Tidying up the outside

All the bathrooms are being prepared for the underfloor heating and the 'hot rocks' floor from Barefoot. There is already some substantial wood on the floor but it is being reinforced with 12mm marine ply, to give rigidity to the flooring.



From the lake, all the 'green' bits are now gone, and its starting to look like a finished house. This is the 'estate agents' view as my brother in law likes to call it, taking in the lake. You can't see the road though!




And here we are starting to tidy up the front of the house, this came as a bit of surprise for Heather, as I had only mentioned to Bob the digger man the evening before that I was thinking of taking out all the old shrubs, which had given us some privacy, but hid the views to the lake. Next thing - Bang - all gone, and I forgot to mention it to Heather. Oh well, I guess in the end she will hopefully see the funny side of it :-)

Oops forgot a bit

I found some pictures on my phone, I forgot I had taken, which should be a couple of sections back, but as I can't figure how to edit old posts, it can sit here instead. The top attic room is divided into two sections, and one of these will be a 'cinema' room. This is the frame that will hold the fixed screen, which is around 99" diagonal, in front of me is the HDMI cable that is threaded through the ceiling, and all the speaker cables are due to go in. The longest stretch I can get is nearly 5m from projector to screen, so that just works out about right with the Infocus Projector that we are using.



The underfloor heating finally went in, laid on top of Kingspan insulation boards with clips to hold them down, a serious amount of pipes once you counted the rest of the downstairs. This is the kitchen and snug areas, all ready to go. The rush is to get the floors ready for installation of the barefoot flooring, and then the kitchen, which are due in mid July.

The kitchen is fully plastered and the screed is now complete, with the underfloor heating in place - it all looks so much neater. We decided to extend the ceiling to accomodate the cooker hood, so the ducting is neatly hidden away, and with a set of 6 spotlights and a slightly different shade of paint it should look really good.




And here it is painted - it doesnt really do it justice, it looks much better when you are standing in the room. The flooring is due down soon, so all the finishing touches need to be in place in the downstairs rooms. The ceilings are all painted as well, with no marks about where any of the lights are going to go - but I am told Tim (the electrician) knows exactly where everything is!

In the corner is coiled up electric cables, ready for the kitchen, and in the middle the pole sticking up is the gas pipe, and there are also a couple of conduits to bring the electric into the middle of the room.





Here is the lounge, ready to paint, with all the flooring complete.

The house is now all plastered out, and the second fix is going in for the joinery, the windows look great, and the curves around the ceiling look neat and tidy. All radiators are now fixed, and as you can see from the pile below, all the fittings are starting to be delivered on site ready to go.


The doors are going on - these are one of a couple of sets of double doors, where we wanted the light to come through to the hallway. At one point I thought we may have to use solid doors, after the inspectors wanted every hallway door to be a fire door, but we found a glass from Schott that was rated well enough to use, so these are fire rated glass doors! And very very heavy. They look black, as we have covers over them on the other side to protect them.




Upstairs again we have gone with Oak doors (Yoxall I think) which give the house a more traditional feel, with softwood architraves. This picture is the door to the landing, wardrobe door and the open Bathroom door. All skirtings are now fixed upstairs, interestingly all MDF based, which everyone seems to rate better than what I would consider a normal wood skirting.

Gutters

One of the areas of overspend was the guttering, we started with plastic guttering of the black variety which was on budget, and then we saw an imitation cast metal (plastic with bumpy bits) gutter, which I thought was pretty ok - and then we saw a good deal on Aluminium guttering (good dela being relative in this case) and I must admit, even given the extra cost it did look so much better. While I was still deciding Heather went and ordered it anyway, and it is the DB's.

These are the bendy bits, and the straight bits are in the next picture

We also had all the underfloor heating put in, and the boiler, which all comes into a cupboard in the utility room - all wireless with an outside sensor, so in theory we should have a constant temperture to match that outside. Each room will have its own control, but I am not sure we will use it like that

Well its some 6 weeks since we have posted anything, mainly because of Holidays and slow progress on site, but things have moved on a pace, so it seemed a good time to show where we are.

Long gone are the green bits, now all the brickwork is finished, and the sandstone Quoins look really good - very subtle. Here you can see the peaks finished and the nice little finishes like the sandstone block within the peaks. The scaffolding is up for another week or so to finish some adjustments to the Chimney (Heather wanted another 3 courses of bricks put on) and just to tidy up the brick line.





Also the front is being cleared, and the window covers have come off, so everything seems a little lighter

From the back of the house you can see the lintels in place and most of the brickwork is now complete, apart from the peaks. The botton left wood panel is there to allow the builders access, and the doors will be fitted once everyone has stopped going in and out with wheelbarrows etc.

The front of the House is looking better, and hidden away under the scaffolding you can just see the sandstone arch above the front door, there is a second one due to be fitted above the window as well, to match.

Inside the house the plastering out continues, with most of the rooms now complete - and starting to dry out. Its strange how the different plaster colours, from wet to dry change the size of the room, the dry light coloured rooms look fairly large now, and you can see where everything is going to fit, well hopefully.

The fireplace is under way. Here you can see the brick sides, and then pieces of plasterboard either side - this will be where the fireplace sits, so you will see some brick and then the brick interior. There is an Aga Wenlock going in here. The little bit of metal you can see is where the woodburner will connect into, and the rest of the chimney is made up of a Pumice liner which will go up inside the Chimney breast, and this is surrounded by small pumice stones.

You can see a better view of the brickwork from here, and the piles of dirt, which will be used for landscaping once we work out the best way to finish the front area off.

We are now looking at the landscaping - and part of the tidying up that needs completing, is the Leylandi hedges.  They have got a bit spindly, and have big gaps at the bottoms, which will need sorting to give some privacy.

We also seem to have some dead areas on the trees as well, so the plan is to replace some of the area with a wall, but keep as much as we can in place. so partly wall, which steps between 2.2m and 1.8m, as it goes along the boundary, the back to the Leylandi hedge.  Should look nice when its done, but it wasnt in the budget!

The wiring is nearing the end of its first fix, and finally all the strands are coming together down by the consumer box.  You can see the large black armoured cable which is for outside, the rest are the electric cables from around the house - and yet to join the mix is a pile of cat6 cables, so a fair bundle of cables to sort out.

All  the first fix plumbing is now complete, and next step will be the underfloor heating for the ground floor.

The bricks are coming along, now the first level is complete, but with all the scaffolding and polythene protecting everything its really difficult to get an impression of how it will look, but so far it looks great and we are pleased with the choice of bricks.

Bricks and Plasterboard

 Well the sun is shining, and we are finally making progress on the outside.   Here is a view of the house from across the lake - still very 'timber frame' green, but hopefully not for longer!

The 'shoulder' has been built and down the side the bricks are pretty much as far as they can go without the Quoins, which arrived this afternoon.

Here are the Quoins and sandstone for the windows, we have gone for a local reconstructed dark sandstone, which hopefully will match really well with teh bricks.

Inside the plaster board and kingspan is going up - and the rooms which seemed large as timber frame, smaller with the insulation, and then bigger again with the plaster are finally taking shape.  The Electricians are off this week, so not all the plasterwork can be done, whilst we wait for the cables to be put in, hopefully completed by the end of April.

Finally the large center window in the hallway is taking shape, although with all the scaffolding and polythene protecting the frame, its very difficult to see the view and light coming through.

Bricks - at last the bricks start to arrive. An initial delivery and hopefully the brickwork starts this week!

After what seems a week or two of no movement, everything is starting to move forward again.  The plasterboard and kingspan insulation panels are being delivered, now the first fix plumbing is complete, we are just waiting for the electrician, which I hope will be in the next day or so.  The bricks get delivered next - the initial 10,000 spread around the house, and bricking starts next week - 10 weeks roughly to finish.  We are getting a nick name as the 'Green House' locally, so it will be nice to see some bricks covering it up!

The guys have been spending their time doing what must be one of the worst jobs in the house, installing the insulation, which just gets everywhere.  Now the rooms are taking shape and everything is eerily quiet, as the fibregalss absorbs all the sound.  This is the loft space getting the treatment.

One of the back bedrooms, you can see the Kingspan insulation panels on the eaves

And finally Stuart and Steve have finished the roof, and it looks great - all tiles and capping is in place, and we just need a little rain to wash off the dust and dirt.  From the road the slate gives the roof a nice depth, and you can see the thickness and texture of the slates, so very happy with our choice!

The Roof is coming along

The roof is slowly coming along - The eaves have been painted the same colour as the windows, and we have extended them slightly so that you can look up and see the wood.   The three dormer windows now are all tiles as per this picture..

This is a side view and shows the part hip of the roof.  The planners would not allow us a full hip, and the alternative was a normal ridge roof, so we got a compromise of the part hip - It looks OK, and gives the roof some shape.  This is the view from the front, half way up on the scaffolding.

...And the side view, still half the ridge tiles to put on

And finally the rear, pretty much all the tiles ready to complete, hopefully all done and dusted by the end of the week - The weather has been great so that has helped no end.

 this is a side view - the front Apex's look great and we are really pleased with the choice of tiles - they have a 75 year guarantee, which will outlive us!

Whilst it all seems a bit slow day by day, all the little internal and external jobs are moving on. 

The insulation for the walls was delivered this week, so we have lots of different style of insulation all over the ground floor, and once the first fixes are done, then in it goes!

This is the Kingspan insulation panels for the outside facing walls

..and the plumbers have been in doing their first fix as well.  For the first time we needed accurate locations of all the sinks, taps, waste and shower units so that the piping could be run through the floors.  I was a little concerned over the holes they drill to run the pipes, but once the insulation is in place, hopefully the noise will stay to a minimum.  Here you can see the pipes to the utility room sink (hope we dont decide to move it!) and in the distance the radiator pipes.

We had not really put a lot of thought into the radiator positioning, so we have gone with the recommendations of the heating engineers, and for the most part put them under the windows.  

The size of each radiator varies, and according to the room size, as to what size or how many panels the radiator has.  Because we have underfloor heating downstairs we only have the upstairs to worry about for now.

All the Radiator pipes are run as plastic click and fit, but when they exit out of the walls, then they are copper fittings, so they look nice.

Here you can see the pipe runs through the ceiling