site as scaffolding is in the way of it's exit route). We/the architects specified seamless aluminium guttering which is formed on site. Unfortunately there seems to be only one profile available and we don't like it that much ... we got the sample last week but haven't had the time (or inclination) to do a whole load of guttering research to check out all our other options so we're going to live with it. I wish I'd got my act together and asked for a sample in grey but we didn't realise it was going up today so when we asked Ian about it yesterday it was all a bit too late and it will be black.

Not to be outdone by the development across the road, Nick designed this rather lovely sign so everyone knows where we are and all the Washpit Lane dog walkers can see what's going on.  

Nick's office taking shape. Some of the window boards are in and you can just see the gluelam beams which will be exposed at the top of all the upstairs rooms.

This is a shot of the landing. It will be a really interesting space with the earth wall and instead of taking the walls vertically to meet the ceilling these alcoves follow the line of the roof structure which should give a sense of how the building is put together. You can see here in the furthest alcove the ventilation pipe which rather unfortunately runs straight through our lovely design feature. The system design didn't take into account the alcove and it would have been very convoluted to go round it. Nick and I talked about boxing in a bit more of the alcove but Nick says he doesn't mind seeing the pipe (!) and so it will stay for the moment and I will save judgement til the area is finished - we can box later if it offends.

The master bedroom with an open passage through to the en suite. You can see the earth wall to the right and the underfloor heating manifolds in our built in wardrobe which is on the route round to the en suite. 

Had a very nice lunch on Saturday with Meg & Frank, hosted by my folks. You can see here that it's a house of two halves at the moment. The upstairs is starting to look a bit more finished and the down stairs, here, still very much like a building site.