Early birds, these guys. On my way to meet the electrician at a lazy 7:30 am, I saw that they’d already had a delivery that was just departing down the lane.
oak cladding in morning light
More oak arrived late yesterday via Neil and his Land Rover with trailer; it’s always a pleasure to have him onsite. These pieces will cover the steels in the master bedroom, a design compromise that sits a little uncomfortably only because for the rest of the house, the wood is structural, and this isn’t. But with Neil’s skill in fabricating, and Josh, Terry and James’ skill in installing, I doubt we’ll be able to tell any difference between the cladding and the real deal at all in years to come. It looks very fresh at the moment when put up next to the stuff that’s been up for six months. Neil clearly spent ages on the comprehensive installation manual for the guys too. I’m sure they’re grateful!
instruction manualTerry’s not putting it up on the wonk, it’s the lens distorting the anglescurved beam to match detail in the hallway
Meanwhile, work carries on around the rest of the house, and it’s crowded. Plasterers, roofers and electricians have been in all week, and I’ve been interviewing fireplace experts, interior designers and joiners.
fitting plasterboard from the vaulted section
The best bit of the week was our topping out ceremony. We, well, Tim really, decided it would happen when the last ridge tile went on. Originating in Scandinavia, this is an event that usually happens on bigger projects and usually involves chasing out evil spirits with branches of evergreen plants, and blessing the building for its future occupants in some way. Rather than inviting a random druid priest around or sticking the odd sprig of fir tree up the top of the scaffolding, we tried to keep it simple.
Our solution was that we signed the final ridge tile. We got out our white pen and scribbled as a family, then got Tim, Ben, James, Terry, Josh, and Spencer to sign as well. So Spencer carefully left the last space empty for us to fit on the very front of the house. Excellent! It was a two-part event with fizz and sausage rolls on the Thursday as Clinton couldn’t be there for the actual fitting on the Friday. Everyone from the roofers to the tackers were there. Matt, Gillian’s boyfriend even joined in. Clinton said a few words of thanks, we armed Tim with the camera for some family snaps, and then we tucked right in!
Gemma setting up the buffetbuilders buffetit IS Oxshott after allthanks, guys…… from all of usunderside of the ridge tilefuture residentsGemma and fake fizz
we even had waiting service
The A-Team: Ben, Jackson, Tim, Clive, Blake, Dave, Mike, Josh, Terry, James, and Spencer
So it seemed only fitting that after all these festivities and thank-yous that we actually got the signed tile on the roof. The girls, Matt, and I spent a lovely sunny morning in Roofing School with Spencer (well, me watching them more than doing anything constructive).
up on the scaffold
Spencer prepares the area for the final tileGemma lays the tile
Can’t say that our efforts contributed anything special, but it will be lovely to think that at least we had something tangible to do with the build as we look up at the front gable forevermore. The layers of cloaking look great, and the rest of the roof is just about there. Next week will involve Spencer doing a little tidying with other, lower, ridges, which leaves the scaffolding coming down Thursday or Friday!
final tile in placecloaking closeup“How are we going to get the leaves off THAT, Mum?”can you spot the venting tiles?
New Year, new resolve, ….. we WILL be living in this house before this year is out. Having seen the potential of this place in 1999 and bought it and moved in by Feb 2000, we’re finally going to have this noose around our necks lifted. We’ve hemmed and hawed for so long about the most cost effective way to renovate or fix or whatever, and we’ve lived in such an ambiguous state for so many years, that it’s quite incredible to think that it will ever be FINISHED. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s finished, Finished and FINISHED, but just to have a house that doesn’t leak and looks half way decent will be a huge improvement on previous years. After all, the kids know nothing else!
And of course, it will be way better than half way decent. You can see from the time-lapses that there is a bunch of activity onsite these days: electricians, carpenters, flooring, heating, windows….. It’s starting to really crack on.
The window guys started on 9 Jan, so all the oak subframes had to be installed beforehand.
family roomthey will eventually fade to grey
James has kept a bit of celotex on the sills to protect them once they’re in.
shocking weatherdoor frames being built and getting installed
Terry and Josh have been quietly getting on with wardrobes upstairs and kitchen framing downstairs.
kitchen studs
The window guys arrived en masse in a team of four or five depending on the day. The last time we saw this gear was up North, and it’s weird to see the frames and glass in the house at long last.
test pane
One of the guys was a specialist pointer: each of the windows has a silicone bead running around the frame between it and the oak and another between the frame and the glass. I’ll get a macro shot of the beading next week, but there is a precise technique and the finished product is gorgeous.
waiting patiently for installationmaster bedroommaster panebrave man with a hammer
master bedroom from inside
There are still loads of things to do around and about. The roof tiles should arrive this month, but since it’s a stand-alone piece outside the Critical Path, it kind of doesn’t matter when they go on. The building will look very different when it’s got its hat on.
roofline
The first floor is being covered with celotex insulation prior to the underfloor heating next week. Wednesday is screed day, and this works perfectly with the windows guys because they’re awaiting delivery of more gear from Grantham which arrives the following week, so they’ll take a little break from this job while the floor sets. All very time-dependent and complicated.
bathroom
We had a stairs meeting this week with Tony the Blacksmith and Colin and Gary from the joinery company. The goal was to sign off on the plans and get into production which is 10 – 12 weeks from sign to installation. Tony brought models of his spindles and had a great conversation with the joiners. In a total Goldilocks moment, we’ve decided to use the middle sized section of spindle. Plans were signed, and production lines confirmed, so we’re looking at end of March to see these in real life. Tony says he’s making progress with the lantern as well.
oodles of spindles
It also snowed this week.
disgusting weatherfrozen camera housingsnow on scaffold through the new windowsdoor handlesfront bay–with windows (most of them…)
The main structure is up and sorted and the building is Dry. Dry is a Big Deal. Even though there are large gaping holes where the windows will go (on 9 January), these will be boarded up over Christmas, and the rest of the structure is Dry. The guys are now finishing off the fiddly bits of the roof on the outside and putting up the frame for the ceiling on the inside.
fiddly bits and covered subframessubframes in the sitting roomone in and one not
The roof and all the subframes are attached to the concrete by these enormous brackets. Terry assures me that there will be no roof blowing off on this house. The lead will be installed in the coming weeks.
west bathroom windowswest-most bedroom
James is making up the inserts for the angled brick sections. We had a meeting with the reluctant warranty company about the design early on. They were quite rightly concerned about water ingress in the junction between all the materials sitting in the oak frame in case the structure settled. We worked then with Dave to create a multi-layered system of composite board, epoxy resin, insulation and compriband that will prevent any drips or drops from getting through. It is very complicated, and James has been pretty keen to get stuck in to building them. They look good so far!
pre-insertbrick inserts, pre-brickinserts and insulation from the inside of front gableinserts from outside
The ceiling is also complicated: the trusses go up really quickly, but then there is much time spent creating a set of noggins in between each truss to support the plasterboard ceiling that will be installed soon.
east-most bedroom: trusses & noggins, boarding & flooringceiling with loft boarding and dormer window
There are two extra guys on site this week who installed all the subframes and boarded them up. The goal is to get the building dry enough to set the underfloor heating in screed before we all disappear for Christmas. That will give the floor two weeks to set and dry.
can you spot the elf?
I think everyone is feeling buoyed up by the progress made recently. This was never going to be an easy house to build, and many of the painstaking pieces of the structure seem to be happening all at once. The guys remain cheerful onsite, they help the neighbours with heavy lifting, they’re keeping the place amazingly tidy given the freezing weather and the early nights, they joke around and it seems quite jolly. It’s got a good vibe and looks a nice place to work.
festive site
We signed off for the kitchen this week (hooray!). That will be 14 weeks. The sanitary ware has been ordered (8 weeks), the floor sourced, and the stairs being drawn up. Many more decisions to be made after our Thursday meeting–I’ve got a 14 point list of urgent items of homework for Monday, and many more pending. But we’re vaguely adhering to our modified schedule which is good. I don’t want to be the one holding up the game. A busy weekend to come….
Not many visits to site this week, but that doesn’t mean work isn’t occurring. James, Josh and Terry have been busy putting up the facias and soffits. They’ve been organising to have the flooring put up in the loft and the space is looking really good.
I’m so glad we decided to rebuild the front trusses into a more open arrangement. Although the guys have done an amazing job of making the most of the space in the other loft areas, the bit over Gillian’s room will be great for storing larger pieces and will eventually be our go-to place for suitcases and Christmas decorations.
loft space looking northloft space looking south–this is where the water tank will liveloft space looking west–through the vaulted ceiling in the master bedroomfinal touches on soffits and facias in the upstairs hallwayfinished woodwork looking eastportrait of Terryroof ventilation, facia and oak frame in master bedroom
Hooray, the guys are in the dry. The big holes for the windows will need to be filled in, but that will be after Christmas. In the meantime, that thin sheet of Tyvek stuff is what matters. Josh and Terry are spending most of their time creating noggins for the ceilings under it, and the roofers put extra battens on which to fix the tiles over it. The guys tell me that the tiles will be on before Christmas too. Now, THAT will be amazing.
It poured with rain on Monday, but the roofers persevered and managed to get some very soggy sheets fixed in their places.
lidceiling skeleton in kids’ bathroomeast-most bedroomterry cutting some noggins as the light fades
The oak frame is starting to look a little lived in, a little too lived in really with the odd bit of scrap falling from the top to the deck. So James has covered the vulnerable parts of the frames to give them some protection.
covered frame
We’ve decided on a combination of black stain on the soffits and Osmo varnish for the facias. James has been painting, and they’ll be cut to size and brought upstairs for fitting next week.
sheets of soffitsOsmo Hall
A few short late-afternoon visits in the week allowed some time for some photos around the site. But most of our time has been spent at the computer and immersed in catalogues choosing stuff and fleshing out the Fixtures and Fittings schedule.
light on lofty beech branch, 5 metres up
through the vaulted ceiling at the join between two ridgelinesHi Josh!lit bridge on the way home
Hard on the heels of Birthday Week last week comes Thanksgiving. I remember inviting my parents-in-law down for Thanksgiving dinners in the early 90s when I first moved here and was still a little homesick. They were very forgiving about having a Christmas dinner served to them a month early for no other reason to appease their daughter-in-law, and I’m grateful for their patience. I kind of gave up doing it after a few years because I decided it’s not the turkey that’s important, it’s the four days off in a row, the travelling and travelling-related-drama, and all-American-ness of it that I missed. This week, with the kids doing their after school classes, Clinton doing Scout-y things and me driving laps around Surrey dropping and collecting children, the night kind of passed us by. So I was determined to retain a small part of the whole exercise–through pumpkin pie, of course.
It’s a weird time to be American and in the UK after the horrible election. For once the geographical distance feels huge both socially and politically as well. I don’t run around feeling “American” but I like to be part of a community. This past week has left me wondering what that community truly is, and what its trajectory might be. But the process is what’s valuable ultimately, and it’s important that the kids still connect with their American side. So to maintain that connection in a positive way, Gemma brought in a piece of the pie to her Scout “International” evening, and Gregory might be starting to grow an interest in his political side. Incremental gains.
The roof continues to grow, ungrow and regrow. Dave and Terry spent some time last week discussing the design of the dormers, and as a result the first one they built had to be rebuilt. But Terry, James and Josh worked hard despite the drop in temperature and by the end of the week, they were all there despite the rain.
truss forestsketch and trusses cut into the structural oakhand built trussesgratuitously nice shot of frameroof, scaffold and row of dormersup close and personal with a dormer
Part of the unbuilding included a set of trusses above the front bedroom. They were originally Palladian trusses, but this didn’t allow for storage. A little scratching of chins all round and we decided to switch to a cut truss. They arrived this week.
loving the storage optionsunset through the roofcomplicated cuts
The solid oak subframes arrived onsite–hooray! They have one coat of oil, and the next will be applied in situ. James and the guys had to carry each one from the road into the dry by hand. There are 72. I can’t move ONE they’re so heavy. How they did it I’ve got no idea. There are three piles in the garage and two in the kitchen, and there they’ll wait until the lid is on the house.
The camera is in a great new spot, so I’ve put all the time-lapses at the beginning of the post. We were a little worried about sun-flare but I think the cloud cover worked in our favour this week.
There are a load of lazy grumpy wasps hanging around the wood. We noticed this when the oak frame arrived onsite, and it’s even worse now that the timbers are here. They like the wood to build their nests. We need one good frost and the problem will be solved but in the mean time, much batting and buzzing is occurring.
Friday
Trevor and Josh moving trusses
Tim said he’s glad James has put the curtains on the oak frame. It’s not all that previous: James assures me it’s more to protect the oak from cutting bricks in the rain and preventing a layer of muck from building up.
not convinced about the trusses…… because there is not a lot of room for storage
We’re waiting on the central gable to to built before the wings go on. The central cable is vaulted through the hallway and the master bedroom and it’s supported by one great big steel. There is a short oak beam connecting the trusses in the structure, but it’s the steel that is holding up proceedings. But there is plenty to do with the internal blockwork, and the guys are confident that they’re almost done at this stage. They’ll be back once the roof is on so they can build up underneath it, but their team is shrinking as work nears completion, and even Quizmaster Paul is off on another job at the moment.
building up the wall before the steel ridge beam arrives
Thursday
Popped by to see some of the pointy bits up close.
Dave hiding in a forest of trusses
Tuesday
Crane day. For steels in the roof and floor planks in the rear bay.
Hooray! James and the gang did some magic the concrete planks into the rear bay without touching any of the wood.
looking up at a wonderful ceiling
a bit tight for the Land Rovers passing in the lane
gables for later in the week
There were lots of teams getting on with life on site today: the brick guys, the crane driver, James, the steels team and more general building guys to start fixing the gables on the steels.
When the crane is onsite, the brick guys have to abandon using the forklift, and they bring all the bricks, the blockwork, and the muck up by hand. Up the ladder. A million times a day.
door to back bedroomsteels over the rear west corner bedroomsame corner looking from the back to front of the houseJames made a nice little nest for the camera’s new homekeeping Port Talbot going
Mick reckons there will only be about three more courses of bricks to lay round the west side. The roof kicks out at the bricks around the angle of the spirit level he held up to show me. They’ll put the roof on, then Mick’s guys will lay the rest of the bricks under the roof before the soffits get put on.
roof kick demo
Now that the concrete floor planks are out of the way, the guys can start building the walls for the closet and ensuite. Meanwhile, James had his Meccano set out to hold up the steel until the walls are there. Looks stable enough…. doesn’t it?
Saturday
I can’t resist taking pictures of the wood frame and the brick. I brought the wide angle lens down to have a play this weekend. We met up with Neil and Grant who were dodging raindrops, tidying up some of the oak frame and drilling holes in it (!) to secure it to the walls.
A visit to the joinery company that is doing the stairs, the oak subframes for the windows and the external doors.
Paul is our Area Manager and he’s always said to come on down and have a visit. As we’re getting to some crunch points with decisions, it sounded a great time to scoot to Andover to have a look. Today I got the chance to meet Gerald the MD, and he and Paul both took me for a tour of the factory before sitting down to talk design.
The factory is enormous. But it’s family run and has grown from a shed to a business with over 60 employees in a generation. There are 28 guys on the factory floor spread out into separate areas. There is a room for the initial cut as the laminated boards arrive from Germany, another for making tenons and mortice joints, another for windows, another for painting, another for stairs, and another for doors with CNCs, lathes, wrapped finished pieces and components all neatly placed in stacks per job. I’ve probably left out a few rooms,….but the guys were really busy as we went around, and everyone was really friendly and very patient with my picture-taking.
I was thrilled to see our job taking up (a large part of) the floor!
window subframes … and more window subframes with jointsLaminates are used for the uncut beams so there won’t be any knots. They’re cut to section size on the outside dimensions, then they’re sliced on the remaining dimension to length, and finally, the mortice and tenon joints are cut in. Gerald fitted one of our subframes all up and assembled for me to have a look; the joints are seamless and the facing sides beautiful.
our job. all three stacks with little white labels waiting to be cutThere are over 70 windows in the house, and each requires more than four bits of wood to make the subframe. Some of the larger pieces, like the sills, are made of two pieces with an air gap in between them to let them bend and settle on installation (I think?!)
We’re having clear Osmo coated frames and doors to retain the natural look of the wood, but it was still awesome to see the painting room. The windows are suspended on a series of hooks strung up to a yellow motorised track. They trundle past the guys to get a good coat of paint (150 microns a layer) and continue on to the other side of the wall to dry. Water is spritzed in to keep the paint from drying too quickly, so the room feels slightly tropical. This waterbased paint takes about 1.5 hours to dry, but our clear Osmo will go on with a brush and take 3 days to cure entirely.
the painting room some stairs (not ours yet) and CNCThe stairs will be cut on a giant laser-guided CNC machine. I got to see a partially-build curved staircase made of gorgeous walnut; Paul had wanted to check the progress on it as he’d seen it the week before and it’s great to see these things evolve. Each piece for every job is drawn up, plugged into the computer and CNC’d to fit together perfectly. This particular job was gorgeous, and the whole operation is a real engineering marvel.
I’ve come away with some samples of different sized newell posts, a picture of cross sectional balustrades, two actual balusters to think about, and a lot of information about the front door from a discussion with Paul, Gerald, and Sean the Main Technical Manager. It’s going to be a busy weekend thinking through all this.
From Andover back to base, I had a chance to climb up the scaffold and have a look at the new bedrooms.
West Wing east wing door to front bedroom back bay, pre-oakWhat was the name of the first lady to fly across the Atlantic? What was the name of her airplane? What was the name of the Japanese city that was spared the atomic bomb and why? What were the names of those bombs? We’ve already nailed the name of the plane that dropped them along with the name of the guy who broke the sound barrier. We did moon landings a few weeks ago, and I’ve overheard a discussion about the bass line in Eagles songs when the guys first came onsite. I probably need some help brushing up on general knowledge if I spend too much more time onsite….
Paul and Dave: proshttps://youtu.be/PfuIcSZRgdA
Thursday
Back to Sussex we go!
Bluebell Railway from the car parkAnother breathtakingly gorgeous drive in the time machine to visit our oak structural frame. It gets loaded on Friday and will be onsite on Monday. I will miss this drive! Neil gave me a tour of the pieces, and in particular wanted to show me the showstopper piece he sourced for us.
ta-da!
The single-piece curved beam is a success. The alternative would have been to cut it out of
a very large section like he showed me in the sawdust on the floor. This would have been super expensive and not quite as nice because the grain would have made a horizontal trace to follow the growth of the original plank. The more cost effective alternative would have been to have cut two or three pieces and join them, and this is what we had specified originally. The many-pieced bends are what you see around town with other builds of this design. Ours will be the only single piece beam. Whoop whoop!
backs of brick infill bits more of our jobThere are over 60 pieces for the rear bay alone. They’ll be stuck on the back of a lorry over the weekend, then up to us on Monday early a.m. They’re all labelled (red pen for front and green pen for back), and it’s great to visualise where the bits will fit in according to Dave’s drawings.
upside-down cross piece for gable with window rebates on the top er, … a truss strutIt’s amazing how casual they are about taking these enormous beams and cutting chunks into them. They tell me that all the hard work, i.e. measuring and planning, has already been done, so this is the easy part. Very impressive!
On the way back, I put the anchors on as I passed the Bluebell Vineyard shop. A quick u-turn later and I was in the car park alongside a very Californian looking setup with tasting room and a nice few rows of well-tended vines. All was well, and then a great big tour bus from Eastbourne carrying a large number of pensioners arrived. I thought I might have just enough time to buy a bottle of their finest before they wandered in, but they were quick, and I was too late. My bottle of bubbles will have to wait until next time. And I think there just might be a next time because we’ve got designs on a nice countertop shelf for the basin in the downstairs WC. Back to Neil’s this autumn I think!
from idyllic Sussex…. … to rainy base for our Thursday site meetingPaul the electrical guy was due to arrive, but he was stuck on the M25 unable to move. Apparently a crane (nothing to do with us!) blew up into a massive fireball on the M40, and travelling anywhere near London was a bit of a no-hoper today. We look forward to meeting Paul another day.
We also welcome Claire aboard the good ship St Anne’s. She’s designed an awesome kitchen, and she was onsite this afternoon to measure up and ensure that the drawings matched reality. Apparently this isn’t always the case, but on this job the plans and the build match decisively. She’ll now make up a set of drawings for review, right down to the lights, sockets and tiling. We’re looking forward to that!
Monday
Continuity–hooray! James is back onsite overseeing everything in his first pair of consecutive weeks in the job. Things are ticking along smoothly; but the brick team is running out of vertical interior walls to keep busy before the oak frame is installed next week.
We had a massive site meeting of the minds today: Dave the Architect, Tim the Contractor, Tom the Steels guy, Neil the oak guy, Paul the joinery guy, and of course James the Site Manager, Ben the Project Manager, and me tagging along trying to learn as much poss. Today’s lesson was: What’s a padstone? For those like me who have not a clue, these are extra strong blocks (not bricks) that the steel lintels sit on. Double doors require a steel above them to support the brickwork above, for instance. The brick team need to know the dimensions of the steels so they can set these padstones in the right places. Should be fine, right? They’re on the drawings. But if the steels are still somewhere between the drawings and physical arrival, the brick team usually waits until they’re onsite to line them up or they risk unbuilding what they’d already built off plan. And as luck would have it, this part of the project coincided with the engineer’s summer holiday plans, so we’ve been delayed in getting them even on paper. We’ve been playing the game of keeping the brick team onsite doing the interior blockwork when they’d really rather be getting on with setting the padstones and building the exterior walls. Next week, hopefully.
crowded houseThere was much discussion of how the oak frame will tie into the brick work. The frame is a really special thing–it’s meant to be completely self-supporting. As in, if you put it all together in the garden, it would stand up by itself. I totally respect the integrity of the structure and think it’s really important to have it do what it looks like its doing, and not pretend. A nice part of the build. We’re all looking forward to seeing it go up, so next Monday will be an exciting day.
There is a large A-shaped steel on the rear of the building between the oak frame and the brickwork that has yet to be finalised and manufactured, and this will be mainly to support the roof ridgeline. The roof is a very complicated thing, and although much of today’s meeting was spent discussing erecting the oak frame, Dave was on hand to make sure we don’t mess up the roof dimensions so that the pitch of steels matches the pitch of the oak once it’s up. Exactly. Tim wants to minimise the number of crane-days (too right, they’re bank), so it’s quite a job to line up the trades requiring cranes all on the same day/s. There are steels, oak frame and floor panels to juggle.
front gableOne decision that had to be made today concerned the bowed beam on the front porch. We’ve spent a lot of time trying to get the look of it right: how thick, where to place it front to back in the frame, what circumference the bend should be…. But just to make things interesting, Neil arrived today with an idea. He said that he’s very lucky in that he has the luxury of spending time (he’s been part of the job since February, so that’s a while!) sourcing pieces for his jobs from all over Europe, and that he had found the Perfect Beam for this job. The one he’s picked is bent at just the right angle across the whole of the piece so that the grain follows the bend beautifully, and the beam can therefore be made of one piece. Previous designs had two or three chops in it to achieve the right bend. Dave says the chopped approach would make the build look like a pub. St Anne’s Arms? Clearly the single piece is the better option. It will be slightly skinnier as a result of The Perfect Bend, and it will now match the width of the vertical beams between the windows rather than the chunky vertical corner pieces. I’m sure this will all make sense when it’s up, and I imagine it will look quite elegant.
Ben says it will be amusing to watch me give tours of the finished product. He reckons I’ll be waxing lyrical about the cunning oak-brick tie-ins and the effective placement of the cranked steels when really all they’ll really be interested in is the nice paintwork and some colourful vases. We’ll see if I will be able to contain myself….
In the meantime, Mick, Paul, Dave, Glen and Johnny just keep happily laying more and more bricks…..
The alternative would have been to cut it out of
