The garden is almost done. Mark and Sam have finished off the back path and porch by pointing it all together. Amazing how much of a difference closing in those lines makes. The Contractor is due to return next week and fix the drive in the back amongst other things, so there’s no point in risking putting up a fence while they’re taking up concrete etc. I need to go back there and set a line for this fence over the weekend so everyone knows where they are.
the benches are to keep people from wander in freely
Just a bit of tamping down at the front, some hedging at the back, and voila!
The yellow pipe remains, and hopefully will disappear shortly. I’ve been in touch with Trevor the plumber again whom we’ve asked to cut it to length for the fire pit.
plan
This fire pit is becoming a little like the fireplace: too long to decide on the design, and the installation is now all out of sequence. And Clinton is truly sick of talking about it with me. I had no idea the natural gas option was so dang expensive. My favourite are these cast concrete things, and they’re special because if you make them out of normal concrete, the relatively high water content within the material expands in the heat of the fire, and they tend to go bang in a catastrophic kind of way. So, really nice fire pits are made of a mix of stuff to get the water levels right down….and the price goes right up. Time to investigate options. I’ve thought about making one from the bits of leftover oak and a large bit of stone on top, so I’ve been talking to a guy in Southampton that makes the burners (one of the only UK guys to do this–they’re super popular in the States, why not here??). He’s got me to refine my design with a few important tweaks. Luckily the position of the pipe, which was a complete guess, vaguely works in the plan once we’ve populated it with a likely combination of furniture and safe distances from the raging inferno. Time to spend the cash? Don’t know, jury is still out.
fire pit idea
Trevor is due to send Sid to us back onsite anyway because there are a few plumbing hiccups occurring. You’d think that checking and re-checking before they carry out any checks at all would be the way forward after all the drama in the summer, but sadly, no. Maybe these things just pop spontaneously? Anyway, today’s issue is that the hot water is irregularly tepid sometimes which is most unpleasant after an early run in the -1 ºC. Added to the list are the already noted issues of the throne of a toilet in the master ensuite not flushing with any verve, and the heating controls in the hallway (always off = brr) and kitchen (always on = lava) don’t work at all bearing no resemblance to the temperature on the control panel.
Is this normal to have so many things go wrong, or at least, not quite right?
It’s much more fun to see changes in the landscaping side. We spent this weekend moving Stuff from the front to the back corner to get it off the drive. I’m pretty desperate to get this house looking less like a building site and more like the home we intended to build. This Stuff consists of: lovely old pieces of oak ready to be turned into something fun, lots of unused bricks of various shapes and sizes, tiles, tiles and more tiles, and the extra paving slabs shipped from deepest Yorkshire. We’re still got 9 old (“vintage” right?) railway sleepers and a bunch of aluminium downpipe offcuts out the front too. But Mark and his gang are due to finish this week, so their Stuff will disappear too.
The next job outside is the planting. Structure first. There’s a bit of box blight going around in Surrey at the moment, so I’ve been warned off planting any. Ilex crenata is a good solution, grows about the same pace and will look good, dense and verdant. It’s even called “dark green” which bodes well in an optimistic way. Trees are on the menu too and it’s getting round time to make some orders.
Back to the house, today’s list included phoning:
Steve the electrician–the lights outside are still tripping OMG, and I need yet another date for when he’s going to fit the replacement broken stuff from last week
Trevor–see above
Alyson–where is the building control certificate? trade warranties?
Peter–will he be the next CA?
Toby–has he received Clive’s fireplace drawings?
Graham–a furniture restorer for the kitchen table that is looking a little tired
Luke–when is Envirovent coming to fix the SpaceX-soundalike of our ventilation system
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.
Welcome to Week 62 in our 36 Week project…. It’s all about finishing now.
bathroom niches have their lightstiled flooring is down in the bathrooms, but no shower screens yetfiddly short tiles cut to finish the floor, but no mirrormaster vanity unit has been moved, but no lightsRich tiled the utility splashback .... and started the tiling in the kitchen
looks much more kitchen-like; requests for moral support go unheeded…
Lots of pressure to Buy Things like… doorbells. Have you ever given much thought to them? The button bit can be a nice design piece, and there are many many different types to choose from. But the ringer, chime, sounder, whatever you call it, has three flavours: school bell, electric programmable with a bijillion different “songs”, or an antique from eBay. We went for a chrome schoolbell in the end. Boring, but necessary.
doorbell: brick mounted or doorframe mounted?garden getting cleared graduallytiling and water buttthinking herb garden thoughtsmore herbs: got a recommendation or favourite to share in comments below?horrible scary crack filledsecurity lights installedoak beam in lieu of bricks to support garage installed
There was an area on the back porch where the supports under the structural oak were slightly shy of the windows leaving a 20 mm gap. There was 10 mm tolerance generally for windows abutting to structure in the specification, and the guys managed to put it all on one side, making the 20 mm of air. The windows were installed just after Christmas, and this gap had been glaring at us ever since. One transgression for the Quirky House Police, but it’s filled now and looks much better.
Paul filled the gap with surgical precisionplinth splits for guttering downpipes restored
The bricklayers elevate their work to an artform. I hope that they’ve enjoyed working on this place, because they’ve had a lot to think about. Mind you, this week’s daily quizzes were mostly about war films which really tested my memory of dates, battles and geography. Oh yeah, ….. and what is the only airport in the States with an actual airplane in it? And whom is it named after? But check out the symmetry around every wall and detail as you look at any photo with bricks in. Genius.
study is finished with flooring and electricsmassive patch panel in the utility room to centralise all the data pointsfireplace with temporary buildout, but the room looks miles better with a coat of paintcolours look alright in the kitchen into family room — Dulux Trade is A-OKmaster bedroom detailwardrobe rails inelectrics are getting there one socket at a time, but not sure about the labelling…
We’re moving in on the Thursday of week 63. In theory. Kitchen commissioning on Monday morning, air permeability test in the afternoon. Tuesday is the contractor’s last formal day on the interior. Wednesday is cleaning, and Thursday we’re in.
When we first started this project I had visions of the finished product being presented in a more defined way. I kinda expected a ta-da! moment. I thought we’d have some time to think about the job, to go around with the contractor in a logical way to see if anything was overlooked, to snag it, to rectify the snags, and to move in with a huge smile. As it is, it’s rushed, the project manager is on holiday, the electricians are still (incredibly shockingly and disappointingly) not finished, snagging hasn’t started, the air-test is going on unsupervised and might fail our SAP calcs for us, and there is still a ton of work to do outside both within and outside the contract. Like, there is no drive and no lawn, but these will be done by others. There are no curtains, yet. And, strangely, there is no TV aerial which somehow counts as AV equipment which was conveniently client-specified but not highlighted until now.
There have been many parts of this project when we’ve seen our naive decisions come to fruition, and some have worked out just fab and the product is marvellous. But mostly, I really just haven’t wanted to look at bits and pieces in case we’d made a poor stab at something. I feel far more fear than excitement or pleasure at moving in just now. Maybe it’s just the fact we’re coming to the end of a period of exam hell with the kids and staffing challenges with the business all at once conveniently coordinated with the week we’re moving in. Maybe it’s because it’s the hottest week of the year. Maybe it’s that the budget is starting to burst at the seams. Maybe in five years’ time this feeling of unease and self-doubt will have morphed imperceptibly into something more comfortable, settled and positive. I hope my future self laughs heartily on reading today’s momentary dip in my attempt to retain a consistently high level of relentless positivity throughout this long journey. This future self will be enormously grateful and very happy in our family home that we’ve had built the way we wanted and was intended to provide the centre of gravity for the six of us at least for many many years to come.
Without going into too much drama about tempers flaring, lines of communication being tested, inspections on the edge and deadlines looming, …, despite all this, it’s all mostly going to plan. This week’s post will be mostly pictorial as I’m struggling to write anything at all coherent in the rush to finish this project. Loose ends include all electricals as we haven’t seen a blub a-flickerin’ yet, the entire fireplace concept, some of the big wood pieces from Neil, the sanitaryware, tiling and the drive. On the positive side, the Moldovian chippies Adrian and Vadim are generally fantastic and are busy getting on with doorframe, skirting and ironmongery. Terry and Josh finished the stairs too–I don’t think they’ll be in a hurry to fit any more capping in the hand and floor rails, but Josh remains undeterred, even when faced with a chisel in his hand and a trip to Epsom hospital. Didn’t stop him smiling when he returned to site to finish the day’s work.
The cornice company arrived early in the week and transformed some of the rooms.
awesome coving, but, oops, poor decision on light placementdoes this work around the units?drawing room looking more formal
Finishing touches around the staircase are being decided with things like skirting beading, window/stair boards, and capping under the newels. James is great at making use of extra pieces to create some of the finishing touches. And it’s only when you see these things installed that you can get a feel for what the finished product looks like. Most things have been fantastic, and some require small tweaks, like the window board used on to top the plasterwork in the front bay. We’ve decided that the trim should have a profile more like the stairs, so this bit of boarding will be replaced, but it was excellent to have the flexibility and chance to check out the profile and have the option. This exercise prompted some deep thinking about what exactly we’re trying to do in the space.
is it a window board or a stair board?
Likewise with the trim between the structural oak and the floorboards. Initially, I wasn’t keen to have so many different kinds of oak hanging around, so I didn’t want the trim in at all when we started the finishes. And James’ advice was not to have too many different trims or the whole thing looks cluttered. But now I feel that if each piece does what it’s expected, then it follows the ethos of honest materials in the house, and it should be ok to have a little bit of trim that matches around the house, and it will blend in better in time. We opted for the little bead around the structural oak in the photo. The floors remain protected, and the windows will have a layer of dust on until the final sparkle-clean, so it’s hard to tell what the final finish will be anyway!
beading on the floorunder-newel
Vadim and Adrian have been boxing in pipework and building wardrobes around them. We’ve decided on a semi-complicated painting scheme with the interiors being darker shades of each room’s trim.
Gemma’s wardrobeGillian’s wardrobedouble checking the spec on ironmongery
Looking forward to snagging the kitchen next week. We’ll discuss a few trimming bits, and do a double check on things like the work-surface edge.
discussion piece: is this pencil or bevel?
The bathrooms are looking good, but we’re finding a few things that could have been better designed. Like,…. the door slamming into the unit when entering the bathroom. We’ll have to install a rubber baby buggy bumper on the back side of the door along with advice to tell the boys to be jolly careful without entering their bathroom with too much energy (shouldn’t be a problem, they’re a bit slow int he mornings). Much consultation with Allison in the States and friends in the UK to generate a survey of vanity unit heights in an attempt to get ours right. We’ve decided 900 to top of unit is a good height–a little higher than most, so it won’t be our family keeping the local chiropractors in business.
boys’ bathroom
In a dull moment, the guys found time to remove the plinth they’d lovingly installed before we changed our minds. Our MO seems to be build it, then remove it….
plinthless fire
…. just like the piers!
looks better now
Clinton never really liked the piers in the front; they were only put there to carry the rainwater downpipes into the ground in a clean swoop. So, taking advice from the architect and structural engineer who both said that they weren’t critical to the structure, we decided to take the bold (= expensive) move to remove them. This leaves an obvious problem for the bricklayers who now need to come back and make these areas pretty again. But the overhang looks much less fussy now, and we’re happy with it. At least we were until a giant gaping crack appeared around the first floor cavity trays.
omg
On further advice, we adopted a suck-it-and-see approach, and the whole thing looks pretty stable despite the crack. It hasn’t shifted since it first appeared, so should be ok. After all, there is an enormous great big steel holding up this side of the house, and the roof is all complete as one separate structure spread across the whole building. It SHOULD be ok. At least it is when I close my eyes. And a little mortar in the joint before we move in and all will be well. Right?
Lee, Jamie, Djokovich, and the groundwork gang were back to lay the paving for the patio. Their work was hampered by the water board inspector who deemed it fit to ask the guys to dig the main supply to the house a little deeper. This was an enormous pain which required un-building of the garage and some of the edging stones the guys had laid last week. The inspector didn’t stop there, took a deeper look at some of the work and started going off on other trench work depths, like the supply into the taps in the garden. He even had a go at some of the pipework internally, which never happens apparently. Usually the inspector has a cursory look around near where the water enters the building and leaves the M&E team to get on with things downstream. The groundwork guys have done hundreds of jobs like this without fuss, and the plumbing team was livid by the time the inspector finally passed it all, and all the trenchwork could be filled in. They’d none of them ever seen anything like it. Clearly this house has been jinxed from the start. The guy earned a few choice nicknames around site, and luckily for him some of the spare pieces of wood lying around didn’t get airborne.
high water table in the mains trenchon the positive side, slabs are looking good
We’re even venturing into town to look at furniture and light fittings. Mostly these experiences highlight that fact that neither of us like shopping very much, nor do we like going into town unless it’s work related. We’re much more country-bumpkins these days. Either we’re super boring (likely), or we just dread the time it takes to travel around aimlessly looking at one low-profile uncomfortable sofa after another. I think Clinton was definitely going to lose the plot entirely if he got close to one more Edison bulb singeing his retinas. The best way forward is to continue on our current course of clicking our way through doing most of the furnishings.
The roofers came back to relocate the club tiles and the whole tile hanging face is almost there. There are six rows above the club tiles and six rows below, but it still seems a little low, so I think they’ll be back.
And I haven’t taken a photo of the front door for a while, so just to remember what it looks like, here’s an image out of the winter shadow an in the sun now that spring is here.
Other parts of the exterior of the building are coming along too. The nice weather helps to make the site look good, and the guys are doing a great job of keeping everything tidy. And when they’re in the middle of a job, most of the bits and pieces are kept together and out of other trades’ ways. It’s amusing to see little empires of woodwork, electrical bits, decorating, and piping in different rooms.
artsy wheelbarrowselectrical detritus in the front porchpanels are coming on
The roofers finished the scalloping on the back windows. They’ve only got the garage flat roof and the club tiles to go.
sunny scalloping on the back of the house
The garage door arrived–hooray! The installers were super jolly and put the thing up in a day. There was a massive design moment at the beginning of the project when we had to decide if to make the door high and bespoke as it is, or to make it a standard size with a brick soldier course on top. The higher door keeps the top in line with the tops of the windows along the face, but it was the expensive option, and I hope that you agree that it makes sense to spend the extra cash on the extra height.
door arrivaldoor installed
The plumbing team has been quietly getting on with the boiler and fittings all without any fuss whatsoever. It’s funny to come to site, say good morning to Sid who’s mostly been doing this final bit, and for him to get right down to business with a fast-paced “Now, where do you want this exterior tap?” These guys don’t hang around! But you can see that the services are all ready to go in a happy configuration of geometry.
boiler arrangementtap located on the garage wall
The Sparks have been working hard on the trunking while the other trades are busy in other rooms. They’d rather be cutting out holes for LED down-lights, but this needs doing as well, so now the cables are set in trunking within the coats cupboard. How we finish this area is up for grabs as it’s not plastered. But trunking and plaster don’t usually mix and the whole wall will be painted to seal in the dust, then boxed in to finish it off.
trunking
The kitchen arrived at the appointed hour without fanfare; just a couple of guys who quietly discovered that there was no trolley packed in with the kitchen units. The only solution was to carry each unit by hand, so Artur simply slung them on his back and carried them in. It turned out that he was in charge of fitting the units and most of the appliances as well in the coming week.
that’s the kitchen in therebit of rubble doesn’t get in the waybefore the kitchen arrivesthe contents of the truck land in the kitchen spaceappliances and more kitchen units
Eventually Artur fitted the whole thing single-handedly. I’ve never had a kitchen this nice and it’s a real luxury. Or hopefully it will be if we made the right decisions. I said to Dave onsite this week that when asked if I was excited about all this recent action that a very large part of me doesn’t want to look at it while it’s being installed in case I change my mind or don’t like some part of the design. But the other part of me is jumping up and down inside and really excited about running the family from this little area.
Some bits like the humungous drawers make it feel really usable and very real. I recall Auntie Eileen saying she really hoped that I’d make a good go of the kitchen when we finally got round to doing the house. That was a very kind thought and I hope she would approve of this incarnation.
magic drawersthree days of work and it’s almost all in — amazing
We knew that the overhang on the peninsula was going to be tight with regard to the big dining table in the room, but it’s only now that the units are in that we can line up a mock table to get a feel for the size. One of the things yet to do is site the pendant and LED spots over it. This isn’t easy and requires a fair degree of commitment on table location. We haven’t quite decided where the lights should be, but one thing is for sure: the overhang and the table together don’t provide enough space to get around comfortably, so the overhang will have to go. That means my two bar stools will go too.
burlap mock table
Part of the ironmongery order arrived last week and was installed while we were away. It’s nice to go around and be surprised by the existence of doors. Sometimes it’s the boundaries that make the space feel like well-defined areas. One nice touch was a set of parliament hinges on the family room doubles.
that’a nice hinge
The shower trays went in while we were away too. We wanted the master ensuite tray to be 100 mm bigger than the well was built for, and this was always going to be a problem with the underfloor heating. The idea was to chip out enough of the concrete floor to accommodate the tray while avoiding puncturing the heating tubing set in the concrete. This was a tricky job that James wasn’t too keen on doing. I wouldn’t be keen on it either; I recall the words “catastrophic” and “potential” and “failure” being used in discussions about this bit. But it was done, and done very well as usual, and the trays are all in sitting in their seals of silicon.
shower tray
The decorators started with the Marble White in the bedrooms, and the skirting went in.
white on white in Bed 05
The stairs arrived as well.
newellsbottom treadsCNC’d area to fit treads…… and the bit that fits into it
Lots of decisions behind the scenes, and we’re not keeping up with the pace. The pressure is on and everyone can see the horizon now!
Ben had the drone out and it’s great to finally see the roof in its glory. Here’s a visual progress report from the get go.
6 May 2016
And these….
Tony had the fire on early in the week, so he kindly invited Ben and me to have a look at making balusters. Each of these is completely hand made by drawing out the bar to a point, then curling it very carefully to match the test piece precisely. Incredible work and much labour involved. Tony has Dave in to do the hammering and finishing, and anyone with eyes can see that their years of working together on projects like this make it seem so easy, but in fact it’s a lot of unspoken expertise involved to make each baluster. There are a lucky-13 curlicues that are framed by straight ones going either up or down. Should be amazing to see when it’s done.
The joinery company making the stairs have been brilliant in supplying Tony with scale drawings of each piece. Colin has travelled from Andover to Betchworth (more than once!) to deliver the drawings and talk about the work with Tony so that the joined up staircase between the two completely disparate trades are installed seamlessly at the end of April. Can’t wait!
Tony and Dave working to draw the bar into a pointchecking the curve by eyebending viceforest of balustersa proper working forgesorry, can’t stop taking photos of these
Meanwhile onsite, the wood floor arrived. Usually, they hoist the planks up box by box, but the ceilings are a little high for that here, so they were hoisted up two planks at a time–it took a while.
First the guys prime the floor, then they lay a layer of latex which acts as a barrier between the concrete floor and the wood. They mix this bucket by bucket onsite. Then a really thin membrane of foam is cut to shape, and finally the floor is put on top.
the wood arrived, hooray!primer coatlatex milkmixing gearpouring latex on a primed section of floorspreading around by handGillian’s room with the finished floor
The services are being installed gradually. We’re waiting on the water board to come and inspect its trench, so although James doesn’t like leaving it open for health-and-safety, it has to be left until they drop round. The boiler should arrive soon; the flooring guys need it so some heat can get into the floor to dry it out. So we were very pleased to see the gas company arrive and install the meter in the hedgehog box around the side of the house. After the drama of last week’s engineer unable to install, this took a grand total of 10 minutes and the guy was off. And the three-phase upgrade for the electrics will be in the middle of April.
not a hedgehogready for electrics
The Sparks are in cutting holes in the ceiling. There is so much to this electricity piece, and we haven’t even chosen any fancy fittings yet. Here’s a challenge for you: next time you’re in a place with small LED ceiling lights, go ahead and have a look at the geometry of their placement. The glossy mags always say to hire a light designer because you yourself as a layperson could never hope to achieve a good effect: what you’re lighting, how you’re lighting, when you’re lighting, controls….. The Sparks want things in grids, as do the architects. We’ve opted for a DIY approach to tweaking Dave’s placements just a little in order to centralise some of the fittings around architectural features like doorways and cupboards. I’m no expert at this, and I hope that I will remember fondly this m.o. when I’m not too upset at the finished product but instead, basking in the glow of the thousands of pounds saved that I didn’t pay to the lighting designer. (Fingers crossed, obvs.)
The guys use their laser sights and chalk lines to get the rows straight. This doesn’t please the decorators who then have to wash off the chalk because the dye runs into the paint, especially if the paint is white. Like on a ceiling. Where the lights are. Duh.
takes a day to set outand another couple to drill
The non-herringbone panels on the side of the house are coming together. I had a total 4 am brain-fade about the side panels which are not at 90 degrees, but rather are offset and parallel to each other. I texted James about it suspecting they’d have to rip off the half-laid panel, but he replied with a photo of the plans which clearly show the bricks in parallel. Glad someone’s on the case! And note to self: consult the plans before hitting the panic button.
brick slips
But there are still a bunch of gaps in the design. The biggest one is the fireplace, and Steve came up from deepest Sussex again to speak with Dave and me about how to accomplish what we’re after for the surround. We’ve made it enormously complicated, and probably unfeasible from an engineering point of view. We’d like a floating stone mantle–but how to fix it? Lots of head scratching, and to be honest I’m about to give in to a simpler design. This room was never designed to live in, mostly to look at, and this is disappointing as we should have thought about it more from the start. The windows are too close to the fireplace wall to put units in, and the building regulations put so many restrictions on measuring out non-combustible zones that it’s all very tiresome. We’re at that last 20% that takes 80% of the effort. But it will be beautiful, the workmanship is great, and it’s only complicated because we the clients are trying to squeeze too much in. Much better to simplify, pare back and let the features in the room breathe a bit. Watch this space.
blank wall, blank heads
Another bug-bear is the garage roof. The guys have done a brilliant job at getting the end to just kiss the fence, so the dimensions are perfect. But how to support it is another kettle of fish. The original (built, then unbuilt) brick pier was a thing of beauty, but it didn’t give us very much room to get around. So we’ve opted for an oak post on a smaller plinth instead. In the meantime, there is a slightly bendy Accro holding the roof up at the spot where Terry says holds the max load. But this still leaves us a little short on space to get around. Do we place the final post off the sweet spot either towards the building or away from it and add a stiffening bracket? Can we? Or do we suck it up and just stick a post in?
jury is out on replacement to bendy Accro
Last week’s tile-hanging design query was bottomed out, but this ended up being just a case of making sure everyone was looking at the same revision. The flare at the bottom will be great, and the roofers will fit in the tile hanging when they next have a gap in their diary. It’s a stand alone piece, and not mission critical–which is refreshing!
While the weather improves and we’re thinking about trenches, services and meters, here are some pix of the outside of the house.
roofers roofingground guys diggingback doors shiningready for downpipesmore roofers roofing… on a Saturday!
The problem with glazing bar alignment across the two planes of windows in the front bay that we had back in Week 42 has been resolved. Thank you to the Bronze company that agreed that this couldn’t be left as it was. It’s funny: now that the bars align, you kind of don’t see them any more. Good design kind of disappears.
Doors are on.
welcome…and the side door we’ll probably use more
This isn’t a standard box house, it’s very complicated. It’s also been through three sets of architects, two contractors, and lots of TLC and tweaks along the way. Like Terry designing the kick to the garage roof off the cuff with no plans. Some of the details only make themselves known when things are being fitted, so it’s helpful (not sure Tim and James think so..?) to be able to take time out and be onsite more and more as we race towards the finish line.
Case in point is the downpipes. There is one in the front labelled clearly on the drawing, and it goes right up in the corner between the vertical tiles and the huge two-storey beam. Well, having a drainpipe alongside the oak is a dippy idea as it’s front and centre and visible to god and everybody. But it wan’t not obvious until it was right there. A puzzle and much discussion: we can’t ditch the pipe because a LOT of rain will be flowing down that little section of gully. Water from the valley section and three faces of roof will be chucked down here right next to wood. But it dangling there alongside the wood and block its view was equally lacking. The solution that Spencer suggested as to add a few strategically placed special plastic vertical tiles that you can fix downpipes to on the opposite side of the gutter section, about three feet out from the gable and down the pillar to the east. That way you get your flow, and it’s away from the wood. A super plan on the first floor, but still not great on ground floor, because each downpipe is cut into the plinth at the bottom which is a gorgeous detail, and there isn’t one built in the new spot. I’m sure James will work something out……
looking up the beams and thinking about locating that downpipe
Architrave and mist coats are making the ground floor look more finished every day.
kitchen and family roomkitchen proper: the working areadrawing roomhallway looking northhallway looking southhallway looking upquirky hallway upstairschoosing colours again
khaki mist 3 or patters clay 2?
And ironmongery….? Luckily we’ve found the mecca of hinges and handles, and it’s in Fleet. We have dithered for weeks about finding a match for the bronze windows, much to the annoyance of Tim who simply wants to get the doors ON ferchrissake, but nothing was doing the job. Actually, there is a company in the States that does the job if you want to spend about £1k per doorset. Have not yet won the lottery so clearly not an option. So we’re going for black to match the balusters and to be a little non-controversial. Graham is helping us, and he’s immensely patient with our wavering and our questions.
more choice than most
With all the flooring being laid shortly, James helped us in choosing the exact locations for the ground lights in the hallway and master bedroom. These are meant to light up the oak in a subtle way, but as we’ve not chosen the fittings yet, James left a suitable gap where they’ll go and concreted in around them. He didn’t waste any time: we were there with sections of pipework in the afternoon, and before they’d packed up, the lights were were packed out.
light spot
With deadlines about colours, hinges, ironmongery, garden slabs, light fittings, driveway colours, and fireplace design passing us by, tempers are getting short. We are all working towards the same goal, even though it’s challenging to stay positive and keep all our pointy fingers from taking aim. When things like the long-awaited gas meter are put back as the installer drives away because the job was labelled for the gas board’s subcontractor as a Swap instead of an Installation (it WAS a swap, just a swap for a missing meter, remember?), it gets a little frustrating.
But then you’ll get one of those awesome spring days where everything is fresh and blue, and we’re reminded that everyone on this job is on message about quality, the finished result is gorgeous, and it doesn’t seem so bad. Good weather and more cake… that’ll fix it.
What started as excitement seeing the marble arrive quickly turned into frustration at seeing 50% of the slabs chipped around the edges. They’ve all gone back to base which is a shame.
gas trench
Lots of work done outside this week now that the scaffold is down. The gas installation requires three separate services: one to connect to the street, our guys to dig the trench, the same installation guys to return and connect, and the last bunch is the guys from the supplier to install the meter.
After spending an hour on the phone with the supplier trying to untangle the previous contractor’s paperwork, I discovered that they still had our gas “on” as “live”. This is weird because it’s been capped off for two years with a suitable daily standing charge applied. Hello, refund?! Once they got past that little idea, the next job was to line up their team to come out and swap the meter. This is great because upgrading to a smart meter at no charge is awesome, except… there was no old meter to collect. The previous meter has gone walkies, and the only way to proceed with the swap was to declare the old one “stolen”. You might think there a difference between lost and stolen, but not to the gas board. Their drop-down list only had stolen as a sub-option to missing, so I sheepishly called the police to get a crime number so I could report back to the gas people to complete their form. The short story and a very depleted phone later, is that the connection is due for Friday next week.
We’re having the electrics upgraded from single to three phase which will provide enough for growth if we ever decide to launch rockets from the garden or at least have power to a shed or an electric car quick-charger on the drive. This connection requires coordination between the power network installers who will do the work in a morning and the supplier who will install the meter in the same afternoon. The hidden subtext to this is that this has to be coordinated because while the sparks guys are onsite, the electricity is turned off in the street…. FOR THE WHOLE ROAD. So we’ll be popular then. Hopefully this will happen during Easter break when loads of people are away.
The downpipe drains have been dug out too, and they all lead to the soakaway in the back and the ditch in the front.
downpipe trench
Terry and Josh are working hard on the garage to get it done before the roofers arrive next week. They’ll also need to finish scalloping the lead in the upstairs windows which they can now reach without the scaffold in the way. And they’ll finally tile hang the front of the house.
I’ll give you a little tour now that the plasterers are almost finished.
kitchen pipeworkdrawing room
hallway downstairsNick’s painting will live on the white wall in the family room as seen from the kitchenview from the front entrancehallway upstairsquirky ceiling and skilling lines meet in the master bedroom and hallway
Clive has been applying the mist (under-) coat, and James has been putting up the architrave and skirting.
mist coat, skirting and architravelovely manifold in the linen cupboardlots of oak offcuts to play withbedroom
The last panel of plaster in the single-skinned flank of the upstairs gallery has been approved by the warranty company, so it’s ready for its mist coat too.
the panel that passed
This week was decision week: ironmongery, paint colours, stone for outside, stone for inside, fireplace, joinery. And I haven’t even started on the wardrobes yet. So, armed with an armful of colour charts, I went to buy some sample pots which Clive kindly offered to put up last thing on Friday. We quite like the Polish Pebble, even through it’s really Polished Pebble, but the guy at the shop mis-heard me so now it’s paint from the eastern bloc. I was picturing going to a decorator place, or B&Q at least, and choosing a nail-polish sized pot of paint to take home. But it doesn’t work like that. You need to choose a shop with a Dulux mixing machine where you tell them what colour you’re after, they type it into the machine, and it adds the exact amount of pigment to the base. I bit of a shake, and voila!, you’ve got your tester pot.
list of samples
But the final colour can’t really be chosen without considering Nick’s painting. He’s the colour expert, and I’m very much not. The work isn’t not done yet, and won’t be for another month or so. So a quick visit down to rainy Rye to see him for a painting check-up, a cup of tea and a chat helped to narrow the field, and we’re pretty much there now on the ground floor. The pressure is on to make a good decision before we keep the decorators waiting and set the project back by dithering.
I thought I’d take advantage of the journey that passed such amazing countryside, so I stopped at Leeds Castle to see if I could have a gawp and grab a sandwich on the return trip. I am so used to the National Trust that I just assumed I could grub and go easily. Maybe I’m just naive (well, definitely), but I was surprised to see that it cost just to go in. This clearly wasn’t the National Trust. Not even a coffee shop at the gate. I thought I’d treat myself and stump up for the entrance fee, but quickly put the brakes on when I could finally make out the charges on the board. What’s the maximum price you’d pay for just a peek at the castle where Henry VIII used as a residence for Catherine of Aragon before that all went south, a ham sandwich and a coffee? £5? £10? Well, the entrance fee is a whopping £24.50! Needless to say, my M&S wrap from the service station around the corner was smugly nice, and cheap.
