We tested the fireplace this week with the goal to check the temperature of the surrounding built-out sections of fireproof calcium silicate board. The design we’ve got in mind is to stick a whopping great big TV above the fireplace, but also to ensure it and the electronics serving it don’t melt into goo with the heat. To make it even more complicated, we would like to clad the whole thing in corten steel. Today’s exercise was to sense-check the idea and take some temperature readings with the fire lit.
fire test
The Rais 900 woodburner is a beast of a thing and extremely well-engineered. Despite having read the instructions and having two of my intrepid expert Scouts along who are excellent at firelighting, it still didn’t quite go as planned. We got the thing lit, but there was no draw up the chimney, so all we achieved is to fill the room with smoke which wasn’t in the game plan. Luckily, there are half a billion fans onsite, so after quickly throwing the smouldering pieces out the window, we borrowed one for half an hour to get some breeze in there and air the room out. I must have been doing something pretty silly with the fire because the stove has been tested and has a HETAS certificate, but rather than do my usual and start fiddling around with it and risk a likely trip to the burns unit, I’ve organised a meeting with the installers who will visit next week and patiently tell me where I’ve gone wrong.
Generally, the weather, or at least the temperature, has been on our side for drying and it looks like the contractor will be able to start remedial work a week ahead of schedule. The environmental guys came in early in the week to take the tenting away and to move the fans around.
watching walls dry
One of the bits of kit the environmental guys use is a floor-mounted humidity sensor.It records the moisture in the concrete floor, and this is key information to have before we re-lay all the wood on top of it. It looks kind of like a mini Tardis just sitting there, but unlike the other little red-box sensors from last week, this one can’t be accessed remotely. It’s pretty simple but effective: they seal all around the base and simply leave it to record data. This one is in the master dressing area where most of the water damage occurred.
black box measuring damp in the floor
The walls and ceilings are all discoloured, but it’s dry. Most of the damage can be simply decorated over by using Stain Block and more paint. But sections of ceiling right under the leak will need to be replaced entirely.
one for the scrap heap
After more than two years of letting nature take over, it was time to give the front garden a serious trim. The beech hedge that we planted in 2001 has almost completely reverted to individual trees, and the rhododendrons in the ditch are now providing homes to wildlife. We cut a LOT back, and it’s a good time of year to get some air in there and let in some light on the hedge so it has time to fill out a little before the winter. I’m probably a bit disproportionately proud of my work here only because it was good, honest and hard–the kind of task that you feel in your back a few days afterwards. And it was a bonus that I also got son #2 out of the house and into the sunlight for a couple of days.
not bad for a couple of rookies with shearsat least someone is living hereno more brambles but found bits of our old cherry tree
Many tiny jobs remain outstanding, mainly choosing fittings like door handles and storage units. Did you know that a letterbox is VAT exempt on a new build? As are toilet roll holders. But wardrobes and carpet aren’t? Odd. Also, in all the paperwork for the house move, I changed our TV licence (god bless the BBC) and noticed that one of the details alongside my address and phone number included whether the TV was colour or black and white. I feel that it’s been a while since these laws have had a serious look-see and need a bit of a revamp.
It will be 2 – 4 weeks to dry the house out, redecorate, and get you in.
… has to rank alongside the similarly famous …
We’ll have the lights on for Christmas.
And more recently…
Put your family in a hotel while the work is done.
It’s not every day that you build a house from scratch, and you would hope that the utterances from the experts could be believed. We’ve learned a lot these last 20 months, the most valuable has been to pick out the genuinely good advice from the masses of optimistic twaddle.
It’s 30 weeks since we had planned to move in, 3 weeks since the flood, and now at least 12 more weeks still to go. The overly-optimistic comments have stopped, and we’re thinking desert-like drying-out thoughts to get us there.
The environmental guys have taken over the site and filled it with dehumidifiers, fans, sensors, and heaters. They’ve tented the master ensuite and part of Gemma’s room where the majority of the water flowed down the walls when the valve failed. The assessors originally said that they would set their gear up and monitor it each week to give a forecast of how much of the 28 days they reckon it will take before the building is dry and any remedial work can begin. Perhaps they’ll start that monitoring next week, because they haven’t been in much since Tuesday. Of course, we’re banking on the warm weather giving the process a boost and are hoping it will be shorter rather than longer than anticipated. However, I’ve spoken to two people who’ve been here before who said that when an insurance company says 0 to 28 days to dry, it usually means 28 days.
It was a comfortable 21° C summer day today with a light breeze and high clouds. But inside it was a dry, hot, deafening furnace well into the mid 30’s. And with this, comes the possibility that what was perfectly dry in other parts of the house now starts to bend and distort.
You can hear the humming of all the machinery going 24/7 as you approach the house. The building sounds alive, and it’s very strange.
trio of fan/heater/dehumidifier downstairs in the hallwayleeched water runs out into the brand new sinkdoors have been removed and left to dryGemma’s room is partially-tentedhallway and master ensuite tents
With all this experience, one of the benefits is being able to pass it on. We probably should have a chat about the acronym seas we’re swimming in: JCTs, EOTs, LADs and General Damages. If you ever entertain the idea of building a house or engaging a builder to do a large amount of work that requires one of the many flavours of Joint Contract Tribunal or JCT contract, you should know a few things. Firstly, Kevin McCloud (For It Is He) subscribes to the phrase “hope for the best and plan for the worst”, and he’s right. But Hope alone isn’t the best strategy really. Planning for the worst involves having a solid contract in place to give impartial clarity to sticky situations should they arise. The hard part is guessing what exactly the “worst” could be from the keen-as-mustard and comfortable position of haven’t-started-yet and not-having-a-clue at the get-go. He also says that “house building has ruined many a good relationship,” so when engaging a builder, you should think less about beginning the marriage of your dreams and more about drawing up a hard-as-nails pre-nup for a possible divorce. Simply put, you will be completely clueless about how much protection you are going to need. This is why we hire professionals instead, and we don’t rely so much on the well-intentioned advice from friends, relatives or anyone else who hasn’t parted with hard-earned cash for a building project.
The second thing you should know is that you are ‘the insurer of last resort’. Any time anything goes wrong on your job, everyone will look to you to pay-up for his or her mistakes. This gets old quickly.
Time is everyone’s enemy on a job like this. The builder can request Extensions of Time, and the client can attempt to claim Liquidated Ascertained Damages, all in an effort to avoid being penalised for indecision or inaction. It all gets a bit messy, but if you’re clever from the outset and document these things properly, you will be able to fall back on the JCT to iron out the creases. If you don’t keep track, you end up scrabbling around in the dark recesses of history trying to figure out who did what when… and who should be up for paying.
Now that the muck has stuck, the insurance process, waiting around for reports, and reading the fine print in the contract is all taking a little too much out of everyone involved at the moment. Ultimately, there is a limited number of cookies in our cookie jar, and we are getting glimpses of the bottom of it these days which is scary. I Told You So is ringing in my ears with everyone saying to me that a self-build project always costs more than you think it will. Yes, you’re right. Everyone’s got a friend that has overreached in an extension, renovation or build. No one ever says, “Wow! And look! We’ve got loads of money leftover for curtains and new sofas!” Just, no. Knowing this, we prepared: we knew (thought) that so we had a robust contract, a sink (sunk) fund just-in-case, and effective (expensive) management in place. Along the way we felt comfortable enough to splash out on a few nice things, and this has been tempered by being more frugal about other things. And unlike the mystery figures and vagaries that are bandied about at the end of every episode of Grand Designs, we’ve kept track of every penny meticulously, so at least we know where we are, even while looking around for our paddle. Eight extra months of rent and professionals’ fees now means that we are making choices that we didn’t think we’d be facing because we’d prepared so well (we thought). After all, we’d waited 15 years to get started on this project so we’d had a LOT of time to think about it. It’s frustrating to see it all withering now, but curling up under the duvet isn’t an option, so onwards we go….
garden from the master bedroom
Downpipes have gone in on the sections where we had the brick pillars removed. They’ve also finally installed the contentious one hanging off the vertical tiles on the front elevation into a newly-cut plinth.
downpipe hugging the building into the plinthparade of double-swan-neck downpipes with oak soffitswater butts ready to go in when the landscaping is finishedsoffit junction in the sun
The joints between the oak and the brick were mortared in last week. I went round to another house built in a similar style, and the owners were super friendly and kind enough to describe some of the problems they’d had with joins between materials. In fact, the lady of the house was so nice that she’d invited me and Elder Daughter in to have a good look at some areas of concern. Their builders had used mastic to seal the structural-oak/brick joins. After a few years of wear and movement in the oak in this other property, some of the mastic has started to come away from the brick exposing the join to the elements. They’d also put clear silicon in the oak joints just like we did. They’re getting it all sorted now, but it’s taken them living through a few floods to see where the problems lie. We’ll put this in the Good Advice bucket.
There are a lot of multi-material junctions throughout our building. Our mortar joints are raked in 3 or 4 mmm in which gives a lovely shadow effect to each course but it makes life a little tricky for making a nice seal. Mastic along the joins between the window frames and the bricks would only splodge into the mortar joints, potentially leaving a messy uneven line. So unlike my new friend with the similar house, we’ve decided to forego the mastic and use just compriband on its own instead. This is a sticky-backed foam that squishes down into nothing and expands to fill gaps in the heat. The trick is to put it in the fridge or freezer right before installing it (especially in summer) to give time for it to be cut to size onsite. They’ve used large sheets of it in some of the larger gaps between the structural oak and bricks, so it will be consistent too. Marvellous.
Despite a little rain in the week coupled with the moisture in the mortar leeching the tannins from the oak onto the plinths and discolouring it a little, having mortared joints are still a damn sight more reassuring than having possible failed future seal.
fresh mortar …… and one week on with tannin leaching out
Despite all the hot mess of problems we’re having at the moment, it’s refreshing to think it’s actually a beautiful building with some architecturally interesting features. And it looks nice in the sun.
I had a minor surgical procedure a good few years ago which went all a bit pear-shaped in recovery. On speaking to the surgeon, who was a really nice chap despite my setback, it turned out that this particular complication was a one in a bijillion type of thing to happen. Really rare, definitely unexpected. He said then that in all his work, this sort of thing happened less than 1% of the time. But he also understood that despite the odds, it was still 100% of my experience. That’s a lot of responsibility to carry around as a person and a doctor. To his credit, he saw the whole thing through really well, all the while being proactive and keeping positive in analysing the problem, firmly believing that a good solution would gradually emerge. His attitude turned out to be pretty infectious (no pun intended) and a good learning experience in retrospect.
So, here we are in the midst of another less-than-1% experience. At least, I hope for the building industry it is! No one is happy about it, but onward we go, getting past the worst part which is seeing the nest we’ve built our family upended once again. Demolition was bad enough. I’m upset, but curiously not devastated at the damage done by the flood. It’s not seeing the tangible building wrecked that is gutting, it can and will be mended, it will just take about four more months. It’s more the emotional side that’s galling and the general disappointment that can’t be repaired in any speed but has to be ignored now and eventually left to percolate and dissipate over time.
We started this project with the family in mind, and the goal was to get this house to work effectively for all of us. Rather than have the nice shiny efficient home we’ve worked so hard for, the family is now shoe-horned into our third rental that the kids don’t feel a part of. It’s just like camping, kids, just with better plumbing!, says their ditzy mum. It must be very unnerving as a teenager to have your space dismantled and your parents all distracted 24/7. It seems like this project has taken ages to me (it has by anybody’s standards), but for a bit of perspective, we’ve been at this for a sixth of my youngest’s life, so it must seem horribly normal to her, and that’s not right. I suppose it will make them resilient in the end, but inwardly, I look to my surgeon from before for inspiration and try to be proactive and positive for the kids.
Keeping a smile on is taxing, but we’re quite upfront with the kids about what’s going on–there are no secrets or glossing-over of facts. We’re probably a little too free and easy with opinions around the dinner table, but as this project has eclipsed most of our social life, the build is kind of all we talk about now. It’s easy to be glib and remind them to appreciate that we’re fortunate to have the capacity to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. But this level of subsistence isn’t what we signed up for, in fact what we signed up for is completely the opposite. We tried to ensure that by having loads of tiers of management in place and work cross-checked by a host of professionals, that this sort of disaster would be avoided. In years to come, will I appreciate the house more because the journey has been more arduous? Will we chuckle ruefully as we look back on today’s drama? Or we will feel like just another couple of middle class ya-hoos getting too big for their boots and wading into seas where they shouldn’t be swimming in the first place? Whatever it is, there is no point having a moan, but it’s bloody hard to look at the lovely ruined walls and ceilings and not feel a little robbed that we were so close to living in it.
As a rule, I haven’t shouted anyone out in either a positive or negative way, just because I feel that this blog should be more a story where the House is the central character, and no one wants to read about my dirty laundry. But I feel compelled to give Andy Bald of Removals In Action five virtual stars for being completely awesome. Kevin, Kesta, Shaun, Simon and everyone on his team were total gentlemen and will have moved us five times when all this is said and done. This week the gang worked solidly for days moving us back and forth from rental to storage to another rental with stops to our friend’s house and to the new house to leave some logs in the garden. They’ve put up with me being emotional, 35° temperatures, and a constantly changing gameplan. Thanks, guys…. you’re incredible.
Equally as steady is Warren the Milky 07889 141395. Having milk delivered is a special treat and a cultural phenomenon that I’ve had the pleasure of supporting since I moved to the UK in ’91. Despite our recent vagabond existence, Warren has worked hard to keep the supply consistent for no benefit to himself. When we moved outside his patch into the first rental he found a colleague to continue our delivery seamlessly. It was a pleasure to move back near the house in the second rental and have him resume the service himself. Now, with this short term rental, he’s not only gone and found another colleague to deliver, but he’s given us his good wishes and looks forward to seeing us back in our old neighbourhood soon. Seems a completely unrelated thing to the house-build this whole milk thing, but he’s been delivering to the house for over 15 years plus the two we’ve been out, so it’s kind of a long-term relationship, and one that’s slightly odd because it’s all so ninja–I hardly ever see him! Thanks, Warren.
I apologise for leaving last week off the blog; in the midst of finding new digs and moving into them and it all feeling a bit chaotic. This week is better and we’ve found a path to tread again. The insurers have taken over the Drying Out Process which they say could take anywhere from 0 to 28 days. There are damp reports, forensic assessments, dehumidifiers, environmental teams and all sorts of experts introduced to this project and taking a look this week. Some damage is making itself evident a couple of weeks post-deluge as the underlying structure starts to dry, and even I can see these bits.
To catalogue a few of the areas as they’ve changed in the past fortnight….
kitchen nibs are looking damp and the coving is ropey and split but the units are probably ok
ground floor ceiling looking damaged–how much of the staircase was affected?bowed skirting was removed in placesbowing before removing in the family room; is there water under the marble?skirting lights will need replacing tootenting and dehumidifying sodden areas
But work continues, and although we were planning on moving in, I can’t really say that it was to a complete house anyway. We’d agreed with Tim that work would continue once we were in, and some important bits remained outstanding. Like the 1.25″ diameter water supply which was installed this week. The old pipes were lead, and the water company has a scheme for replacement (which is a little known fact), and they came to replace the house’s supply for free–hooray!
water company searching for pipes in the road
It turns out the supply runs alongside the road between it and the ditch, so there was no kango-ing of tarmac and far less fuss than expected. Phew
The Swedish-sauna oak soffits on the first-floor overhang went in all along the front and west side of the building. It’s all bright and sparkly now with Clive’s double coats of Osmo oil, which looks a little jarring next to the structural oak that’s been there for months, but it should grey out like the rest of building in time. Spencer will be back to install a lead strip around the west overhang so it’s completely watertight.
pretty porchalong the underside of the overhang
boys’ shower room is looking smartmirrors have gone up
Shower screens went in and niche lighting is on. We’ve had a little trouble with the screen for the girls’ bathroom–it’s got a dippy kink in the wall which prevents fitting the screen flush with the edge of the tray, and it’s just plain too long leaving a slim 560 mm gap to get into the shower. We can’t do anything about the placement of the glass, but we can adjust it’s length. The catch is that the screen is made of special safety glass so it can’t simply be trimmed onsite. These things are jolly expensive, so it takes some nerve to say it’s not right. We’ve asked for a price on replacing it at this stage, and we’ll make a decision whether to change it or not depending on how astronomical it is.
girls’ shower is narrowutility room lighting and tiling fits perfectlythe view out of the building is still beautiful …… and so is the back against the shiny tiles.the guys have done a huge clear-up in the front garden
Lots has happened on the outside of the house in the past few weeks.
the protective aprons on the brick plinths have come off, and the brick panels are almost completetwo vents for the fireplace, top is for cavity venting and bottom is for convectionrainwater pipework at ground level, although it looks a bit high compared to next door’s fence
The electricians will re-attend after the driveway is complete. There’s a day or so of work to put the car charging point in, wire up the coach light and run all the garden spots out to their respective beds. But for now, the wires will be left all coiled up on the side of the garage. Some will be on timers in the garage and others will be switched from the front door which is exactly like we had it in the old house.
cabling for the coach light, garden spots and porch down lighters all coiled up and ready to go
The oak support for the garage overhang was mortared in with the rest of paving slabs. This post replaced the very large brick pier that was built first and then demolished when we discovered it left no room to move around it. The edges of the post are really square, and we’ve got to decide whether to chamfer off the corners–what do you think?
oak postJamie tilled the back garden on first passground lights will fit in the cuts to paving slabs in the giant back door step
This kind of finishing work would have carried on regardless of the flood, and would have been happening even if we had moved in. The builders have been part of our lives for 65 weeks, and the house is pretty dang big compared to what we’ve been living in the past two years, so I’m sure we could have fit in the odd chippie or electrician during the move. But fortunately for them, they’ve had a chance to work unencumbered, and they’ll soon be clearing off to hand over to the environmental guys as part of the insurer’s package until it’s dry.
Pain is a funny thing. It gradually fades, and the weird bit is that you don’t notice it’s gone. I hardly think about my surgeon any more, but all sorts of thoughts have come to the fore recently. One day, this trauma won’t burn so bright, the technicolour will dim, and things will calm down. Looking forward to it.
Post redirected, banks informed, car insurance changed, schools notified, meters read, cleaners booked, checkout from rental organised, and… off we go at long last. After two years of being away from St Anne’s, we’re finally moving in to the New House. What an adventure!
What could possibly go wrong? We’ve moved twice already, so we’re a dab hand at packing up with all the incidentals and hiatus in broadband (for the four teenagers this is the biggest hiccup in the process) that go along with it. What do you suppose is the worst thing that could happen at this stage? Problem with the removals? Kids getting ill? Car breaking down? I’m sure there are a few potential perils that could befall us now. But, Monday rolled around, and Andy and his removal team were top notch as usual (we’ve had the pleasure of them moving us four times now including once for the office). The kids remained amazingly buoyant and kept calm despite their five A-level exams this week and two the next between them. So even though Mum was going a little nuts, it was all looking great.
Until Tuesday.
We let the removals guys in to the pack up the rental in the morning and rushed over to site for an early meeting to find Tim’s car parked up in the lane and much activity onsite. Apparently, the main valve that regulates the water pressure from the mains leaked overnight. This valve is in the loft and is the first piece of apparatus besides pipework that the plumbing sees after it enters the building from the mains. It’s placed just upstream from the hot water tank up there above Gemma’s room. Somehow a bunch of water came out of it, and I won’t say any more because the loss assessors and legal teams are involved. But it must have been on a long time looking at all the damage.
the join in question is the one with the white silicon tape to the left of the regulatorall the wood floor is coming up to let the floor underneath dry outdrying out the saturated electricswetlots of skirting started bowing immediately as water cascaded down the wallslight fittings were removed and put in a pile in the kitchenwet walls and water line drawn on floor
The rest of the week has been spent getting our stuff into storage and trying to find an immediate short term rental. We’ve got some great friends who have kindly put us up for as long as it takes which is incredibly generous, and we are very grateful that everyone has a bed, cups of tea can be made, and that we can use their place as a base. They’ve even let us use a part of their garden for all my potted plants. But somehow we’ve got to get cracking back into real life next week what with school, work, and exams, and coordinating what’s in and what’s not in the storage pod. Somewhere, buried within the solid mass of boxes, we’ve got to retrieve gear for a D of E Gold expedition, school shoes, and outfits for two proms before Friday. The contracts for the legal team are also buried along with all our warm clothes as it’s just gone from sizzling heat wave to soggy cold snap. My little Toyota would be bursting to the gunnels with all this stuff, so I think we’ll have to acquire other forms of transport to schlep stuff around town. So that’s another thing to organise.
And after that it’s picking up the pieces to find our third rental during this project.
There is no time to wallow in what this all means or how much it’s going to cost, we’ve just got to get on with it.
Welcome to Week 62 in our 36 Week project…. It’s all about finishing now.
bathroom niches have their lightstiled flooring is down in the bathrooms, but no shower screens yetfiddly short tiles cut to finish the floor, but no mirrormaster vanity unit has been moved, but no lightsRich tiled the utility splashback .... and started the tiling in the kitchen
looks much more kitchen-like; requests for moral support go unheeded…
Lots of pressure to Buy Things like… doorbells. Have you ever given much thought to them? The button bit can be a nice design piece, and there are many many different types to choose from. But the ringer, chime, sounder, whatever you call it, has three flavours: school bell, electric programmable with a bijillion different “songs”, or an antique from eBay. We went for a chrome schoolbell in the end. Boring, but necessary.
doorbell: brick mounted or doorframe mounted?garden getting cleared graduallytiling and water buttthinking herb garden thoughtsmore herbs: got a recommendation or favourite to share in comments below?horrible scary crack filledsecurity lights installedoak beam in lieu of bricks to support garage installed
There was an area on the back porch where the supports under the structural oak were slightly shy of the windows leaving a 20 mm gap. There was 10 mm tolerance generally for windows abutting to structure in the specification, and the guys managed to put it all on one side, making the 20 mm of air. The windows were installed just after Christmas, and this gap had been glaring at us ever since. One transgression for the Quirky House Police, but it’s filled now and looks much better.
Paul filled the gap with surgical precisionplinth splits for guttering downpipes restored
The bricklayers elevate their work to an artform. I hope that they’ve enjoyed working on this place, because they’ve had a lot to think about. Mind you, this week’s daily quizzes were mostly about war films which really tested my memory of dates, battles and geography. Oh yeah, ….. and what is the only airport in the States with an actual airplane in it? And whom is it named after? But check out the symmetry around every wall and detail as you look at any photo with bricks in. Genius.
study is finished with flooring and electricsmassive patch panel in the utility room to centralise all the data pointsfireplace with temporary buildout, but the room looks miles better with a coat of paintcolours look alright in the kitchen into family room — Dulux Trade is A-OKmaster bedroom detailwardrobe rails inelectrics are getting there one socket at a time, but not sure about the labelling…
We’re moving in on the Thursday of week 63. In theory. Kitchen commissioning on Monday morning, air permeability test in the afternoon. Tuesday is the contractor’s last formal day on the interior. Wednesday is cleaning, and Thursday we’re in.
When we first started this project I had visions of the finished product being presented in a more defined way. I kinda expected a ta-da! moment. I thought we’d have some time to think about the job, to go around with the contractor in a logical way to see if anything was overlooked, to snag it, to rectify the snags, and to move in with a huge smile. As it is, it’s rushed, the project manager is on holiday, the electricians are still (incredibly shockingly and disappointingly) not finished, snagging hasn’t started, the air-test is going on unsupervised and might fail our SAP calcs for us, and there is still a ton of work to do outside both within and outside the contract. Like, there is no drive and no lawn, but these will be done by others. There are no curtains, yet. And, strangely, there is no TV aerial which somehow counts as AV equipment which was conveniently client-specified but not highlighted until now.
There have been many parts of this project when we’ve seen our naive decisions come to fruition, and some have worked out just fab and the product is marvellous. But mostly, I really just haven’t wanted to look at bits and pieces in case we’d made a poor stab at something. I feel far more fear than excitement or pleasure at moving in just now. Maybe it’s just the fact we’re coming to the end of a period of exam hell with the kids and staffing challenges with the business all at once conveniently coordinated with the week we’re moving in. Maybe it’s because it’s the hottest week of the year. Maybe it’s that the budget is starting to burst at the seams. Maybe in five years’ time this feeling of unease and self-doubt will have morphed imperceptibly into something more comfortable, settled and positive. I hope my future self laughs heartily on reading today’s momentary dip in my attempt to retain a consistently high level of relentless positivity throughout this long journey. This future self will be enormously grateful and very happy in our family home that we’ve had built the way we wanted and was intended to provide the centre of gravity for the six of us at least for many many years to come.
Clinton celebrated a penultimately significant birthday on the weekend by going back to school: blacksmithing school. He’s always happiest when he’s making and building and doing. So with some stout shoes and safety glasses, off he went to the Quinnells’ at Fire and Iron to get stuck in to Make Stuff. The course was about blacksmithing technique but with an artist kind of vibe; the goal was to take home a few cool pieces at the end of the two days. With a little guidance from the instructors, he’s gone and made something quite amazing, unique and special. You’ll have to wait for the great unveiling in a future post, but I will hint that it’s for the house.
Iron Man
The long-awaited visit from British Telecom to attach the house to the rest of the planet was scheduled for Monday. Matt the Engineer arrived promptly first thing to rig up the line. Jamie got stuck in to finish off the trench, and James and I deciphered where the electricians had cunningly hidden the location for the BT box (spoiler: in the garage). So Matt got busy connecting, and Jamie filled in the trench afterwards. Apparently there’s a dial tone and everything!
we love a good trench
Other outdoor work included laying more paving slabs and turning on the outdoor lights.
replacing a wobbly slab
Steve’s team came to install the wood burner in the middle of the week. Cue much amusement from the guys wanting to know when the fish will be delivered. Installation went off mostly without a hitch with a little drilling out of the brickwork for ducting and a little bricking up for a base that the thing sits upon. It’s a closed system, so we don’t need air bricks to the room, but there is a need to supply air to the appliance itself, and another need to vent out the chamber so it doesn’t overheat, especially since we’re sticking a great big TV above it (eventually). The extra size of the exterior brickwork plinth at the bottom made it a little challenging for the guys to connect the bottom duct since it was so long, so they had to come back the day after and finish the job. It looks great as it is but we’ll add to it in time: eventually the build-out sections will be built bigger so the TV is set back behind the stove. We’re going to develop this design with Steve now that this portion of the job is complete, but at least it’s safe at the moment and passes all its HETAS requirements for building control. It’s a complicated design, but Dave’s watching over it, and it will be awesome.
Rais 900 all alonewhere it will livewoodburner, mid-installtemporary buildout and ready to go
The mechanical ventilation system failed it’s commission a couple of weeks ago, which was slightly scary. The pipes are all running in the void between the concrete first floor and the ground floor ceiling, and getting to them now would destroy a ton of decorating. The system runs to all the wet areas including the downstairs coats cupboard where all the electrical controls are housed. The problem was that there wasn’t enough suction on the longer runs to the other side of the house and to the kitchen, so it failed its installation tests. We have been waiting on tenterhooks seeing how the company would deal with this, and they came back this week to fix it. Their solution was to fit a second motor in the loft to give it enough oomph. So now we’ve got double-spiders up there, all labelled up nice and pretty, and it sucks like fury. Hooray!
fancy MEV
You may have noticed in one of the photos above that the exterior light was ON! Yes, the lights are on at long last. Lewis was characteristically sanguine about showing me the gleaming little LEDs and lovely warm Edisons outside, but I am pretty sure he’s kinda proud of getting near the end, and I think I even caught a sly smile or two in there somewhere. It’s another threshold of making the house look like a home.
I’ll take you on a tour of some of the mostly-finished rooms….
shoes-off policy upstairs now that the floor protection is upGareth’s roomGregory’s roomfirst floor hallwaythe glorious linen cupboard!Gillian’s roomup close and personal with a newel postboys’ bathroom with burglar PIR in hallway
master vanity needs shifting to the right 100 mm
It was all looking marvellous indeed! But then… the heavens opened. This time last year, you’ll remember that the storm drains on the local roads up the hill failed, and my neighbours got flooded out with the grounds guys altruistically running bricks to them to raise their furniture before the water got to their beds and sofas. Since then, much repair work has been done, and one neighbour was able to move back in just after Christmas; the other is due to move back in at the end of the summer.
This year it was our turn for drama.
The water was either down to the oak frame or the windows, and it was only in a few places. First we phoned Neil who has built a bijillion of oak frames in his career, and he was totally cool about it. Although he’s never seen anything like it, he offered some suggestions and kept a cool head. He was down onsite two days after we called, and he agreed to do some sealing around the edges as a failsafe. He came with Grant and an enormous ladder on the weekend to put the CT1 in some gaps and seal it up, so we won’t be seeing this sort of thing again. The next step is to talk to the window company about the seals around the windows, but that’s a little more complicated because there are so many materials (mastick, sealant, bronze frames) to contend with. Ben’s on it and we should come up with a solution to cover that side as well soon. This belt-and-braces approach should mean we’ve got an air and water tight arrangement, and this is important as we look forward to the all-important Air Test for the SAP calcs in a couple of weeks.
The brick guys returned to repair the damage we did to taking out the piers, and to fill the extra holes the in the bricks made by the electricians in their quest to find good spots for outdoor lights and power. They should finish up next week so they’re only here for a wee bit, but I didn’t get away lightly…. “Who was the last man to walk on the moon?”, asked Paul in the morning. With a completely blank mind, I said Charlie Duke whom I knew was an astronaut, but I also knew was the wrong answer. I’ve even read Andrew Smith’s Moon Dust, and I SHOULD know these things! When I came back onsite in the afternoon to drop off some thing or other, it was “What’s so significant about the River Roe in the States?” Galling, because I’m American, and I’m sure he picks these questions because of it. I will leave you to go and find the answers yourselves!
chipping out the decimated brickworkredoing their own work
And James has got all comfortable in his man-cave in the kitchen.
Not long to go now. Three weeks until we move in. There hasn’t been a light bulb lit yet which is worrying, but they’re all getting wired in at least.
sorting narrow from wide beam
hooray for lights in the upstairs hallwayfamily room lights/James’ new digsWhere do these go, Jimbo?fancy floor lights under the stairscill lights in the kitchen
But the biggest thing this week was saying goodbye to the old garage. It put James out of a home and his new office is now sitting in pieces in the family room. He doesn’t really sit at his desk very much now that we’re coming up to the close–lots of managing lots of trades all the time. I’m sooooo glad to see the garage go. What a beast! Jamie says the beams were in excellent nick which is surprising given the decrepit state of the rest of the structure: cracks in the floor, leaky roof, cracks in the brickwork. It’s main problem was that it sat right on the sweet spot for the garden. When our future selves are sitting out on the new patio with a cold drink in hand, we’ll shake our heads and remember it fondly, I’m sure!
We had the happiest labourer ever onsite this week. John, I think he was called, and he was a luck-of-the-draw-from-an-agency bloke. I guess he was used to working in London where these guys are normally tasked with horrible jobs like moving supplies up and down 7 flights of stairs a gazillion times on a given day in the middle of summer, so this surely seemed a picnic in comparison. When James and Jamie allowed him to drive the dumper around and get involved in the garage demo, well, he was just over the moon! Like a total kid, smiling all day long, as if he were hiding in a candy store at Christmas, not doing a day’s work around on a building site with big machinery. It’s a pleasure to have him onsite and his enthusiasm was totally contagious.
roof’s off3 lorry loads to remove most of itTa-Da!
by the end of the week, even the concrete base was gone
Inside, some final pieces are coming together. In preparation for the fireplace installation next week, the electricians put the wires through the ceiling towards where the sockets will live for the hi-fi. These wires will get boxed in, and it’s lovely that they’re away from all the scary heat from the stove area. Dave’s done drawings, so everyone knows what the finished product will look like.
wires ready for boxing
Additional boxing will be put on the other side of the room to hide the gas pipe. We put this in to future proof any requirement for gas in the room. Like if we wanted to change our lovely wood-burner to gas if it was too hot for instance. Or if we just wanted a change. Originally this pipe wouldn’t have been in the way because we’d intended to cover this area with a low set of built-in units. But with (more than a few) changes in design, this pipe got a little orphaned. Boxing is not a great position to be in, it smacks of afterthought, but it’s the best solution we’ve got at the moment.
orphaned gas pipe
The plumbers are making their way round the bathrooms. The WC was transformed from Box to Room over the course of the week.
boxroom
Lots more to think about outside. Like clearing,….
earth – (and) – child
We’ve got to decide if we want to spend the extra cash on swapping the porch soffits from painted ply to oak tongue and groove. What do you think?
porch: ply or T&G?more soffit decisions
More work was done on the brick slips, and they’re all finished now–hooray! Thanks Clive. A bit of fancy mortar and we’re done.
front slips are instill getting large deliveries….
Work on the bridges is looming. We’ve got a design through from the engineers, and it looks like we’ll be able to drive the space shuttle across them they’re designed so robustly (is that a word?). I’m not sure we need something so bomb-proof. There’s is a ton of extra hardcore to get rid of, so we can use that to fill, and I’ve still got lots of 450 mm diameter corrugated plastic pipe to use too. I’m sure James and Jamie are sick to death of moving it around site anyway. It’s turned a little Where’s Wally with these dang pipes.
450 mm pipes
It was half term this week, and I must say a big thank you to the kids for being so great and leaving Mummy alone to get on with site visits, curtain choosing, counting pennies on spreadsheets, and generally being preoccupied. They should be getting on with GCSE and A-level revision anyway, right? We did manage to get out and about one day, the highlight being a great big Surrey snail round Ranmore Common (we’re very easy to please). Sadly the ice cream van had scarpered due to impending summer storms which we managed to dodge. I’m very grateful to the kids for being so self-sufficient. I definitely owe them some cakes when this is done!
I’ve put this one in here because Dad might like the digger-as-sundial on a weekend when there’s nothing going on onsite.
Got the lamp back this week with its two new panes. Even bought it some new bulbs on amazon. I toyed with the idea of polishing it up back to its original copper, and you can see a little test piece where I gave it a go under the sign-hanging bit int he photos where it looks more brown. But Stephen says just to clean the dirt off it and polish it with beeswax. So that’s what we’ll do. Now just to fit it when the electrical guys are ready, or better yet, just ask them to install it before they forget.
The electrical control gear arrived, but there was a bit of an information gap of how to wire it up. It looks very nice and should be a little bit like plug-and-play since the hard part was planning the system and choosing which circuits would be set up to be controlled before the first fix. The easy bit is fitting the units, but the hard bit might be programming. It will be all installed nicely in the cupboard and will be finished once all the lights are on, the units are commissioned by the manufacturer, and the wires tidied away.
control circuitrycontrol central: it will squeeze in there somewhere
Smoke alarms were fitted with blue bag covers while the decorating continues.
safety first
And other rooms are starting to be fitted with their arrays of LEDs dangling from the ceilings.
kitchendrawing roomfamily room
We’ve got some really fancy lights in the floor and skirting, and these are going in carefully and gingerly so they don’t mess up Mike’s paintwork, Rich’s tiling, or Josh’s joinery.
under the stairs, ready for cutting outskirting lightsfloor lights in the front bayheating manifold all wired in too
Terry and Josh installed the new less fussy oak cladding in the master bedroom. Neil had dropped off some whoppers of replacement beams the week previously–they were so big that it was impossible to lift, much less finesse into place. So Neil kindly took them back to deepest Sussex to shave a bunch of weight off and make them more manageable, but with still leaving enough meat for the beams to join in the middle and cover the steel along the ridge-line. Even without the extra weight it was a job and a half to fit these large beams, up on the tower, in the middle of May, while the heating is being tested. Terry and Josh get all the fun jobs.
heavy workpropped up with a bit of timberfinished beamsshavings from making the mortice and tenon joints
Bathrooms are coming on and the tiling looks great. The tilers have a bunch of criteria they use to line up the tiles. Mostly they like to centre on specific things like fittings and windows. But sometimes decisions have to be made to un-align tiles; one of these was maintaining a non-cut edge around the shower trays on both wall and floor tiles. This is to ensure a good seal around anywhere water might sneak in. If you don’t cut these edges, the porcelain finish remains intact and it reduces the possibility of water getting inside the actual tile. This is good. But sometimes the resulting wall tiles that are aligned with windows then don’t line up with the joins in the floor. This may be perceived as a little un-good. But I’d much rather have structural integrity be the focus, and we’ve chosen a colour for the grout so the lines kinda disappear anyway. I’m sure that when we see the finished product with all the furniture and vanity units in, it will be amazing.
girls’ bathroombath to be fittedboys’ bathroom
Some other nice bits percolated through this week.
bright morning light in newly-painted kitchenJames’ personal favourite brand of loft laddersfloor protection being lifted while underfloor heating is ramping up in test phase
The priority is to get the inside of the building all completely finished, cleaned and sorted. But tiny jobs outside can be attended to in between.
brick slips installed–just need mortar
Next week is a big outdoor week with the return of the grounds guys with the lovely big noisy machinery again.
Without going into too much drama about tempers flaring, lines of communication being tested, inspections on the edge and deadlines looming, …, despite all this, it’s all mostly going to plan. This week’s post will be mostly pictorial as I’m struggling to write anything at all coherent in the rush to finish this project. Loose ends include all electricals as we haven’t seen a blub a-flickerin’ yet, the entire fireplace concept, some of the big wood pieces from Neil, the sanitaryware, tiling and the drive. On the positive side, the Moldovian chippies Adrian and Vadim are generally fantastic and are busy getting on with doorframe, skirting and ironmongery. Terry and Josh finished the stairs too–I don’t think they’ll be in a hurry to fit any more capping in the hand and floor rails, but Josh remains undeterred, even when faced with a chisel in his hand and a trip to Epsom hospital. Didn’t stop him smiling when he returned to site to finish the day’s work.
The cornice company arrived early in the week and transformed some of the rooms.
awesome coving, but, oops, poor decision on light placementdoes this work around the units?drawing room looking more formal
Finishing touches around the staircase are being decided with things like skirting beading, window/stair boards, and capping under the newels. James is great at making use of extra pieces to create some of the finishing touches. And it’s only when you see these things installed that you can get a feel for what the finished product looks like. Most things have been fantastic, and some require small tweaks, like the window board used on to top the plasterwork in the front bay. We’ve decided that the trim should have a profile more like the stairs, so this bit of boarding will be replaced, but it was excellent to have the flexibility and chance to check out the profile and have the option. This exercise prompted some deep thinking about what exactly we’re trying to do in the space.
is it a window board or a stair board?
Likewise with the trim between the structural oak and the floorboards. Initially, I wasn’t keen to have so many different kinds of oak hanging around, so I didn’t want the trim in at all when we started the finishes. And James’ advice was not to have too many different trims or the whole thing looks cluttered. But now I feel that if each piece does what it’s expected, then it follows the ethos of honest materials in the house, and it should be ok to have a little bit of trim that matches around the house, and it will blend in better in time. We opted for the little bead around the structural oak in the photo. The floors remain protected, and the windows will have a layer of dust on until the final sparkle-clean, so it’s hard to tell what the final finish will be anyway!
beading on the floorunder-newel
Vadim and Adrian have been boxing in pipework and building wardrobes around them. We’ve decided on a semi-complicated painting scheme with the interiors being darker shades of each room’s trim.
Gemma’s wardrobeGillian’s wardrobedouble checking the spec on ironmongery
Looking forward to snagging the kitchen next week. We’ll discuss a few trimming bits, and do a double check on things like the work-surface edge.
discussion piece: is this pencil or bevel?
The bathrooms are looking good, but we’re finding a few things that could have been better designed. Like,…. the door slamming into the unit when entering the bathroom. We’ll have to install a rubber baby buggy bumper on the back side of the door along with advice to tell the boys to be jolly careful without entering their bathroom with too much energy (shouldn’t be a problem, they’re a bit slow int he mornings). Much consultation with Allison in the States and friends in the UK to generate a survey of vanity unit heights in an attempt to get ours right. We’ve decided 900 to top of unit is a good height–a little higher than most, so it won’t be our family keeping the local chiropractors in business.
boys’ bathroom
In a dull moment, the guys found time to remove the plinth they’d lovingly installed before we changed our minds. Our MO seems to be build it, then remove it….
plinthless fire
…. just like the piers!
looks better now
Clinton never really liked the piers in the front; they were only put there to carry the rainwater downpipes into the ground in a clean swoop. So, taking advice from the architect and structural engineer who both said that they weren’t critical to the structure, we decided to take the bold (= expensive) move to remove them. This leaves an obvious problem for the bricklayers who now need to come back and make these areas pretty again. But the overhang looks much less fussy now, and we’re happy with it. At least we were until a giant gaping crack appeared around the first floor cavity trays.
omg
On further advice, we adopted a suck-it-and-see approach, and the whole thing looks pretty stable despite the crack. It hasn’t shifted since it first appeared, so should be ok. After all, there is an enormous great big steel holding up this side of the house, and the roof is all complete as one separate structure spread across the whole building. It SHOULD be ok. At least it is when I close my eyes. And a little mortar in the joint before we move in and all will be well. Right?
Lee, Jamie, Djokovich, and the groundwork gang were back to lay the paving for the patio. Their work was hampered by the water board inspector who deemed it fit to ask the guys to dig the main supply to the house a little deeper. This was an enormous pain which required un-building of the garage and some of the edging stones the guys had laid last week. The inspector didn’t stop there, took a deeper look at some of the work and started going off on other trench work depths, like the supply into the taps in the garden. He even had a go at some of the pipework internally, which never happens apparently. Usually the inspector has a cursory look around near where the water enters the building and leaves the M&E team to get on with things downstream. The groundwork guys have done hundreds of jobs like this without fuss, and the plumbing team was livid by the time the inspector finally passed it all, and all the trenchwork could be filled in. They’d none of them ever seen anything like it. Clearly this house has been jinxed from the start. The guy earned a few choice nicknames around site, and luckily for him some of the spare pieces of wood lying around didn’t get airborne.
high water table in the mains trenchon the positive side, slabs are looking good
We’re even venturing into town to look at furniture and light fittings. Mostly these experiences highlight that fact that neither of us like shopping very much, nor do we like going into town unless it’s work related. We’re much more country-bumpkins these days. Either we’re super boring (likely), or we just dread the time it takes to travel around aimlessly looking at one low-profile uncomfortable sofa after another. I think Clinton was definitely going to lose the plot entirely if he got close to one more Edison bulb singeing his retinas. The best way forward is to continue on our current course of clicking our way through doing most of the furnishings.
Deep breath. Another week. Lots happening onsite though. I’m thinking Pareto thoughts as we get into the last 20% and see lots and lots of little tiny things blossoming into Good Things and other parts turning into Snagging Things.
It’s all about stairs at the moment. The last newel came to site, and got chipped into the corner.
cut newel
And the last baluster went in with the weird expanding foamy glue.
ewthe balustrade, pre-balustersempty handrail
Tony brought the long-awaited balusters to site on Tuesday. They looked a treat when he got them out of the van and laid them out carefully in the family room.
Tony and his balusters
He’s rightly proud of them and set them out with enough room between them so they didn’t touch each other. We anticipated a smooth installation, and Tony brought Dave along to help. But when everyone was onsite and we all tried to negotiate Tony’s metal work with Terry’s wood work, James quickly realised that because stairs are installed sequentially, our plan to add Metal and Wood in parallel wasn’t going to work. Tony usually operates as a discrete trade that doesn’t rely on anything else going on after his work is installed, so when we decided that to avoid a lot of standing around and waiting while wood and capping were placed in line after each baluster, we all decided it was best that Terry install the whole thing, and Tony left, a little disappointed.
the first one went in fine….pointy-down on its rail
The pattern is kind of complicated and made more so by having mirrored patterns along primary newels while retaining a consistent direction for the pig-tails (what Josh calls them). One small bit of trouble bubbled up upon inspecting the holes cut for the pointy-ups and curlicues. They’d CNC’d into the treads at the joinery base, but they were rounded, too small, and bereft of further drilling into the stringers. The holes were short so the lengths that Tony cut perfectly to size couldn’t be fit. Another reason that Tony went home early from the party.
This was potentially a bigger problem than working out the process of labour in the installation. The holes are meant to be square to accommodate the metal sections, and drills are generally round, so straightforward drilling out wasn’t an option. Could chip them in with a chisel? In order to get the chippings out of the hole and keep a square profile there’d be no way to get a chisel down in there at the right angle to do the work. Much chin scratching and tutting all morning. Luckily, the joinery company sent down a lucky victim later in the week with a portable mortice chisel machine to sort it all out, and once that was done, Terry and Josh could get fitting, working their way gradually around the balustrade.
too small and too roundishbalusters on rails
More chin scratching occurred when we realised that a couple of the rails pointed the curlicues in the wrong direction. But that was quickly sorted. Between Terry and Tony, it was only me that was panicking for no reason at all.
Terry flipped the pigtail by cutting the railbalustrade looking more and more finished
did we have to go and make it this complicated?
Decorating continues on a pace. I read somewhere that when they’re midflow, it’s important to hold your nerve, make no changes, and see what the colour looks like when they’re done. I must admit to having to do just that at a few moments while Mike has had the brushes out. None of the colours are particularly contentious, all different shades of neutral. But I’m used to seeing all the walls in white, and some of the colours seem a bit, well, bold in large scale.
tower mid Potters Clay 2 and Potters Clay 3Mike makes it look easy
The guys are putting in all the door handles as well. Graham has been very patient with our list of door furniture, and it’s incredible how many working parts and variations there are to doors. Bathrooms sets, locks, latches, flush bolts, roller catches, magnetic catches, exterior espag sets. And I still haven’t chosen a front door knob or a post box.
levers and latches
There is a lot of dippy stuff going on behind the scenes to do with bathroom fittings. The WC basin is a freestanding floor thing, and fitting it is giving the guys kittens just because it’s a little unusal. How far from the wall, madam? How high for the taps? It’s almost in, and the water is live. They still have to tile the back of the room before installing completely, and that will be next week sometime.
Another problem was bath valves. Valves are the things that turn the water on in plumber-lingo, and we’d planned to have them drilled into the bath. But of course what’s on the architect plans didn’t quite match up with the bathroom order that we placed last October, and the holes had gone off into the ether. The logical alternative was to fit them on part of the horizontal buildout from the bath to the wall. And this looked alright until we remembered the vanity unit that would stand between the user and the dials. So I thought, let’s just cut to the chase: I recalled what Dan had said about controls when we started talking about bathroom gear in the first place, and I opted for a simple manual shower valve for the bath. Martin was as great about it as he’s been since he’d picked up our job after Dan had left the company, and he did a straight swap that included two drives to Farnham (mine) to return and collect.
I don’t have any photos of this gear, but it’s really simple. In fact, it’s so simple that Trevor and Dave on the M&E side said that it wouldn’t pass building regs. Apparently there’s a pesky TMV3 (?) regulation that these valves do indeed need to be thermostatic and not manual so little-‘uns doesn’t get scalded. This whole bath tap thing has been a very long and boring saga which has included me looking for options on the internet on my phone in tiny-vision in meetings and in the middle of the garden trying to make a decision about taps that would work.
So instead of photos of bath taps and Surrey countryside, here are some pictures of things happening around and about the build this week.
toolsensuite tiles, pre-groutlone pointy bits against beechthey moved the ceiling pendant in the hallway
If I haven’t mentioned Rachel before, I’m really happy to finally mention her now. She’s helping with the interior design part of the project, with goddess-like patience, and at the moment it’s all about blinds and curtains. My good friend Lou paid us a visit on Friday and kindly helped me out (read: got roped in…) to measure each and every one. We counted 36 windows that need separate coverings. And there’s a long lead time on these, and as we’ll be moving in around the summer solstice (we’re at 51 degrees latitude up here in the south of England, so it’s very light, very early), it’s good to put these in the important and slightly-urgent box. I’ve made a list of priorities for these. I think we’ll be open to the world for a while if only for cost! At least the lane isn’t exactly the M25 for traffic …. Cardboard is underrated as a window dressing anyway.
