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.
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
Friday, 30 March 2012
Monday, 26 March 2012
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: -
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.
Monday, 19 March 2012
Week 31...
... has just come to an end with a day of tile scrubbing. We're back onto the tiles for the greenhouse and now have one last push to finish them off. At last the pile looks small!
Cam Tile have finished the shingles at the back of the house and are nearly done at the front. The final bits of shingles are inside the greenhouse and the draft lobby by the front door. There is glass in the greenhouse windows with the roof still to finish.
Saturday morning the plasterers were in screeding the greenhouse floor and finishing off a few small areas of plastering. We arrived early to use some of the screed to create our cobbled yard. The stones are all found on site during the archeaological dig. They are river stones not local to this area. When we dug them up there was lots of broken pottery and quern stones mixed in with the cobbles. The stones still need a good clean and we might look at using some sort of sealant to bring out the colours (when wet they're very varied in colour - not all grey as they look here)
Nick spent Saturday fiddling around with all our reclaimed door knobs and all the upstairs doors are now fully functioning. It's an eclectic collection of knobs and the debate of whether to paint the doors white or leave the wood finish goes on. You can see the electrical fittings here with one of the room temperature monitors fixed next to the light switch. Our under floor heating is adjustable in each room.
The stairs have most of their glass in. It looks great but the long bannisters going up the stairs and along the landing are a bit wobbly - builders and architects are not too worried but i'm inclined to agree with Nick that they're just a bit too wobbly for comfort and we'll probably ask Ian to put another upright midway along the long lengths. I don't think they'll ever be completely solid.
Our very own little Pompidou Centre! All connected and functioning. Lots of little expansion tanks attached to the various systems. Dan will come back at some point to tell us how it all works and how to use the controls. We have a touch screen pad to control the heating zones and timings - ain't we all modern!
Juliet has been here helping for a second weekend so special thanks to sister Jules.
Sunday, 18 March 2012
Week 30
It's been well over a week since I last had a chance to sit down and get a post done here so there's a bit much to report in one go. I was wondering how to split the posts and settled on straight forwards time.
I reckon that we got going on the build in mid August last year so last week was week 30 and this week is week 31 of the build - I'll do a post for each.
Working out how many weeks we are into things was interesting. When we sorted out the contract initially Ian was proposing do the whole build in 20 weeks. It was an ambitious target and here we are 10 weeks over run. Around half the hold up is entirely our fault – what with the damned earth wall falling down and all. The other half seems to have been lost along the way and I have to say I’m very glad things haven’t moved any faster than they have. We’ve had so many things to choose and decide I can’t imagine having done it any quicker!
So … week 30 (last week) saw more scrubbing of floor boards - a joyous 2 days. The oak boarding was much easier to clean than the maple so we got that done fairly quickly then on the Friday got back onto blunting chisels on the mapel gak. Tom, Ian's son, Juliet, Nick's sister and Rob, my friend all helped out on the Friday. Many thanks. There was still a lot left to do after and Nick and I both working this week so Tom and his friend Alfie (whom it turns out Nick used to teach at Long Rd 6th form) worked their way through the rest of the boards this week. It was well worth the money to get them on the case and they got hold of some very heavy duty scrapers that seemed to get through it all a bit quicker than blunted chisels.
The wood is all now stacked inside the house with space around the boards for the air to get to them. The heating has been on and it is getting used to its new atmosphere before fitting next week.
The slate tiles went up in our en suite. After trapsing round all the local tile shops and deciding on slate I had a look on line and thought the colour and pattern of these looked good on the pictures. I'm glad to say that the pictures were accurate (phew) and I really love the rusty coloured patterns.
Family bathroom tiles going up. These are handmade from Mexico (through a london based co. called Milagros). The red tiles in our kitchen at Stanley road are Mexican - they do such vibrant colours and I fell in love with this green although one of the builders thought it looked avacado! humph. 80 retro cool perhaps?
Boxing for the bogs is now done.
On the roof with Ian and Nick. Discovering here that the extract vent cowl for our whole house extraction system from passivent needs an upstand built. Air is extracted from the wet rooms through ducting via a single extract fan in the loft space so there is only one exhaust pipe from the building - therefore less holes in the thermal envelope. Each extract and inlet has a hygroscopic shutter i.e. a shutter operated by a strip that expands or contracts depending on the air humidity. There is a minimal background ventilation all the time and when one of the wet rooms becomes humid the extract automatically opens, the system detects the drop in pressure and steps up the amount extracted. Likewise it automatically closes when the humidity drops. I could go on about ventilation a lot more but Nick says this bit is already boring so give me a call if you want to know more about my thoughts on it!
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
O.M.G.
urgh! The gak that needs removing from the tongues and grooves of our reclaimed floorboards turns out to be industrial strength stuff. We fondly thought a few friends and a days work with a wire brush would get us through most of the boards but not even close - these are even worse to clean than the tiles were!! We have thurs/fri aside for more scraping, chiseling and chipping and are hiring some man power from Ian.
Lucky Rachel back for more reclaiming, lucky Charlotte visiting for the weekend and roped into a day's work and lucky Hellen whom I happened to see last week and nobbled for some time and effort. It was a freezing cold day with constant rain which only stopped for about an hour during which it snowed. The scraping was difficult and slow progress was made on the large stack of wood. A big thanks from us for helping with what I can only describe as a grueling task :-)
Lucky Rachel back for more reclaiming, lucky Charlotte visiting for the weekend and roped into a day's work and lucky Hellen whom I happened to see last week and nobbled for some time and effort. It was a freezing cold day with constant rain which only stopped for about an hour during which it snowed. The scraping was difficult and slow progress was made on the large stack of wood. A big thanks from us for helping with what I can only describe as a grueling task :-)
Alison visited last week and really was the luckiest of all because she didn't have to do any helping! Behind Alison's right shoulder you can see the sliding door partially closed across the main living area/hallway gap. This door is hidden in the wall when closed. Nearly everywhere is plastered now - the hallway and larder have been done since this pic.
We thought we were going to be able to fit our thermal store and gas boiler in the corner of the boiler room where Dan (heating engineer) is working but it turns out we can't so the tank has migrated over to the other side of the room leaving a trail of copper pipes in it's path. These have to stay exposed in case of gas leaks but luckily this room was designed to be the 'engine' room so we don't mind seeing how it all works in here. We have chosen an Ecocat thermal store from Chelmer Heating.
You can see the two sets of solar thermal panels fitted to the central roof section here. They sit up quite high off the roof and look a bit startling at the moment with their white plastic wrapping. Hopefully they'll blend a little better when it's just the black tubes. You can get either evacuated tubes, or flat panels to collect solar thermal energy. There are pro's and cons to both with the evacuated tubes reportedly performing better in cooler weather so should give a longer heating season.
You may also notice that the large blue site hut has turned into a small blue portaloo!
Men at work!
The family bathroom starts to take shape. Tiling for the showers will go up later this week.
Thursday, 1 March 2012
1 month to go ...
or at least that's what we're hoping. Ian is going great guns and every day is a busy day on site at the moment. We're hoping the main build will be done at the end of the month. We have agreed with Ian that the drive and some hard paving outside will sit outside the time constraints of the contract - mostly because we can't make up our minds what we want. We specified grasscrete as we wanted something permeable and that wouldn't look overly formal but then we decided we really didn't like the look of it so may go for hopsack bricks instead. Both options can be seen here.
On site the upstairs doors have been hung. They will eventually be painted white but they were kept in a shed at the reclaim yard and have been living in the playroom since they got to Girton so we will give them a few weeks in the warm house to dry out and acclimatise before painting them.
Here they are. Nick's put up a some of his lamp shade collection - he had a fun time last year lusting after expensive spun aluminium enamelled lampshades. He's purchased a few of them, some old and some new.
Ian has set up one of the toilets. The cistern is designed to be built in so we will need to design and build some boxing around them. We will have 3 toilets. They are Ifo cera Es4. Swedish designed and using only 4 or 2.7 litres per flush they apparently 'set the standard' for water saving bogs! They will use our saved rainwater along with the washing machine.
The electricity was connected on Tuesday and our solar panels connected and commissioned today. We are getting the feed in tariff registration in by tomorrow - the deadline if the government's early tariff reduction is overturned. They set a tariff that they said would apply until April but then just before xmas suddenly halved it. The solar panel industry has been thrown into chaos as lots of orders were cancelled but Green Peace have taken it to court and so far been successful in arguing that the early tariff reduction was illegal.
Other progress this week - solar thermal panels are on the roof, the heating engineer is fitting the thermal store and finishing off the plumbing for the heating system. We have gas. The site hut has gone. Our large sliding doors separating the family room and the hallway downstairs have been fitted. These we had to have for building regs, to separate the kitchen from the stairs. They are hidden in the walls when open. I'll get some more pics of all this tomorrow.
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