Week 85

The contractors are back this week to sort out immediate Stuff. These include things like painting the garage floor and filling large gaps in blockwork in the walls out there, fixing the rainwater diverters, sorting my neighbour’s drive, and changing the loft boards. What’s been lacking on our side is any kind of oversight or ensuring that the work is carried out to the expected standard. So, …drumroll, please… we welcome Phillip to the role of Contract Administrator III. He’s the new Alyson/Ben, and so far he’s a total rock star. He’s come in, assessed the build, found 65 items to put on the rectification list, and written a comprehensive report, with photographic evidence!, to circulate. Why oh why didn’t we hire him earlier?? He’s a cyclist as well which makes his appointment even more jammy.

While Tim has been dicking me around on timing by deliberately not letting me know what the plan is or what he’ll be doing during his Week of Fixing Stuff, I’ve been biding some time for Phillip to get up to speed and take the reins. Brave man is Phillip, jumping on board this moving train. Meanwhile: patience, patience, patience. I won’t be rushing to contact Tim through his lawyers as per recent arrangements to get stuff like rainwater pipework and the insulation complete, I’ll wait it out, try to chillax about the When, and leave it all to Phillip.

Although he’s employed by us, it will be Phillip’s job to impartially enforce the contract as CA. That means that he makes Tim do the stuff he said he’d do, and he makes us pay the stuff we said we’d pay. Our spanner in these works is that thanks to previous management’s weird ideas about signing off everything willy-nilly without checking properly, we’ve paid…

e v e r y t h i n g

…in full. Usually, in a normal world, that would put us in an unenviable position leaving us exposed for overpaying for an incomplete job. But in the Weird World of Building, this is entirely normal; lots of contractors won’t even talk to you unless you’ve paid them first, never mind actually show up and do anything. Three years in and there is so so so much I still don’t understand about all this.

So, returning to the day-to-day….. Mike’s been back with his paint brush to paint the garage floor. You may remember that this was the solution given when it was discovered that a 1 cubic metre hole had to be butchered out of the pristine garage slab (and rebar) to re-route the water pipe that somehow was seen fit to be installed too close to ground level. The reinstatement of the concrete floor left a great big square of different concrete which isn’t cool. The rectifying painting never happened, so they’ve come back to do it now. Over last weekend just gone, in preparation, we, and the now-very-grumpy children, had set up the scouts’ mess tent (thank you 1st Oxshott) in the garden to temporarily house all our Stuff.

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temporary garage
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leaning tower of tent

Dave recommended Watco products as the fix, and Mike got set to work on the first day cleaning out the dust, cutting back the plastic around the perimeter and using their Etch and Clean product to provide a good base. That took overnight to dry, so painting started the following day. First coat down and Mike was off to his next job while it dried before the second coat scheduled for our third day of fun and games. Luck would have it that we’d had a storm blowing through the last few days, and you’ll recall that we live right near the heath. This combination is a bit toxic for painting garage floors as loads of beech and oak leaves swirled around in the breeze and blew directly through the door that Mike had left open and onto the newly laid paint.

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brilliant

I couldn’t get in there to remove them because the paint was wet. So I left it. Not my usual vibe as 9 times out of 10 I’m a get-stuck-in-and-sort-it-out kind of girl. Although this was frustrating to see, in actual fact I think the leaves didn’t stick too badly, and the second coat hopefully would have erased whatever slight marks the pesky leaves would have left anyway.  I haven’t been in to check because it takes a few days to get seriously un-wet. But,… reminds me of Michael Roux. It will be nice we can repeat our Grand Move of Stuff back into the garage in reverse and return the mess tent to the scouts.

The environmental guys visited this week to inspect the mould in the loft. They tested all the boards with their whizzy little water meter and found the really mouldy ones to be around 30%. They should be around 15%. To our horror, they suggested that the problem wasn’t left-over damp from the flood, but instead, that the flat roof between Gillian’s room and the main structural oak frame is leaking or allowing condensation to build. They think that either it’s a seal that’s properly gone, or that a thermal barrier is missing and making water condense on the boards, causing them to grow their fuzzy mouldy surface. And the growth on the floor is due to spores flying around and settling onto it. Ew.

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one of the mouldy boards
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a row of mouldy boards

This means that the whole problem shifts its Sauron-like focus from the insurers re the leak, to Tim re general building and warranty. But he doesn’t know this yet. The environmental report is due out soon and will go first to the loss adjusters and maybe then on to the insurers. I’ve just got to make sure that Tim gets a copy of it so that we can start the ball rolling and get it fixed. I spent most of my day yesterday wandering around in a disbelieving daze wondering how things could get any worse than they already were.

In a fit of wisdom and unusual allocation of resources, Tim sent Josh the young chippy, his finance guy and Dulux to tear up the horrible bit of destroyed rear drive and replace with a 6″ deep concrete float. Nothing like having experts do the job they’re trained to do. All nice guys, but I’d expected Lee and the groundwork guys to do, er, groundworks. James reckoned there were a couple of metres square that needed replacing, but he’d forgotten about the temporary tarmac and barrowfuls of hardcore shoring up the drive they’d put down during last year’s rains. He marked his assumption in yellow.

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that’s not quite all the horrible-ness, James

All in all, there’s about 12 square metres to replace from corner to corner, and to his credit, they re-marked the larger area before they set to work. And the leftover bit from the demolition needs a clean line cut into concrete as well. Luckily, Mark and his landscaping team put us off for another week, so they won’t have to face setting their fence up and having dead slabs in the way.

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digging out the broken bits
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ear defenders are for wimps “I’m deaf anyway!” shouts Dulux

Concrete was poured by the afternoon, and it was looking great until they said that they’d be back next week to remove the kango-ed out spoil. Whoa! Brakes on! No, they’re supposed to FINISH THE JOB and take it all away TODAY. Full truck, I’m afraid, madam. What about my landscapers who are coming next week to put up my fence right through the middle of your pile of shite? Sorry, we only do what we’re told, and we’re clearing another site tomorrow, so that leaves us next week.

Sigh.

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concrete
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shite

Oh yeah, and it rained this week. So that means despite Ricky’s magic touch with a silicone gun, the outdoor lights tripped.

Again.

Week 73

As we lurch into another week of very little happening on remedial works compared with masses accomplished on the driveway, I’ll start this post with a bit of a change in tone. The blog has gone from Public to Private to keep the project’s chronological recordings from being used by lawyers, and since you’ve suffered through the rigamarole of answering invitations and creating log-ins and passwords to get access here, let me reward you by gently leading you towards the edge of the rabbit hole to peer down at what’s really been going down behind my previously sugar-coated versions of my eleventy bloody billion previous posts.

The post-flood remedial works are supposed to be complete by 16 September. This would be funny if we hadn’t been here before; now it’s just business as usual. It includes both a builders clean and a sparkle clean as well as the handover of The O&M Manual. Just that alone should take about two weeks! O is for Operations, but I’m a little hazy on M if it’s not Manual, as it would then be an Operations and Manual Manual. ?? Tim’s plan such as it is, has the electricians in Tuesdau (HA!–still hadn’t had confirmation of their arrival by last Friday), decorating and groundworks complete, joinery assembled and snagging finished by Friday, leaving room for the cleaners to be in early next week. Clearly, pigs are aloft in Oxshott, and there’s nothing we can do but watch this oncoming train wreck. For the third time.

The biggest problem is that there’s no stipulation of timing with the insurance works–the loss adjuster is only interested in cost. Our rent and associated Liquidated Ascertained Damages are considered uninsured losses and aren’t covered in the remedial works, but a small teensy portion of them is covered in the JCT, the main contract of the build. And the kicker with that is that when we took advice from Ben at the beginning, we set the LADs to be £500 a week which just about only covered our rent and not a lot else. Clearly this is no where near enough and doesn’t cover things like numerous removals, setting up services at a rental property, storage costs, postal redirection, estate agents fees or wear and tear on one’s soul. We’ve got a discussion to have with Ben, but….

Anyway, as there’s never been a dull moment on this project, er, apart from the bricklayers’ one-week strike…. or maybe the plasterers’ scheduled three week/actual six week stint (unbelievable),…. the biggest hiccup this week is that Ben has left. He has suffered a bit of a breakdown and if he told me that half the problem was bullying by our contractor, I wouldn’t be surprised. His girlfriend wrote to us on Friday effectively resigning him, and his out-of-office email says the office is closed until Autumn 2017. It’s a huge blow to him personally, and it’s horrible for him I’m sure. But professionally, it leaves us right up the creek without our paddles.

The contract requires a Contract Administrator, and because Tim is Tim, and he is entitled to do so in the contract, he won’t do any work at all without one. So we’ve hired Alyson (welcome, Alyson) from Aspire, the driveway crowd (who’s doing an awesome job), to pick up the pieces and see us across the finish line. It’s the logical solution as their values as a company are exemplary, the work they’re doing on the drive will actually be done early (Shocking.  I know.), and they know the landscape (sorry) of developing houses in the area. Tim’s already objected that us hiring her is a conflict of interest, and to object to her appointment is another one of his entitlements under contract, but I’m not sure if it’s in his interest or if an adjudicator would agree with him, because we all simply want this wrapped up. Perhaps Tim will relax into this new appointment, and I hope he does for everyone’s sake. Alyson is meeting with Tim this week, and hopefully they can get started without drama.

The JCT says that the contractor has to make “regular and diligent progress.” Diligence is a little suspect because as you can see on the time-lapse, although Mike is armed with paints and brushes, he’s spent an awful lot of that time talking to the Aspire guys outside. Everyone’s really waiting for the flooring guys to finish laying the wood upstairs before any real work can start. They’d done a lot of the joinery work before the flooring went down: some of the doors needed replacing and lots of warped architrave was reinstated. You’d think that after Tuesday when the flooring was finished, that they’d be onsite in force. But, sadly, no. Still no site manager, still no programme. Tiles and skirting hadn’t been ordered, groundworkers were nowhere to be seen, and, surprise, no sparkies had attended for weeks. I would like to be pleasantly surprised to have these things in place and all mapped out. But I’m still waiting even now.  It’s a big ask for Alyson to wade in at this eleventh hour, she seems up for the challenge, and we’re putting a lot of faith in her.

Dave completed the snagging list over the weekend ready to give to Tim today. Everyone loves a list because you can simply tick things off which gives an enormous sense of progress. The challenge is to put some perspective on the individual items. Some, like reinstating the driveways for our long-suffering neighbour round the back are huge. Others, like picking up a single bolt off a windowsill, are insignificant. It’s great that the list is done and distributed, but I can’t honestly see the more than 200 items being scheduled and done by next Friday.  Do you?

Take a look at the electrical cupboard for instance. It needed to be completely reinstalled because it sat right in the path of the waterfall back in June. The sequence of works to fix it involves the electricians, our appointed security guy doing the alarm, the plumbers doing the heating manifold, the joiners and the decorators to each do their thing. You’d obviously think, “oooo this requires careful sequencing of trades.” What we’ve ended up with is everyone doing a little bit when they can, nothing getting completely done, and a shocking puzzle pieces arrangement of build-out joinery to cover it all: wires sticking out, bare blockwork behind pipes, unintelligible arrangements of wires….. What we want, and what’s on the snagging list to be done, is a quality finished cupboard. This isn’t it.

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don’t get me started

Enough griping. I haven’t put any time-lapses on the blog for a while so I’ve put a bunch showing progress made on the drive at the bottom of this post. In the meantime, here’s a lovely tiny video of some hawk action one day when visiting site (Allison, can you tell what these creatures are?) and a few photos front and back.

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it will get less stripe-y when they tamp it down and add sand to the joints
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digger’s last week coming up
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rear garden still to be sieved

Next week we’re supposed to see tilers, joiners, grounds-guys, electricians and decorators. And the kitchen company because someone has dinged one of the doors and it needs replacing. I’m sure much of this will happen, but the problem with having a load of trades in all at once is that it gets crowded and work actually slows down. We’ll check the snagging list against how much progress was made on Friday.

In the meantime, the drive will be finished a few days early. Go figure.

https://youtu.be/7aKZsG2Eka4https://youtu.be/kQzLZa1ol2w

 

 

 

 

Week 65

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….

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kitchen nibs are looking damp and the coving is ropey and split but the units are probably ok

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ground floor ceiling looking damaged–how much of the staircase was affected?
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bowed skirting was removed in places
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bowing before removing in the family room; is there water under the marble?
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skirting lights will need replacing too
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tenting 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!

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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.

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pretty porch
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along the underside of the overhang

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boys’ shower room is looking smart
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mirrors 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.

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girls’ shower is narrow
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utility room lighting and tiling fits perfectly
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the view out of the building is still beautiful …
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… and so is the back against the shiny tiles.
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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.

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the protective aprons on the brick plinths have come off, and the brick panels are almost complete
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two vents for the fireplace, top is for cavity venting and bottom is for convection
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rainwater 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.

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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?

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oak post
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Jamie tilled the back garden on first pass
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ground 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.

 

Week 62

Welcome to Week 62 in our 36 Week project…. It’s all about finishing now.

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bathroom niches have their lights
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tiled flooring is down in the bathrooms, but no shower screens yet
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fiddly short tiles cut to finish the floor, but no mirror
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master vanity unit has been moved, but no lights
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Rich tiled the utility splashback ..
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.. and started the tiling in the kitchen

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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.

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doorbell: brick mounted or doorframe mounted?
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garden getting cleared gradually
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tiling and water butt
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thinking herb garden thoughts
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more herbs: got a recommendation or favourite to share in comments below?
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horrible scary crack filled
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security lights installed
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oak 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.

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Paul filled the gap with surgical precision
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plinth 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.

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study is finished with flooring and electrics
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massive patch panel in the utility room to centralise all the data points
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fireplace with temporary buildout, but the room looks miles better with a coat of paint
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colours look alright in the kitchen into family room — Dulux Trade is A-OK
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master bedroom detail
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wardrobe rails in
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electrics 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.

Right?

Week 61

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.

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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!

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we love a good trench

Other outdoor work included laying more paving slabs and turning on the outdoor lights.

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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.

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Rais 900 all alone
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where it will live
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woodburner, mid-install
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temporary 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!

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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….

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shoes-off policy upstairs now that the floor protection is up
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Gareth’s room
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Gregory’s room
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first floor hallway
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the glorious linen cupboard!
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Gillian’s room
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up close and personal with a newel post
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boys’ bathroom with burglar PIR in hallway
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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!

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chipping out the decimated brickwork
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redoing their own work

And James has got all comfortable in his man-cave in the kitchen.

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Week 60

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.

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sorting narrow from wide beam

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hooray for lights in the upstairs hallway
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family room lights/James’ new digs
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Where do these go, Jimbo?
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fancy floor lights under the stairs
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cill 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.

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roof’s off
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3 lorry loads to remove most of it
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Ta-Da!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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box
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room

Lots more to think about outside. Like clearing,….

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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?

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porch: ply or T&G?
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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.

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front slips are in
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still 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.

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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!

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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.

 

Week 59

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.

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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.

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control circuitry
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control central: it will squeeze in there somewhere

Smoke alarms were fitted with blue bag covers while the decorating continues.

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safety first

And other rooms are starting to be fitted with their arrays of LEDs dangling from the ceilings.

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kitchen
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drawing room
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family 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.

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under the stairs, ready for cutting out
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skirting lights
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floor lights in the front bay
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heating 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.

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heavy work
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propped up with a bit of timber
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finished beams
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shavings 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.

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girls’ bathroom
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bath to be fitted
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boys’ bathroom

Some other nice bits percolated through this week.

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bright morning light in newly-painted kitchen
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James’ personal favourite brand of loft ladders
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floor 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.

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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.

Week 58

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.

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awesome coving, but, oops, poor decision on light placement
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does this work around the units?
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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.

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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!

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beading on the floor
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under-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.

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Gemma’s wardrobe
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Gillian’s wardrobe
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double 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.

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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.

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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….

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plinthless fire

…. just like the piers!

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looks better now

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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.

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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.

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high water table in the mains trench
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on 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.

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keeping the guys happy

Week 57

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.

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cut newel

And the last baluster went in with the weird expanding foamy glue.

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ew
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the balustrade, pre-balusters
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empty 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.

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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.

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the first one went in fine….
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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.

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too small and too roundish
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balusters 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.

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Terry flipped the pigtail by cutting the rail
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balustrade looking more and more finished

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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.

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tower mid Potters Clay 2 and Potters Clay 3
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Mike 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.

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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.

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tools
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ensuite tiles, pre-grout
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lone pointy bits against beech
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they 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.

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sample city