Actually, it’s a flue liner, not to be confused with the identically named but made of pumice ‘flue liner’ that was already installed with the chimney went up. All very technical, but for the past few weeks, Dave has been developing the plans to make this thing work.
These are the best laid ones of the bunch…installing the cowel at the topall set to go
Terry and Josh have made a start on the garage roof. This first requires brackets to be attached to the wall on one side and onto the brickwork on the other. They were making good headway until they got called to build a new skin to a wall in the hallway later in the week.The problem was a very small area of single skin which was going to make the place thermally inefficient and vulnerable. This issue had been brewing for a while as we’d been waiting for approval from the warranty company with this wall design and with a little pushing from Ben, they finally approved the thinnest version which is great because it allows more of the oak frame to be exposed. But it’s a problem no longer, as the thing is now built at long last, and the plasterers can get on and finish it off.
Terry’s garage roof bracketsthicker wall
Aaron’s been in to finish the first fix wiring. The wires have been capped and cased all over the house, and they’re making maps of were they are under the plaster so we don’t end up sticking nails through them when we put up artwork.
breaking a few eggs before the omelette is finished
Once Aaron was done, there was a whole gang of new plasterers that came and put the ceilings up. It’s very high tech with laser sights and grids of brackets to hold up the suspended ceiling that hides the electrics and plumbing under the concrete upstairs floor. They’ll still be about 2.8 m off the deck.
straight line gizmo
One last trip around the scaffold to check out the finished roof.
can’t resist taking another of these pixcloaking tilesa mortar snake through a hole in the slate (these just flick off)
lead dormer cheekspencil lines showing the handmade workmanship
The doors arrived at long last. It took four guys to lift them off the truck, and they came pre-assembled in their frames. James, Terry and Josh will fit them next week which will make the building will be almost air tight. This will not be a small undertaking. As you can see, we have yet to choose a doorknob in the centre. Clinton actually bought a brass casting kit a couple of years ago, and we’ve got some thoughts, but it’s got to be good. No pressure!
colossal front door (it’s upsidedown)
The plasterers are just about done upstairs and will move downstairs next week. Like the rest of the house, it’s not been straightforward: there are some fiddly bits like in the upstairs hallway and some enormous swathes like the stairs wall and the whole of our bedroom. They’ve done a great job, but they’ve got to get a wriggle on to finish downstairs before the floor goes down.
master ceilingplaster in the master bedroomhallway looking east
Most of the action this week occurred behind the scenes. Lots of planning and sorting and choosing more than cutting, sticking and building. We’ve chosen a fireplace, paid bills, decided on tiles, placed thermostats, chased electrics, considered ironmongery and built-in furniture, and we started thinking about wardrobe build-ups, kitchen pendants, sofas and curtains. I thought we were doing well with box-ticking until Tim asked for confirmation of colour choice for the paintwork. I think I need a lie-down….
Spencer is pretty much done with the roof, and now he and Jackson are on to the more decorative bits. One of these is the scalloped lead-work around the windows. There are 16 downstairs and 10 upstairs runs of this lead, all of varying length. There is nothing at all normal or even and symmetrical about this house. The lead was installed when the oak subframes were put in. It serves a very useful function in keeping the brickwork section underneath waterproof, but it’s an artisanal job to make it look pretty.
It starts with a scored out scallop.
a satisfying OCD momentJackson and his compass
Then the scallops are cut with actual scissors to make the shapes.
Spencer practicing his cutting out skills
Each cut-out is rolled up and hammered into place.
The guys wear gloves because of the chemicals in the lead. Working with this stuff all day is toxic–lead poisoning is a real thing, and the preservatives on the surface are well-yucky.
ooooo……ahhhh
We’ve opted to keep a layer of PVC on the course between the plinth and the vertical brickwork to protect the plinth from stuff dropping on it from above. All it takes is a stanley knife to remove it later on.
Plastering is the name of the game in other areas of the house. And in the few rooms where they are not working, Terry and Josh can get on with the window boards. Must say, they look lovely next to the subframes. They’re both treated with this Osmo oil which will bed in and soften in colour over time. We’re putting the stuff everywhere on all the oak except the huge structural pieces–architrave, door linings, the lot. We’ll even slap it on the oak underside of the first floor overhang outside. James hates it only slightly less than the black stain on the soffit boards.
window board
Another interesting piece is the brick inlay panels. They’re not herringbone, but everyone calls them The Herringbone Panels–even us. Actually, with my Pedant Hat on, they’re Askew. But this is alright with me! (Sorry). Clive painstakingly sliced each brick to a skinny sort of depth, and we’ve bought this fancy adhesive for them to stick them on. Like the oak cladding last week, this is not quite functional, well, not at all, but it looks awesome. They’re doing a brilliant job setting, pinning, gluing, and mortaring them into place.
There are fifteen panels to make: 5 across each apex front and back, 5 across each paired square below them, and 5 below the windows in the hallway. That’s a lot of work, and I feel somewhat guilty just writing this in all the time they’re spending making the panels, but they are taking enormous pride in how it’s turning out. They took a day off the scaffolding when storm Doris blew through, the front and some of the back are mostly done.
I don’t usually go on about it, but I take great pride in looking at other houses with this similar non-herringbone brickwork, whose designers have decided to use a different brick from the rest of the house because it can be bought in, and thinking that our guys have simply taken the time and made the effort to do a brilliant job. Anyone with eyes can see that it’s a total pain to have spent days and days cutting these really thin slices to carefully stick on the boards, which is what James and the guys have done. But the finished effect will be seamless with the brickwork in the rest of the house because it’s exactly the same brick. It’s a bespoke house that everyone onsite is on board with to make it as good as it possible can be. And THAT is the bit that’s amazing.
The roof is almost finished. Spencer asked me if I was happy with the course of cloaking tiles that will sit between the oak gables below and the roof tiles above. He’s added a layer of Welsh slate secured underneath to prevent the roof from wobbling as the oak settles. They’ll be mortared in when they’re laid next week, and the gap between them and the roof tiles will be filled as well. The carefully installed leadwork finishes the job.
junction of tiles, slate, cloaking, and leadcloaking mockup that will go up and upleadworkclothed and unclothed
The gutters went up later in the week. They’re powder coated aluminium which will last and last with any luck. Aluminium is made in longer lengths than cast iron which is great for the long runs without dormers–easier to make, easier to coat, and easier to install. Although the guy I spoke to who was working with long sections of it up on the scaffold late on Friday said it was very very cold as a material to handle. Yes, at 2C it would be. They’ve installed around all the fiddly dormers, and the downpipes will go in when the scaffolding is down. In the meantime, they attach giant bags to where the downpipes should be, so that water still collects and stays off the face of the building until the job is complete.
dormers with burlap hats onlong runs of guttering on the east sidepieces cut to length and ready for fitting
guttering installed just in time–this is slushy snow in standstill traffic…lovely!
It’s the middle of a bitter cold spell with snow off and on all week, but none of it sticking, so it’s just disgusting outside with no snow-joy. Phil the plasterer says that they need it to be 5 degrees and rising for plaster to set. Part of their job is to physically stand there and watch it set to even out imperfections, so this is taking rather a while, more like days than hours, it being all in cold and slo-mo.
There are ten individual 2.5 m tall panes of glass in the hallway at the front of the house. If we do decide to go with the fancy automated curtains we’ve got in mind, we’ll need holes drilled and wires for power setup through them. James had the unenviable task of drilling the structural oak as close as he could to the windows given the body of the drill. So faced with this tricky job of messing around with the expensive and carefully engineered oak, he simply bought a new drill bit for the job, lined it up, and with his typical levels of cool, just got on with it. It looks bizarre to see shavings of precious structural oak now adorning the surfaces of the lower beams. I’m glad I wasn’t there to watch.
cable hole
The back of the house is looking more like a house. Terry is still up the top, round the sides, inside, outside, and up and down ladders all day long cutting bits to go just about everywhere. Meanwhile, Josh is in full voice doing the same. There is more than enough to keep both of them very busy and loads of disco tunes to keep them going.
back of the house
We welcome Nicola on board this week. She’s the garden design expert and will draw up a plan for the front and the back. This is timely because I had the good fortune to meet James the landscape gardener and Andy with the driveway materials, both to discuss what’s happening outside. So a plan is where we want to start, especially with the hard landscaping and tree-planting as there is a certain level of commitment involved in those pieces, and that will come to fruition in the coming weeks. For once we’re doing something in the important-and-NOT-urgent-box, and not in our usual space of important-and-urgent.
Meanwhile, what colour of driveway would you like? The most cost-effective range is the 6mm aggregate which requires a 16mm base rather than the 10mm aggregate which requires a 22 mm base. Less material means less labour as well as less of the stuff in the first place which equates to less money (hopefully).
10 mm is too big, 3 mm is to small, so 6 mm is just about right
Another visit to the forge to end the week to have a discussion with Tony about some very minor tweaks to the curlicues.
look closely for snowflakes falling in Betchworth
We had a good chat about his current job, how he started his career and what happened to allow him to start working in a place like this 27 years ago. I think he is enjoying working on our project as he seems to be a specialist in odd and interesting metalwork staircases. We’ll go back another time when the fire is on and he’s making our pieces.
the anvil has seen many years of actionTony and Clinton discussing the ups and downs pattern
James is preparing to fill in the brick slip panels soon. He’s given one of them a start, but the specialist epoxy mortar we chose back in Week 31 needs a special gun for application rather than a trowel, so he’s waiting on its delivery before continuing. There is leadwork to fill in beforehand anyway. Meanwhile, Clive has been cutting bricks like there’s no tomorrow.
Clive’s been cutting bricks and tiles
I hope the view through the building will always be this good. Maybe if it’s good now with bags of plaster, ladders, and light fittings hanging off the ceiling, it will be even better when it’s all tricked out with furniture when you come down to make a cup of tea in the morning.
Roof tiles arrived this week. Spencer and his team used the tile-escalator, or Bumpa, to haul 10,000 tiles up to the roof. That is TEN THOUSAND. A totally bonkers number.
We’re very happy with the colour. Although we didn’t use a huge mix of colours in the end, having gone for mostly Heritage, Michelmersch, they still look really mottled when they’re on, and that’s the look we were going for. The colour changes a lot in the light, and it will darken over time.
frozen tilesthey frost up on the north side of the house
Josh with saw, not enjoying puzzle-piecing the insulation
Josh, Terry and James are cutting up bits of insulation to fit in the rafters. Not a super fun task, but they’re getting on with it bravely. In fact, it’s their absolutely least favourite thing to do in the whole build because they’ve got to get all dolled up in their anti-dust gear complete with masks and as much full-length coverage as possible to avoid fibres sneaking into clothes and itching all to hell. And we’ve got tons of the stuff. Some of the long sections will have rolls of insulation, which gives a small respite, and these will be installed after the plasterboard ceilings are put up so they don’t drop down through the gaps.
Once the solid insulation is installed, they tack up large bits of fancy tin-foil to make it even cosier.
tin foil ceiling in back bedroom….… now covered in plasterboard later in the week
A small issue percolated to the surface with lining up the glazing bars on the west and north faces in the front landing first floor bay. We’re still discussing how to deal with it. But the rest of the windows are going in nicely.
We’ve got another issue with the glazing bars in the back of the house too, and this is more of a design thing. They don’t line up either. But is it a problem at all? Architects would probably recoil in horror and shout “Of course!”, but this is a one off house, right? It’s the crack in the pot in the great grand scheme of things. Making them line up would require masses of redesign from the bricks to the subframes and on to replacing windows and frames. Tim reckons that once it’s decorated and furnished we won’t notice it so much. He’s probably right. My plan is to plant the heck out of the garden so you see through the windows (obvious but important here) into awesomeness.
is it a problem?
The kitemarks were such a bugbear at the beginning of the build with the warranty company insisting that they were visible ON EVERY PANE. There are 98 panes. That was clearly not the option we wanted, and after many flurries of emails, we got them printed discretely just behind the glazing bars, just like the window company does on all their other jobs (that probably don’t use our warranty company).
the hallowed kitemark
It’s still below freezing but at least it’s sunny and as warm as it can be for the guys working on the back of the house.
The view straight through the house is still pretty special.
back to frontthrough to back
It’s still been freezing every morning, so here’s a gratuitous picture of the frosty Common.
Before Christmas we had the pleasure of meeting Nick Archer, an artist in Rye who we’re going to commission to create a work for us on this wall. He’s done amazing large scale works with colour which is his speciality, and lots of his pieces are bought by corporations with large lobbies that can fit them. We’ve fallen in love with a particular piece of his below. We’ve even moved the electrics in this room so you see the painting from the kitchen instead of a black screen of tech. The painting will bring the whole downstairs together.
future home for a Nick Archer painting …… and Nick’s “Stranded” which is similar
As a testament to the cracking-on vibe that is occurring onsite, the roofers and a window guy are onsite on Saturday. This doesn’t happen very often. Spencer and his team are enjoying a little winter sun and practicing their catching skills. I’m told they’ll even be around on Sunday to load more tiles up to the roof–no cutting or noise to annoy the neighbours, just generally getting on.
There were 20 guys onsite on Wednesday, a world record for St Anne’s!, and around 15 for the rest of days in the week. Lots of juggling with cars, gear, deliveries and tea.
action stations
there’s an X on every fifth course to show where extra nails have gone for building control
Inside is looking very different day by day with the addition of each window. We can start to set our minds to decorating this beast, and thinking of things like curtain returns and furniture.
Some of the windows died en-route to their final destination which is sad considering all the love that goes into each one. But it must go with the territory and there’s only one dead soldier so far.
The pipework to bathrooms in the first floor has been installed on the ground floor ceilings throughout, and it pops through the floor when needs be.
pipes, windows, & electricswaterworks in the study ceiling
One cool thing in the underfloor heating is the sensor setup. Tracks in the screed were avoided to install a sensor unit that fits between the pipes and connects to a programmable unit on the wall. This unit controls a zone, and there are units dotted around the house. Will be neat to use!
shower room sensor spot
Another M&E thing we’ve got is a mechanical extract that runs from a central hub to each wet area and the coats closet with all the electrics in it. This unit will raise the circulation in the house so we don’t get condensation and then mould; part of building regs and calcs on the size of the building…. (?)
There was a debate early on about how to cross the vaulted area with the MEV pipes to the shower-room on the west side of the building. At the time we talked about possible fixes such as boxing it in around the apex of the master bedroom ceiling, or adding a second extractor fan for just that bathroom, and all sorts of complicated ideas–none of which were particularly enticing. But in the end James got the guys to run the pipework over the entire ceiling between one roofline and the other. Pretty impressive!
The photo with the silver MEV pipework shows the underside of the roof having been tiled, and the right side still to finish. You can see the lovely blue sky through the Tyvek and battens on the unfinished side and more blue sky all along the ridgeline.
silver MEV pipework
The front of the house upstairs is pretty dramatic. James and the guys continue to put up extra Tyvek and insulation whenever they can to protect it. These are the most precious windows ever! And it’s great to know that they think so too.
There is still a teensy bit of floor to left screed still because the team had brought just slightly too little gear with them last weekend. They come up from the south coast to do the work and they have to do it when the site is not overrun with subcontractors. They must have been horrified to find they’d come up short. They’ll come back soon, and it will be good to be finished to cover those delicate pipes.
landing looking westlanding looking south through the master bedroom
The lone windows guy installed the side lights to the front door today. At least it’s a little warmer this morning on the north side for him. And the forecast is good going forward, so here’s hoping for a good few weeks with lots of activity!
The guys wear gloves because of the chemicals in the lead. Working with this stuff all day is toxic–lead poisoning is a real thing, and the preservatives on the surface are well-yucky.
