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About this blog

This is a blog to record our progress and experience of building a new house in the highlands. The purpose of building is to give us somewhere to live on-site where we work in the woodland.

Entries in this blog

Finishing

Finishing up

As predicted, progress has been a bit slow. We've been working away on internal joinery/finishing and a bit of outdoor landscaping when the weather allows (in-between baby-management and working). We got our building warrant completion cert. and VAT reclaim back about a month ago which has also helped.   Costs For reference, our finalised costs were just shy of £1300/sqm including all professional fees/admin, site setup, construction and fitting out costs. I think this is a fair r
jamieled

jamieled in Finishing

5

Beginning of the end!

There's been a considerable hiatus in both blogging and building. Looking back, my last post on November 22 last year was explaining how we were finding it tricky to make progress and that my wife was due to give birth to twins in early Jan this year.   Little did we know that about 24 hours after writing that post, said twins arrived 7 weeks early necessitating a fairly urgent trip to Glasgow, first for my other half and shortly after for me to be present at the birth. For medical rea
jamieled

jamieled

4

Air test

Only a short update for now and a distinct lack of photos. I'll put something more interesting up in the next week or so. Suffice to say that combining work with trying to get to completion has been quite difficult. Throw into the mix that my other half is shortly due to have twins and you understand why I'm often getting comments like 'do you ever think you've maybe bitten off a bit more than you can chew?'.   One milestone recently was getting our air test done. I've decided to write
jamieled

jamieled

11

Lockdown progress

We were pretty lucky to get a big plasterboard delivery the week before lockdown. The inside is now boarded, taped and painted.       The bathroom floor has been tiled. A wee thanks to @nod for pointing me in the direction of ditra. Floor seems solid enough and looks neater than I thought it might.     The water treatment has been plumbed (thanks to @PeterW for the plumbing advice). Needs a bit of refinement to make it look more aestheti
jamieled

jamieled

2

Glazing, cladding and insulation

It's been a while since I last updated this, but we're slowly making progress. Since the completion of the roofing in November, we've mostly been cladding, the joiners fitted the doors and windows, we boarded the inside and last week the cellulose got blown in. It's reassuring how well the house retains the heat from a small portable heater, unlike anywhere else I've ever lived!   Bit of a delay in the cladding due to me underestimating both how much we needed and also how much we disc
jamieled

jamieled

2

The roof

I'm posting this as a single blog entry for a number of reasons. One as it's the biggest bit of work we've done without professional help. Two as sheet roofing seems to be a topic of interest on BH and three because this stuff was hard going, with minimal information available on fitting guidance, so hopefully this might help others.   We are using eternit profile 6 sheet roofing. It is fibre cement board and we initially chose it due to some perceived benefits over wriggly tin (princi
jamieled

jamieled

8

Frame progress

The last week or so we've been blessed with pretty nice weather which has allowed for good progress on the frame. We hired in a hiab lorry for a morning to help with lifting the gables, ridge beam and roofing.   As everyone probably finds out, now we start to get a better sense of the size of the house and how it sits in the landscape.   SSE came in the other day for our grid connection. Those who have been following our progress might remember this was quite pric
jamieled

jamieled

3

Foundations, frame and posi joists delays

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
jamieled

jamieled

10

It starts!

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!
jamieled

jamieled

2

Trees!

Since the last blog entry we've been working away at co-coordinating the paperwork for the building warrant . But progress is slowly being made. Last week we heard we've been lucky enough to get a 50% grant towards our grid connection costs, which is a big help. Anyone else who's thinking of applying, feel free to get in touch if you want to know more about it. I think you need to sit within SSE's (North Scotland) area.   As part of our build we're removing quite a few conifers, the co
jamieled

jamieled

13

Planning permission granted!

Rather surprisingly our planning permission was granted at the end of last week. It turned out to be easier than we'd thought and a good few weeks before the planning authority were required to make a decision. We have a few conditions, some tree related as we're surrounded by them and one or two of the usual suspects related to foul drainage etc.   As there's no progress on site, we've been doing a bit of woodland restoration (the main reason for building a house here). As I know you
jamieled

jamieled

8

Draft plans

We've got some initial ideas together, image attached.  For anyone interested, we've used an architect to help us.  The picture roughly shows the situation, the current plan is to take out some of the conifers in the background and place the house there, replanting some other areas with natives.   To give the attached a bit of context, this is a house which allow us to work/restore an area of woodland, hence why the main entry is through the utility room.  Overall we're looking for a f
jamieled

jamieled

14

Initial ideas

We're at the beginning of the self build process, up in the Highlands.  We have a site that has full planning and we have quite a few ideas, so for now it's cracking on with a lot of research.  We originally acquired the land as a bit of an exercise in woodland management, specifically with the long-term aim of developing native woodland and productive timber (though we might not see it in our lifetime).  The planning is almost a bonus,  living on site will make the woodland worl easier. We
jamieled

jamieled

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