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Blogs

God is in the Details

The Perfect Bin Store

I know there is no such thing, but this blog is supposed to be about Details.   How to build an attractive looking bin store to deal with dustbins that breed like Statutory Consultees in the Planning process?   Here is one option used locally. They have used traditional perforated blocks that we are all used to from the 1970s.     Here is something similar from Kevin McCloud's The Triangle development, using Gabions.   (Photo Credit)  
God is in the Details

An Excellent Modern Terrace Plan

I thought I would post a plan of a terraced house I ran across recently.   The small estate of houses was built in 2004. Typical but pleasant modern houses, but this 2.5 storey terrace has a notably efficient layout.   In the overall footprint of 5m by 9m (including external walls) includes 1047 sqft, and includes:   Large lounge 12' x 16'. Dining room 8' x 10' attached to 10' x 7' kitchen Three double bedrooms (one ensuite) Family bathroom
An Orkney Build (in ICF)

Part 17 - Kitchen, Utility and Tiling

Having gone through the process of considering then discounting travertine as our floor covering of choice, we eventually settled on a porcelin tile to cover those areas (kitchen, utility and vestibule) that were not having oak flooring laid. Unfortunately for us, the person who we believed was going to be doing our tiling (and does virtually all of the builders tiling), at the last moment refused to undertake the work in our house.  Quite why I've not been able to establish, nor has my builder.
Scooby Cottage renovation.

New floors and a new stud wall - shame about the ceiling....

We seem to have made huge strides in the last two weeks with both of us spending a good amount of time at the house.  The pipes have been laid ready for the radiator as well as the lights for the downstairs lights.     To try to get the rooms ready for skimming, we needed to sort out the bedroom floors.  they were a mish mash of old boards, some damaged where we'd lifted them (tongue and groove is hard to lift without lifting them all).  So we took the decision to replace t
A house! A house! My kingdom for a house!

Act VII - Internal Examination

We were making good progress with the architect; we had agreed on the new external look and received an updated internal floorplan, which was a big improvement over the layout that came with the plot.   We received the first draft from the architect on 7th July 2016, and agreed on the drawings to submit to Planning on 18th August.   During those 5-6 weeks, my wife and I sat with the plans, "walking" through the house, working out how we’d use each space, and going back to the
A house! A house! My kingdom for a house!

Act VI - Scene II - The Consequences of Space

Based on our brief, our architect had taken the original designs that came with our plot, utilised the same house footprint, and had come up with a new set of designs and internal floor layouts.   We had two choices for the external design - a flat roof or two mono-pitched roofs. After a little discussion between my wife and I, and with to the architect, we agreed on the two mono-pitched roofs design.   The house to the west of us had an almost flat roof (they initially submi
A house! A house! My kingdom for a house!

Act VI - The New Design

The first decision to be made with the new architect was how to change the external house design to remove the lack of head height in the roofspace, but stay within the existing footprint.    In the napkin sketches, the architect had suggested two mono-pitched roofs to replace the existing dual-pitched roofs and we immediately liked that design. However, he didn’t immediately just go with that design and at the start of July 2016, he sent us through a couple of options, one with a flat
A house! A house! My kingdom for a house!

Act V - Selecting an Architect

Its nearing the end of May 2016, and we’d owned our plot for 10 months. In that time we had:   Pretty much decided on a builder, although we’d not signed anything contractually Cleared around 1000 tonnes of soil off the site Found out that the approved plans that came with the house were unworkable for anyone whose ancestors originated  from somewhere other than The Shire, Middle Earth Come to the conclusion that while architectural technicians are great at CAD,
Scooby Cottage renovation.

Lights, ceilings and skips full of wood......

Well the kitchen wall has gone and we love the extra space - shame its only for a while till the bathroom wall gets put back.  Our neighbour needed somewhere to store her old sofa and asked if we could keep it for a while so the room is now half full with that.  It gives us somewhere comfy to sit in front of the wood burner but it is a pain wehen we have to move it back and forward.  Luckily we are concentrating on the upstirs so its not getting moved often.   Most of the last couple 
A house! A house! My kingdom for a house!

Act IV - Scene 2 - Can You Dig It?

I just realised that I missed a couple of things out from my previous post.   In December 2015, a boring rig was on site to do its thing for a mineral report. This was required (in addition to the coal authority report) to identify whether there were any coal seams in the area, and also to get a general view of the underground minerals which would feed into decisions on the preferred foundation design for the structural engineer. This was arranged through the builder.   The d
A house! A house! My kingdom for a house!

Act IV - Progressing the Design

It’s September 2015. We had our plot, we had approved planning permission, we had a builder who was about to start a build in the plot next door to ours and who had provided a build estimate that fitted with our budget. What could possibly go wrong?   18 months later, and I’m still not sure I can adequately answer that.   On the positive front, the 120 year old Farmhouse we’d put on the market a few months earlier had sold for a price we were very happy with. We were less enamour
A house! A house! My kingdom for a house!

Act III - Buying the Plot, Wayleaves and Servitudes

It’s May 2015 and around 4 months since we first saw the plot and 3 months since we decided not to buy it. There were various reasons for this:   The was a train line running along the rear of the plot, serving the local power station There was a BP pipeline running through the border of our plot, imposing a 3.5 meter no build zone on our plot We’d never done anything like this before. We were not self-builders. Buying a plot was for people on Grand Designs or Building
A house! A house! My kingdom for a house!

Act II - To Buy or Not To Buy

In my previous post, I explained how we came across our plot when out walking close to where my mother-in-law had moved over from Dublin.  It came with full planning permission for a modern house built into the hill, as shown on the boarding on site. Interestingly, the boarding was from a local builder (which I’ve blurred out here)     This is the image shown on the boarding:     Here’s another sample image of the house:     “Our” hou
Construction in Cornwall

It's Dry, and wet!

Finally got watertight after much fighting with Velfac doors, wrestled with insulation, polythene, underfloor heating, shuttering for liquid screed, access for 3x concrete trucks. Anyway the pumped screed was finally completed today and this has always been a major milestone in my mind. It also happened to coincide with the day the scaffold came down which has put today up there with the best days of the build so far for me.    Sitting back with a brew now enjoying the moment after hav
A house! A house! My kingdom for a house!

Act I - Finding a Plot

Prior to purchasing the plot we’re planning to build on, we lived in a 120 year-old single-storey Farmhouse sitting in 1/3 acre plot with lovely views looking down onto a loch a few hundred meters down the valley. We loved living there, but with our daughter heading off to university in Autumn 2014, we realised that we did not need a 5 bedroom house, and the annual maintenance was expensive both in terms of time (tending to the gardens) and money (regular replacement of the slate tiles due to th
A house! A house! My kingdom for a house!

A Kingdom For My House!

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse - Shakespeare’s Richard III, Act V, Scene IV   Hello, and thanks for stopping by.   Firstly, apologies for the title of this blog.    I can’t really say that I’m a big fan of Shakespeare, but I was struggling to think of a title for the blog, and, like Shakespeare himself, I do like a play on words.    By way of explanation, for those not from Scotland, the region of Fife (the location of our plot) is known as the K
An Orkney Build (in ICF)

Part 16 - Joinery finishes

It's been a couple of months since my last update, during which time we have (almost) finished work and moved in.  In this entry I'm going to talk about the joinery work.   As readers may recall, our UFH was switched on 2 weeks before Christmas, which meant there was very little activity on site until the builders came back after their Christmas fortnight.     The joiners were first back, and got to work straight away laying around 105m2 of engineered oak flooring in the main
Sips and stones may break my bones...

Founds in.... and lessons from Buildstore.

So we ended up with 2 builders in the running. One who has built SIPS before but who was quite negative, (saying his guys wouldn't like the travel, his masons wouldn't like the reclaimed stone and his roofer wouldn't like the slate... he was also not happy with how he'd get pallets of the stone to 1 side of the house where it's near the boundary) and the other who had a "nothing is a bother" attitude, and an excellent reputation locally. As it happened, the second one also had the most competiti
Tennentslager

Shed photo diary

Just in case anyone is interested in making their own shed, I thought I'd put the pics all in one place. I was given 34 sheets of 18mm OSB so it's super sturdy and otherwise I spent £500 on timber and another £100 for ironmongery and roof felt. And as ever my time was free...   Used mostly old 5" posts dug in and secured with postcrete. There were a few comments that these will rot over time but I'm hoping they will stay fairly dry as they are covered by the shed.
Wee Hoose on the Croft

Clad tidings...

So the roof is now totally finished- was a beast of a job and having finished the ridge I felt as though I had been riding a particularly fat horse all week. Physically tough doing it without help and using just a ladder, but I'm impressed with the corrugated steel and would happily use it in future. I would seriously consider it for wall cladding as well, as it was much quicker and not any more expensive compared to my larch.   I had made a start on the larch wall cladding a few month

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