Flicking through my Waitrose Magazine searching in vain for interesting Christmas recipes this week (and only coming up with increasing feelings of inadequacy looking at saucy Nigella in page after posed page of perfection), I saw this quote by Michael Roux. You gotta hand it to Trevor and Sid for getting onsite double quick when things go wrong. We must be on their quick-dial list which is great for service, but I think they should have listened to Michael.
After much inspecting and head-scratching, Sid realised that last week’s tepid-water situation was down to the lack of a non-return valve in the pipework feeding the tank. It looked like the cold was getting pumped round the pipes when required, but kept filling things until turned off. One of those things was the big hot water tank in the loft which kept getting topped with cold as we used the hot. Sid said he’d seen it before on a dog-washing station (really?!) where a blending valve had been added. The more hot water we used, the more it got cooled down by the cold water. Not great. So one valve installed later, and now we’ve got bags of hot from every tap and shower. Hooray!
He doesn’t usually carry a non-return valve around with him, so he cribbed one off the setup in the girls’ bathroom that he was due to check anyway. We’d bought one of those fancy ExoFill taps where the waste doubles as a fill, so it eliminates the need for a separate spout. Very whizzy and not that expensive. Our problem was that it never filled with any speed. It was always just a dribble. It was odd, because the pipes were 25 mm diameter, the same as the sink which flowed like fury. Sid thought the slowth might be the thermostatic valve plumbed in upstream, so he gradually took it apart over the course of the morning. The valve was ok, and the cartridge worked, but what he found was that there was a massive wodge of silicone gunk in the pipework blocking the flow. Wodge removed, and now the ExoFill is a torrent. Fabulous.
torrential bath
Dave came to site midweek to check that the mould growing in the loft required the loft boards to be changed. You may recall from previous posts about June’s flood that the contractor was working from a Scope Document that set out what work was required to fix the house. This document became the kind of bible for the remedial works, and is the one the insurers approved. One of the items on it was to replace stained loft floorboards. That’s a large job and one that Tim’s been avoiding even though it’s in black and white on the snagging list and the scope document. I’m not quite sure why this one has been left and left and left. It’s even more curious because another item in the document is to cover the ceiling lights that poke up through the floor of the loft with little hoods to protect them from frying the insulation that they get covered with. At the moment, the solution was to leave the lights completely bare of insulation in the whole area which leaves great big cold spots–not great from a thermal efficiency point of view.
The question is: why would Tim hesitate to have the insurance company pay to replace the loft boards when he’s got to go up there anyway and take them up to add the hoods and insulation? A bit of mould would work in his favour here. I just don’t get it, and I don’t like to think he’s being contrary for the sake of it. The Loss Adjuster wants proof that the work hasn’t been carried out if he’s to chase Tim, and Tim needed proof that there is mould to carry out the work. So Dave’s visit was all about recording these things, taking some snaps, and writing a report (and corresponding invoice) to say the bleeding obvious and get the whole thing in motion. A big thanks to Dave; he’s always welcome and always good for a very measured and balanced view on how to manage the situation. And another week goes by…..
mouldy loft and lights ready for their hoods
Ricky the New Sparky was in on Friday to sort out some of the light sockets too. We’ve got dippy things occurring like inconsistent multi-gang switches (the main lights are always the switch nearest a doorway) a fancy skirting light missing its innards, and fiddling with the outdoor lights sunk into the ground to stop the circuits tripping every time it rains. That was an easy one–the seals had been installed upside down. There are six of these, and now they’re bomb-proofed, sunk in the right way round and all siliconed up.
Hopefully we’re getting to the very end of Bits And Pieces.
Practical completion kind of happened on its own between Tim and Alyson behind the scenes which was weird. I would have thought this momentous event certainly warranted a fanfare or fireworks, or at least a pause for thought. Instead, the only communication I had from Tim on Moving In Day was an email with an invoice for half the retention. Lovely.
The move went really well, as predicted because each of the other 4 1/2 times we’ve had the pleasure of working with Removals In Action, they’ve been completely ace, and the whole process was calm, cool and collected. The kids were brilliant. We’ve lived in three rental houses and one friend’s, having moved all our clobber in the 77 weeks of the build from handover to PC. Andy, Kevin, Simon, Paul, Kesta and the gang are now like old friends. Having the driveway complete before Moving In Day made life a heck of a lot easier than it would have been otherwise. Lots of space for the trucks, cars and boxes.
all packed up and ready to vacate the Tiny Houseempty drive waiting for Andy’s vansback of the house on a rainy moving dayand now to unpack…
I managed to fix a few things the week before Moving In, like completing the installation of the ensuite lights. These are the ones that hang on either side of the mirror-we-haven’t-bought-yet. I’d bought two from Mr Resistor, and they managed to send along an incomplete order (missing out one lamp entirely!), so we sent that back in a fit of meh. We re-ordered from Ocean who were actually cheaper and simply brilliant. When they arrived, the electricians got semi-stuck in and installed the bases to the wall, but not the glass covers. The covers then floated around from room to room in their respective boxes for weeks, so rather than risk having them squished by or lost in all our stuff, I got my spanners together a few days before Moving In, delved into the sea of Styrofoam packing, and sorted it.
ta-da!… lights
Downstairs, I had been looking at the coats cupboard with interest for some time. My vision was to have a very long rail for all of our coats, paired with a comprehensive shoe rack underneath. After much research on the internet for heavy duty brackets (6 people have many many coats….), I copied a design from a one-man-band in Poland and managed to have my own set made by Pete in Sussex from bobsbrackets.com (brilliant), and powder coated (by KG Sprayers in Guildford–again, brilliant). In another fit of DIY, I even bought a drill and some bomb-proof adhesive and enlisted a child to help put it all up. Finally, and with huge relief (for me because I could unpack yet more boxes, and for Child because it meant she could resume fiddling on her phone again),–it turned from a Coats Cupboard into an Electrical Cupboard. The only thing left is to buy and varnish a lovely piece of oak planking for a shelf on top.
a blatant copy–plans for Petemy brackets!gratuitous pic of rail with brackets
Now that we’re in, we’ve had a few worrying moments as we’ve got used to the place. Were we going to be happy with our decisions? Would everything work? One issue was that the room thermostats kept going off. There are five downstairs and eight upstairs, so having to reset each one, on a daily basis, was rather a pain in the seat. Here’s a quick review of how these things work to set the scene: with underfloor heating, each room or zone has it’s own control unit. The main controller in the garage is set to go on in the morning and again in the evening, so it looked like the electricity serving the thermostats was going off with the main controller. Dave the plumber was suspicious that this wasn’t meant to be wired this way, so referred it to his boss Trevor and Steve the electrician to figure out. After two days of emails back and forth, it turns out the system is wired perfectly; we were meant to rely on the individual room controls rather than the main control. Crisis averted, but would have been avoided completely if we’d had any remotely adequate handover from any of the trades who installed any of the systems. But that’s another story….
Another weird thing was when I woke up on one of the first really cool mornings to find ALL the windows fogged up. Naturally, panic ensued, so I hit Google to find the reason and see if there was an easy fix or something more sinister. Usually condensation happens because something in the window system isn’t working correctly: there’s a breach the double glazing seal, or a gap between the window and the frame. Both these scenarios give water beading up on the INSIDE of the glass. Ours was OUTSIDE.
This is actually an example of the windows working perfectly, and also highly efficiently to boot. Warm air inside is kept well away from the cold air outside because the windows are double glazed and separate the two. The outside window gets as cold as the air, and water condenses on the surface into little beads. This happens for the same reason you get dew on grass: the outside temperature fell below the dew point; we essentially had dewey windows. It only occurs when the humidity is very high, and as it happened, it was a couple of days before hurricane Ophelia wandered over northern England making the humidity a stodgy 94%. Kinda neat from a nerdy physics point of view, but annoying for watching the encroaching storm from inside the cozy house, until the windows warmed up and went clear again.
physics lesson
One of the reasons I haven’t kept up the blog is because we’ve been trying to come to a completion arrangement with Tim the contractor. Sticklers that we are, neither Clinton nor I have any capacity whatsoever to tolerate a lacklustre job, so to move in and to STILL have things incomplete or broken is really unsatisfyingly, amazingly, shit. Despite having been issued individual certificates for plumbing, electrics, and other systems, some bits still don’t work. Parts of the electrics are completely off plan, and unbelievably, there is still a leak IN THE EXACT SAME FITTING that failed in June and caused the flood.
oh. my. gawd.
Needless to say, Trevor got Dave and Sid out within the hour to tighten and refit the valve.
A few big things on the snagging list remain outstanding, but all “diligent” work by the contractor has stopped since PC. Nice to not be overrun with guys working onsite all the time, but nothing is being done to finish the contract. It’s a Mexican standoff in Oxshott: Tim is waiting for us to pay and sign a Completion Agreement, and we’re waiting for him to finish the work before we pay. Alyson has waded in as Contract Administrator with many shrugs of shoulders, and says now that she can’t comment on Tim’s work, meaning that we’d have to pay Dave the Architect instead to oversee the snagging completion. Dave says he has attended as much as he feels is necessary, and isn’t keen to come up to check lack of progress for us. It’s all incredibly disappointing, and the finish line still seems some distance away. .
What stuff am I talking about?, you might ask. Well here are some examples:
My poor neighbour has suffered through 3 years of our build, and the drive that she now has sole use over has been truly mutilated by the builders. She’s been so awesomely generous about letting them park in her section of the drive, but now as she drives out (and the newspaper delivery guy drives in at 6:00 am every day), the mashed-up concrete slabs pivot on a non-mud section and go ka-dunk ka-dunk announcing the arrival of anyone driving up to her door. It’s a big job to make it good, and we’re not asking for pretty here, just good. Fixing it as a gracious Thank You from the contractor would be nice.
We have two water butts to contribute to our Part L regulations for environmental impact. They’re fed by a diverter in the rainwater downpipes that is supposed to allow the butts to be filled until they can’t be filled any more, leaving the leftover water to go down into the rainwater drains in the ground. The guys who installed the aluminium guttering and drain pipes cunningly fit the diverters lower than the holes in the water butts THAT THEY DRILLED THEMSELVES. Duh. One is ridiculously off and near the ground, the other is just a little low, but enough to make the whole apparatus completely ineffective. This wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s something that I can’t run around with a spanner and fix; it requires the guys to come back and do it properly, replacing pieces, and that means that Tim has to instruct them.
The electrics are an absolute nightmare. We never had an agreed physical plan on paper or pixels that we can all refer to, so it’s a matter of going back through three electrical foremans’ emails to figure out what the spec was. How Alyson ever agreed to the final figures I’ve got no clue. Even now as we’re having electricians in to check circuits and move cables that were cut too short, it’s still a hot mess with no plan to reference, and there is not one iota of joined-up thinking. Here’s an example: we were advised back around Christmas time last year to get a Rako control system thing in the kitchen and the drawing room, and Paul (Electrical Foreman until Feb 2017) was super keen to get this on board. Lovely, we thought! One switch and lots of flexibility. Then Paul left unannounced to start his own business, and he was replaced by Mark in mid-March. Mark never really got to grips with anything at all, and despite huge promises of sorting everything out that Paul had left hanging, we still had no plan, lots of variations, an accumulating catalog of errors in wiring, and a deteriorating relationship between the contractor and his subbie. Mark didn’t hit it off with Tim and was eventually fired in the Summer for telling James he wanted to knock Tim’s block off. Nice! Mark was replaced by Steve whom we’re dealing with at the moment to get things fixed. He’d doing his merry best and keeping a cool head, but there is still no plan so switches are inconsistent, wires are too taught, sockets don’t work, and the whole outdoor circuit including the coach lamp, trips into oblivion. Completely frustrating. Especially since we’ve paid out for the job to be finished and functioning.
Today we found that the reason why the 5A circuit in the family room doesn’t work. One of the sockets was omitted but the electricians wired it in anyway, and everyone had forgotten about it. Even the plasterers who’d plastered right over it, leaving the wires unconnected and the circuit open. No wonder the remaining sockets in the loop didn’t work.
Getting back to the Rako system, one of the blue units is a bridge that allows access via a remote device like a phone. Kinda bling for us, I know, but really cool. It needs hard wiring to a data point, but lo-and-behold, Steve’s company didn’t spec one in because HE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THE SYSTEM HE WAS FITTING. Honest to God you couldn’t make it up. As an afterthought the fix was a loose cable in the cupboard. Like it?
See? It works. Quit making such a fuss.
Clearly this wasn’t the solution we’re looking for, so the best they can do now is run the cable back into the Horrible Boxing and have it eek out by the Rako Bridge. A normal system would have hidden the data point or wired it directly. Poor Poor Poor.
The woodwork is being snagged, and after the flood, many skirting boards have shifted. Slipping slivers in the gaps was a nice try, but didn’t win any prizes for great workmanship so the short section was replaced.
problemsolution?….. why even try this on?
Tim agreed to carry out an extension to the wood floor around the fireplace in the drawing room as our very last Variation. But now the skirting is too high. Despite Alyson saying that she couldn’t comment on Tim’s work, she went ahead and blindly certified it, leaving us exposed to the entire charge even though there is now a massive gap between the skirting and the floor. Rather than complete the job and THEN get paid like any normal trade, Tim has done half the job and now can treat it as a snag that he can do whenever he feels like within the year-long rectification period. Brilliant.
that’s better
Our final Variation that Tim agreed to carry out was an extension to the wood floor around the fireplace in the drawing room. But now the skirting is too high. Despite Alyson saying that she couldn’t comment on Tim’s work, she went ahead and blindly certified it, leaving us exposed to the entire charge even though there is now a massive gap between the skirting and the floor. Rather than complete the job and THEN get paid like any normal trade, Tim has done half the job and now can treat it as a snag that he can do whenever he feels like within the year-long rectification period. Brilliant.
We’ve got an ongoing argument about whether the work has been completed fully in the loft where the flood occurred. It smells damp even now. I’m not above asking friends who come round to see the house to follow me up to the loft to see how it smells. (I have patient friends). The scope of the remedial works includes replacing the stained loft boarding to the standard as if were new. And they’ve done none of it. Predictably, in the first couple weeks of November, mould started growing in the loft. After sending these exact same photos to Tim, he STILL disputed the existence of mould, damp, incomplete work,…. you name it, and has referred me to the Loss Adjuster. The Loss Adjuster referred me to the Architect, who needs to come onsite and take MORE pictures for the Loss Adjuster who will then refer to the Insurers who will tell the Contractor to do his job. Lovely.
only a little mould
The electricians know that our job has sucked from start to finish, so last Spring (before he left) Mark had offered to install the cabling for a CCTV system, gratis. We thought that finally we were getting a little bit of an acknowledgement that the service on offer had been less than perfect. So we were on a roll until we had our cameras fitted and found that the muppets had installed old-fashioned coaxial cable rather than the Cat5 they’ve got throughout the rest of the house. It was probably a contractors pack of wires supplied by someone who isn’t quite up to date with the current CCTV gear. It all means that this choice puts a cap on the quality of the cameras and prevents us from installing a true IP system that talks to the rest of the house. In future years it will be like having an old iPhone that struggles with the latest update as technology passes you by and renders your beloved phone into a brick.
it’s coax for sure, sigh
None of these things are critical, but the quantity of fuck-up, Tim’s poor attention to them and this gruesome chess-playing approach has soured the whole journey. People ask me if I’m happy now that I’ve finally moved in. Yes I am, of course I am. It’s a beautiful house. The heating works and it’s great to be back Home. But it’s painful to feel had over. To have paid the bill in full and to STILL feel had over. And it’s disappointing to watch Tim’s perspective change from keen as mustard in 2015 to build a striking building, to 2017’s version of swearing at us down the phone, communicating through lawyers, and actively avoiding doing the work he signed up to do. Charming.
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.
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.
it will get less stripe-y when they tamp it down and add sand to the jointsdigger’s last week coming uprear 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.
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.
