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. 

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.

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. 

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!