Electricity outage

We had arranged to meet Neville who's making our kitchen this afternoon and then Ian and Jeremy (architect) afterwards to talk about the window cladding detail. In fact, I had a call from Ian at around 11 to say that the electricity had stopped working so Nick and I hopped in the car then to see if we could sort things out.

It was a nice day to be on site. Freezing cold but bright sunshine and loads of activity, inside and out. It was a lovely surprise to see that they had started on the cladding and we can start to see how the finish will look. Loving it so far :-)

I think it was the flat roofing folk with a heat torch that tripped the switches. We got the supply from Mum and Dad's house up and running again without too much trouble. Dad will have to sort out the supply from the playroom (large shed in garden for anyone who doesn't know 1 High St).

There are two sizes of boards - 6 inches (foreground) for the main areas and 3 inches (just visible behind the first scaffolding pole) for detailing. The timber is western red cedar which is a lovely red colour but (to the dismay of some of the woodworkers on site) we are painting the boarding the colour you can see here. It's a grey/green colour we saw on a newish building at Cripps Court, part of Magdalene College where Nick has worked. We got hold of the architects who gave us the details, it's a mix of three colours produced by Osmo. The shingles on the sides of the building will be left natural timber and should eventually weather to a nice grey colour. The idea with the paint is that it is quite close in colour to the weathered timber so we may get away with allowing it to wear off and the grey timber to come through from underneath thereby avoiding both maintenance and the first few years of weathering which, if uneven, can look very scruffy.  

Painting the edges before the boards go up. There's a 10mm gap between the boards so it's all getting a lick of colour.

The car port base is crammed with timber and insulation. Also visible at the back on the left here is yet another shed. Rescued from a pub nearby it's a bit rotten in places but with dad's help Nick re-felted the roof last weekend so it'll keep stuff we buy for the house dry for now.

The ground floor has a layer of insulation now which has brought the floor level up by 120mm. The underfloor heating pipes were going down today and the screed is due to be poured on Friday.

The last bit of Sarnafil (flat roofing membrane) going on the master bedroom balcony.