Tim said early on not to worry and that the Christmas lights would be on. And they are! We’ve got a tree with lights–what’s the problem?! The roofing guys even built us a present out of battening to go under the tree.
Tim’s present
Despite the amended programme, this has been a big chunky cracking-on kind of week. First of all, the saga about the levels not quite matching up in the first floor between the front oak structural frame and the rest of the house came to a close. The fix was debated (for five weeks) around our architect and structural engineer, the warranty company (mostly the warranty company) and the oak structural engineer, and finally, they reached an agreement on how it was to be built. James and the guys have built and sealed shuttering around what will be a slab of concrete set in situ. The metal mesh that gives it structure arrived today, James has bound all the intersections with little bits of wire, and now all that’s left is to pour and set over the Christmas break.
pre-pour
Masses of celotex is being laid to insulate the ground floor. On Monday (Tuesday?) next week this will have a web of underfloor heating rods wound round and round, and before we break for Christmas, the screed will be poured.
each piece is cut to shape with a teensy power sawkitchen spacewipe your feet first
They’ve removed the scaffolding in the hallway and you can see from the floor right up to the rafters. Terry’s done a marvellous job making it safe with a designer hand rail.
Josh and celotexTerry’s fancy banisterBen and Keith chatting about the concrete slab
The electricians have wired up most of the upstairs, and now there is a web of grey cable run round the rafters. There has been some discussion about where the shaver sockets will go in the bathrooms, and I’m sure this is just the first of many decisions that will be made on the hoof. (We decided in cabinets in the kids’ bathrooms and on the wall above the tile in ours in case you’re wondering.) They’ve even got a sweepstakes on how many times I’ll change my mind on socket locations in the house. Five was the first guess, three was another, and even a very optimistic zero was mentioned. We’ll see. Just don’t want the whole place looking like Swiss cheese so I’m trying my best not to dither. One of the jobs on the weekend is to run round with a can of spray-paint and set the locations of sockets and switches.
Sparkys’ debate
The leadwork is starting to be installed around the window frames. The large frames in the kitchen and family room won’t be in until the new year because the floor screed needs to dry out and we don’t want to damage them.
leadwork before it’s scalloped
I usually get time to visit site in the afternoon, and since sunset starts around 2:30 in what’s now mid-December, the light is usually really good for a while. It’s obvious that the oak frame and the widows are pretty special and make this build unique, and that the quality of the workmanship is excellent. This quality issue partly accounts for why it’s gone over schedule. But sometimes I’m amazed at just how gorgeous the whole thing is, and it’s quite humbling to just sit and have a look. I’m sure the builders think I’m nuts just standing there and staring.
a glimpse of future awesomeness
James has finished the panels, and they’ll be sealed in with compriband and fixed to the frame. But they’re right in line with the sunset, so it makes the whole thing reflected a lovely pink.
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….
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.
Mid-November and it’s getting really really cold. The rental house’s main valve to the ground floor radiators decided to give up the ghost this week just to make things interesting. Not quite a frost on the inside of the windows state of affairs, but it’s certainly cold underfoot when making that first cup of tea in the morning. But this is NOTHING compared to early dark-o’clock onsite.
Walking back from the station on Monday, we decided to pop in for a look at progress and found James and Terry accumulating questions in preparation for Dave’s visit on Thursday. Much scratching of heads ensued over the valley detail at the front and considering the fallout of whether we wanted a sloping ceiling in the front bedroom. The valley is covered with lead (remember climbing on the old roof of St Annes #1 armed with a broom and a jetwash to de-leaf the flat section of roof over the tower??), but the section is long and flat lead covering a space of more than 5′ tends to shrink.
rogue beam
Much to everyone’s relief, Dave came down to site on Thursday as part of his new and improved double-time for this job, and he and Terry figured out a way to ditch the long beam, sort out the lead, and start designing a flat ceiling for more storage in the front bedroom. After these tweaks, it’s full steam ahead with the roof.
Josh, hasn’t James told you it’s -5C out there?Josh and his fan club
Terry and Josh are putting up timbers for the battens to be attached next week. I can’t believe Josh is still in his shorts!! But I really like the combo of wooly hat on and legs out. They’ve been spending most of their time hand-cutting truss parts for the non-standard 50-degree angle roof and creating supports for the fiddly dormers. The game plan is to finish most of the dormers before James gets the more fun job of fitting the oak facias and stained soffits in their wake. Terry says the building will look transformed with these bits on. We’ll wait and see next week.
dormer cornerkids’ bathroom window dormer
One of the details that we’ve signed up for is the kick out on the foot of the roof. It’s a little flare right at the end and kind of a Blair Imrie/Frank Chown style point.
kick
Nice to see Mick, Johnny and Tom back to lay bricks that will live above the soffit. It will only take them a couple of days into next week to finish off. The wet mortar sits all around the kick boards. We’ve still got a pillar to build around the back, so maybe they’ll be back to do that when the garage roof is ready to go on.
We’ve had a choice of resins to use for the brick slip panels in the oak frame. The warranty company wanted us to use this stuff instead of mortar to fix the bricks to the boards and also to point them up. The idea is to limit the possibility water ingress. A sensible solution and there is all of one singular company in the whole of the UK that does this kind of thing –just a little bit niche. We’re going with ‘natural’ instead of ‘buff’ or ‘chalk’. It’s not bad and looks the real deal.
these don’t quite match…… but this one is better
I haven’t had the chance to bother James with my usual million onsite visits this week because most of work and the fact our house-time has been taken up with kitchens, tiles, stairs, wood floors, doors, sanitary ware and electricals. We’re also debating about whether to put sliding doors between the kitchen and family room. The main thing is that the normal double doors in the spec eat up a bunch of space when they get opened, so it limits the size of furniture for the room. I’ve started cutting scaled bits of paper to ‘furnish’ the room and test stuff out. Sketchup is great but it doesn’t give anyone else a chance to fiddle, so we’re going old-school. I’m sure there will be many evenings and much wine required to get this just right.
which purple bit of paper makes the best fit?the door opening in question
One day soon we’ll get around to thinking about landscaping. The hardest part of the plot to figure out is the bit on the north side of the house under the beech tree. We sadly cut down the cherry tree that we planted with such great hopes in 2000, so now there’s not much between us and next door except air. We’ll want to have something against the fence and preferably rising above it for privacy and to emphasise our house. There’s not much light or much water in the space which makes planting anything you want to keep alive problematic. Paving? Water feature? I’ve got to do some reading on suitable plants…. Allison, got any ideas?
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.
Can you say “grey tiles”? Armed with my trusty samples of flooring and window frame, I’ve been playing Where’s Wally in a forest of grey.
The brick guys are matching up the facing bricks along the oak, and I’m so confident in their work that I must confess to having taken the perfect lines and balanced cuts for granted. But I’m also relieved that the bricks and the oak go so well together. It’s such a gamble making these big decisions and hoping for the best. It requires and open mind first of all, then lots of listening to experts paired with hours of research behind the scenes. But decisions made or not, the brickies continue to bring the building up and up and up. Mick had a big birthday over the weekend–Happy Birthday!
Dave building up the front wallperfect facing brick, and blockwork that will live behind hanging tiles
I chose a beautifully sunny autumnal day to come to site, and James took me for a tour of the newly set-up roof-tier scaffold.
through the rear bay to the frontlooking south to Surrey
The back bay is being supported by some rogue struts before the roof ties it all together. You can see these in the photo. In fact, the oak guys are installing the ridge beam that connects the frames, so we’ll see them again in a few weeks. When the extra struts are removed, it will leave nail holes temporarily, but because they’re not drilled, no wood has left the system, so they’ll just close up in time. Clever in an olde-worlde kinda way. The whole process of building this house is as interesting as I hope the finished product will be beautiful.
back bayour bedroom
The red steels are there waiting to be installed as the lintels over the internal doors. There are I beams and C beams, and for the life of me I forget which is used where. I think the I beam is for the lintel over the double doors to this room, and the C beams are …., well, um, yeah.
James took a bit of lead that had been knocking around his van for the past year and installed our first section on the west side of the front porch. A Finish–Hooray!
Martin from the window company came round on Tuesday to measure up before we went into production at the window factory. The bronze frames and the double glazed windows are manufactured separately and put together onsite. The Window Date is 9 Jan 2017.
more leadwork to follow…. much more
There is a slight hiccup in the levels in the front porch area. Dave is coordinating a solution with Tony, Tim, Ben, Neil and James. The whole landing is a little high on the first floor of the oak frame that hangs above the front door.
There is a debate about whether to keep the concrete floor planks and lower the level by reducing the screed, or by replacing the concrete with timber flooring which gives way more scope for changing relative heights. No one is excited about swinging the 1.5 ton planks anywhere near the wood, especially the crane driver. So clearly installation is another issue. Replacing the concrete planks with timber joists would fix the height and installation problems, but we had debated about this many moons ago in the planning stages and decided then that concrete was the way to go to give the building that really solid feel. Is it a compromise to change to timber or just an expedient solution? Or, is laying concrete planks on an oak frame a daft idea? We’ll have a good think over the weekend on which way to run with this: concrete or timber, but everyone is pulling together to work it out. The main things are to be flexible and listen to experts.
artsy woodlooking up through the back frame
We’ve had the pleasure of working with Claire who is designing the kitchen and utility spaces. I’ve interviewed many companies, but Claire has got the vision just right. What do you think?
ta da!ta da from the other direction!
The scaffold team were busy on Wednesday and accidentally knocked the camera. It’s time to move it anyway…
a thing of beautyIt’s been a great week for the house.
Neil, Neil, Chris, Will, and Paddy, the oak frame guys, arrived onsite early Monday and started straight away in putting their giant Lego pieces together. They’ve got the world’s most itsy bitsy crane to lift the pieces, and it’s so small it can drive around the back of the house too. They were all incredibly relaxed and made it look easy.
Chris the Farmer was in charge, and started by unloading the rear frame onto the forecourt.
unloading
Along with the full compliment of brick layers, the oak team and James made eleven on site most of the week.
prize beamthe little crane that couldthe whole teamlots of cutsrear bay in bitshttps://youtu.be/EndGVlO9TiY
brace keys replaced with pegsThe guys kindly replaced one of the front top horizontals because we felt it had too many wains. Not sure if I spelled that correctly, but these are gouges along the corners where the tree wasn’t quite perfect. It makes the finished beams look more rustic. Only a little doubt from us and it was swapped. This involved shaping another piece back in the yard, bringing it to site and chopping the necessary mortice joints and shoulders out of it in the back of the van. Neil and team want it perfect. So do we!
looks hectic but it’s all under control
The windows will fit in the rebates on the long sections of the frame. The little sections will be herringbone brick to block out the first floor floor panels. Designing the details between the bricks, leadwork, and bronze windows took many meetings between Dave, Ben, Richard from the warranty company and us. We’ve got some weird epoxy mortar coming for the brick slip panels, and lots of compriband will be fitted. The main thing is to prevent water getting anywhere near the insides. It will have to be bomb-proof especially since the prevailing wind is out of the southwest–right smack on the side of the house with five panels.
Neil the owner of the oak company is ever so calm about the whole thing. Even when there was a query about one of the floor beams in the front structure, and there was a morning hanging around for the oak engineer to give some details, they waited patiently and simply got busy moving the rear structure to the back of the house piece by piece. He says he specialises in large timber and ships stuff all over the world. The big corner sections on this job are 250 mm square. Big. He’s been to France most weekends racing classic cars in September and off to a wedding in Romania this weekend. On parting today, I wished him well in Romania and said something like “Have fun!” and he replied, “That’s my job. It’s what I do.” It’s not just all fun though–the guys are taking meticulous care with putting the structures together, and by next week, it will be all sanded down and looking gorgeous.
We managed to put down the brochures and colour charts and extract ourselves from the internet for an evening to wander up the road to our lovely neighbours who had the whole estate around for drinks. I have to be honest and say that we arrived trying to conceal our trepidation at seeing all our neighbours after all the planning drama and objections we had at the beginning, and all the complaints about the road now. It would either be a lovely evening, or we’d have to go on the defensive. But everyone was overwhelmingly complimentary about the build, and waxed lyrical about how gracious the building team has been over the occasional lorry in the road. It was a pleasant surprise! I think having the wood go up this week made a big difference. It does look excellent.
view out the kitchenthe rear bay as the brick team packs up for the weekthey’ve done an incredible job on the detail between ground and first floorspying on Johnny through the houseporch with prize beam
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…..
Russell and Chris the Farmer (gotta love spellcheck; he’s a Framer) came to site to check it out for delivery, progress, etc etc. The poor dog was left in the car, but we checked him at regular intervals. We should install a kennel during the build! Dave and Paul came up for their monthly architectural check and also to give Paul the opportunity to have his first look at the project. Dave said he hadn’t been on site when it was sunny yet–the last time he was here, the place was a swimming pool on that torrential day with fire trucks and neighbours getting flooded. Of course Nic, Ben and Justin were there too, so donuts were bought, the sun was shining and we (they) sorted out a few rough edges to fitting the oak frame.
This included lots of hemming and hawing about connecting the existing brand spanking (gorgeous) new brickwork with the oak in the rear bay. Any little change has enormous ramifications on windows and roof, then with steels and oak as well. So it’s good to have as many eyes as possible checking the build to ensure no Grand Designs moments.
The structural oak should go up in the first week of September. That implies the build will be up to roof level. That’s a lot to do in four weeks! We took Russell up the road to pick his brains and have a good look at the larger new-build with a similar design. He pointed out a few good things like some shifting and splitting at the peg holes. It’s comforting to know that he’s doing his best to avoid these things. He said that our structure is a self-supporting piece, and this is different from the facade that is on the larger house. It’s a design departure with a few more chunky bits of oak sticking around, but it is a more honest approach to what the building actually does. Kinda goes with the ethos for the rest of the house.
Wednesday
A cheeky evening visit to check on what can happen in a day.
We’re missing a few super-specials, but Nic will track them downgoing up in the studyhave finally chosen the fireplace so the guys can carry on with the blockworkfront on garage side…… and the plansthe first door in the study at the back …… and the plans
It’s great to see the first dummy doorframe up!
Tuesday
Really? Week 17? The original timescale was 36 weeks. Everyone agrees that was optimistic, but still, we should be almost half way there in theory. Reality is a little behind, but the gap is closing. The biggest landmark is: The Windows Arrive 5 December [capitals necessary]. This is a line in the sand, and I wouldn’t want to get anywhere near messing Martin around! They go in close to last because he doesn’t want to get any plaster, paint or damage on or done to these bad boys. Neither does anyone else I’m sure.
rear bay up to plinth
This week is a great week for progress as the brick work is getting up to the plinth which is one of those details that are not cost effective, require a bunch of extra effort and expense, but which make the house really special.
a lovely set of jointing
The jointing is slightly different in the special bricks to avoid any water collecting and freezing and finding its way into the building.
We’ve got expansion joints in the brickwork too. And you can see the insulation panels pinned to the brickwork using the red pogo-stick ends. These joints sit behind the rainwater pipes that sit in the brickwork nooks and run through the plinth. Complicated brickwork or what?! We’re really pleased with the choice of bricks, and I’m sure the skill in laying all these brings the whole thing to life.
expansion joint in nook
In the background it’s a whirl of decisions. Everyone says this and I didn’t quite realise that it’s as relentless as it is. A real Surrey-Struggles moment I know. Ben, Dave, Justin and Nic are being super patient with our general slowth. It’s serious Scout season as well and half the family was awol planning the trip last week and is currently roaming the wilds of Dartmoor until Saturday. So, just to make myself feel better, we’ve done roof and hanging tiles, a bathroom schedule, preliminary M&E design, garage door, and fireplace (finally, hooray). We’re almost ready to close out the design of the drawing room, the kitchen contractor, and the flooring and joinery schedule including the front door. Just keep swimming.
Been learning Sketchup to get a handle on the fireplace options. We are doing none of these:
Mid-November and it’s getting really really cold. The rental house’s main valve to the ground floor radiators decided to give up the ghost this week just to make things interesting. Not quite a frost on the inside of the windows state of affairs, but it’s certainly cold underfoot when making that first cup of tea in the morning. But this is NOTHING compared to early dark-o’clock onsite.
There is a debate about whether to keep the concrete floor planks and lower the level by reducing the screed, or by replacing the concrete with timber flooring which gives way more scope for changing relative heights. No one is excited about swinging the 1.5 ton planks anywhere near the wood, especially the crane driver. So clearly installation is another issue. Replacing the concrete planks with timber joists would fix the height and installation problems, but we had debated about this many moons ago in the planning stages and decided then that concrete was the way to go to give the building that really solid feel. Is it a compromise to change to timber or just an expedient solution? Or, is laying concrete planks on an oak frame a daft idea? We’ll have a good think over the weekend on which way to run with this: concrete or timber, but everyone is pulling together to work it out. The main things are to be flexible and listen to experts.
The alternative would have been to cut it out of
