Apart from a lick of paint and a recent bathroom, the house is pretty much unchanged since built:
Gas warm-air heating (ducts, and lots of 'em) with electric immersion heater for hot water
Parquet floors to lounge, hallway and dining room which needs resanding, filling and sealing (plus filling the gaps left when we remove the warm-air heating outlets)
1970s kitchen, including sliding-door cabinets!
Our aspirations are:
Immediate - Convert current tiny utili
Well lets say it has evolved and been shaped by the titanic forces of nature and the planning process. Its not quite what we initially wanted and has been compromised and compromised over its various iterations and has sadly lost some of our ‘must have’ features. But it is kinda cute, and we do really like it!
The site is about 1/3rd of an acre slopping up from the road and has a shared driveway to our neighbours at the rear. In the middle of the plot is a 3 bed 1960’s bungalow which
A very very long and difficult history to our self-build that we will compact into as short a space as possible to save readers much of the grief we have been through.
We have always lived in (and renovated) old, cold, draughty and character-full houses, and our last house (a Victorian vicarage) had lots of glass and double aspect rooms and was full of light. We wanted to downsize but couldn’t find anything with similar light and space, and some of the new build ones we looked at
Been a busy few weeks. Following the groundworks, the slab was set out and poured. It was a bit of a warm day, and there was a definite sense of urgency as it went off fairly fast.
Now we've got a local joiner putting a frame up for us. It's being built from I-beams on site. I'd planned this all as best as I could, expecting our posi's next week based on what the supplier told us about lead times. It now turns out it will be another 4 weeks. While I'd rather not leave th
I have this hankering to start a standalone blog, and maybe write an e-book. It needs thinking time.
Back in a month or so, though I will keep an eye on messages.
Scaffold down and windows in...big dose of euphoria....feels like a real milestone. We can now get a sense of the completed project. With the scaffold removed the house now looks far more suited to the plot and we hope our neighbours will be as relieved as we are.
The window install went well. Our windows are Velfac and we opted to use an approved installer as it extended the warrantee to six years. It cost a bit more but the standard of install was good with great care being taken. A
This is the last post in my series, with details of a couple of finishing touches and details of what I bought and what it cost.
Summary
For drive-by readers, the total cost came to just on £2200 including VAT, or about £2500 if the project had replaced everything - I kept the washbasin, vanity unit, storage unit and mirror.
There is also potential to reclaim VAT on the approximate £200 spent on specific accessibility pieces such as the shower seat and grab ra
This post is a brief interlude in my "Accessible Ablutions" mini-project, and will be followed by one more post reporting the costing and sourcing detail of the project.
I found that I needed to hold a hinged shower screen firmly in place against a slopoing ceiling, and needed a custom part.
Through the good offices of Buildhub and @Temp, that was able to be done in a few days to the custom design required. This is a short description of the process, taken from the thread
Since our last entry we've been concentrating of getting the standing seam roof covering on. It's one of those jobs where it would be nice to do someone else's roof before doing your own.
We're using a roofing system from Blacho Trapez, broadly similar to the Tata colourcoat. It requires no crimping and minimal special tooling. It's around half the price of Colorcoat. The HPS200 coating we chose comes with a forty year guarantee. Our first impressions is that it's a quality product that's
Something I ran across today, relating to Grand Designs S 12 Ep 6 - the conversion of a Recording Studio in W11 (Holland Park). The full programme is embedded below.
The project was done in around 2008/9-2011 (ie probably before the recession) by a couple who are a fairly senior City Trader, and an Interior Designer, Jeff and Audrey Lovelock. They bought a ground floor studio flat in Holland Park, which came with a 3000-4000 sqft ish basement, including an .. er .. squash court.
We are now working our way through first fix for the self build.
Our electrician has been busy drilling holes and threading many reels of cables around the house.
The other area where we have made some progress is the ducting system.
I’ve never ordered ducting before and it took me some time to order all of the parts and then have them to delivered to Skye.
This came into two deliveries, both times some of the items were d
Here are a few photos of the refurbished bathroom when done, including the 'ease of use' items such a shower seat, except for a few finishing touches.
(There are a couple of 'before aids added' photos which I have left in.)
There is one more post to follow in this series, which will talk about a couple of final touches, and detail the costs of the project.
[Edit: Added bonus video from the "Recommendations for Bathrooms for Elderly / Disabled" forum thread cre
Progress this week. More photos than words for now. HQ is set up, including the shower.
After felling the trees on site, a few big machines visited to get the logs out.
Leaving the site looking like this:
The last few days have then involved a lot of muck moving and getting decent material out for the tracks and base, leaving us looking something like this:
Next stop, foundations!
Hello folks, finally about to start my new build in Aberdeenshire so thought I would try and document it. I’ll do my best to keep it updated.
It's been a long road to get here but the builders are due to start very shortly so the site has been stripped ready for them.
Electricity is due to go in mid July, Scotframe kit in August and water will be getting dug in after herst.
Below is a photo of the site plan so you have an idea of whats happening.
Couple of photos to sh
Lies, damn lies and building schedules!
Where does the time go! it's been a month since the roof was started a process that should have taken a week...and we're only just ready to put the standing seam roof panels on a month later. More on the standing seam roof in my next blog.
At the time of my entry we were trying to find a roofing team to finish the work. The team drafted into build the roof had had to return to Glasgow to meet other commitments requiring our builder to find anothe
This project has now been going for a week, and should be finished with just under another day of work.
Tiling and grouting has been done, and it is now just to fit the shower, the loo, and install shower screen and those grab handles etc that we have obtained so far. Then it will a case of experimenting and putting the final touches in as the shower is used.
Here are a few slightly rushed photos taken at this stage.
Two runs of pipe installed for the future
At the end of day two ... the shower tray is in. I was planning a moulded non-slip shower tray, but these are proving elusive without a special order so I have gone for a normal one instead and will add a full size non-slip mat.
The only other point worthy of note is that the UFH manifold-and-gubbins are under the stairs, but that a lot of other gubbins is in the garage at the other end, so I am putting in a couple of runs of water pipe in case they are needed later. These will be se
And so it begins ... the refurbishment of my downstairs bathroom to be a shower room.
The self-builder who added an upstairs and extension to the bungalow got a few things wrong, and one of them was that he put a bathroom downstairs, and a shower room upstairs; exactly the wrounf way round for when a frail relative or disabled visitor needs to have downstairs facilities.
So this summer both bathrooms are being overhauled - starting with the downstairs one this week.
We have a lot of roof and the only planning condition we have, is that we use local slate, 18 tonnes of it at a cost of £22k.
So here’s the front roof of the house.
And the rear roof of the house.
A total of 18 separate roof planes in all! Why oh why did I let the architect talk me into this design?
Once the Timber Frame company left a local roofer started to batten our the roofs for our random width, diminishing course roof. Everything was
