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General

The end of the beginning

We're back at work. The SIPS team are on the Island and have satisfactory accomodation, and the first load of house is unloaded on site. But before the photos of this, there are the last stages of getting out of the ground and interfacing with the SIPS superstructure.   The site foreman early last week doing the final checks of plinth flatness. To the best of our measurement ability all is good - within 3mm in height and 5mm laterally.   First to arrive: A new toy! I us
  • dnb

On to the dining room (Part 1)

So now the new kitchen is in, it was time to renovate the room which was the old kitchen in to the first part of the dining room (I say first part, as the second part is going to be in an extension which i'm hoping to build next year).       And then the real messy work begins       This is the house that keeps on giving! Found two redundant (but live) gas pipes buried in the plaster on the wall I knew nothing about, to go wit

Small steps and changes of scale

I've not been on site for much of the week because I had plenty of paid work to do, so I left my scaffolders alone. They're getting there. One more morning and we should be good for the first stages of the SIPS installation. Finally the boss has acknowledged the house might not be tiny.   This side stays open for the first few days of SIPS installation to allow acccess for the panels.   Hoping for some reasonable weather for the weekend to get the last few bi
  • dnb

Almost a month in . . .

Things seem to be happening very quickly and progress has gone really well.   The block and beam of the huge extension is coming together now and the focus has been outside, although with the occasional downpour the inside is now half empty with our 1970s bathroom suite finally gone.   In the interim I've sold everything inside, the kitchen, boiler, naff internal doors and even the crappy floor tiles we took off. All copper and rads ready for my dad to weigh in. Have now run

How to Sketch Your New House Design...

For PC   Get irfanview from here.   https://www.irfanview.com/   Get a window grab of the view from Streetview (using Ctrl-Printscreen for current window or Printscreen for whole screen). Or use a photo.   Trim it using the cursor and CTRL-Y (crop selection)   Do an Edge Detect from Image > Effects >Edge Detect menu.   That gives you the edges in white on black.   Invert the image (CRTL-SHIFT-N) to get black on white.

The reality of the Hot Tub ?

... may have been well summarised in a quote on the Radio 4 programme "You and Yours" this lunchtime by a gentleman from the Swimming Pools Association about the current boom in swimming pools.   "What about Hot Tubs?" "Hot tubs are the devil's own swimming pool."   This was known, in almost all its features, to Hieronymous Bosch the artist - 500 years ago.     This is "Tondal's  Vision".   (No, I don't like hot tubs very much.)  

Getting back to work (maybe)

It's been a while since anyone was on site but family. We've done a few jobs in the last couple of months but obviously made nothing like the progress we originally planned. (Management speak would be "rebaselining the programme"!)   All the beam and block is installed and grouted. All the plinth blocks are installed and pointed, placed to an accuracy of 3mm in height and 5mm in the other directions. Hopefully... Waiting now for the SIPS people to mark my homework! All the bu
  • dnb

Kitchen ceiling.

The kitchen has a 10.5 metre steel ridge which protrudes into the vaulted ceiling by 50cm. I also attached the ventilation 75mm pipework along the side of the steel to supply the living room at the opposite end. So a curved ceiling to run underneath the inside of the ridge. A simple explanation is imagining a skateboard halfpipe upside down. I built a frame out of ply with cutouts for batten to run the entire length of the ceiling. I then fitted a layer of 6mm red faced ply to create a curv

2019.

Seemed to spend most of the winter and spring fitting plasterboard.  At times I struggled to keep motivated. About 275 sheets later and still a bathroom and living room to board out even now. The plasterer did a great job, I have great admiration for the skill.      Did some drainage and fitted the Vortex treatment plant and rainwater harvesting tank aswell as the. mains supply to the house as the ASHP arrived ready to be plumbed in.   My dear Father bu

Progress, 2 years later.

In response to @Russell griffiths post about blogs, here goes. It is still 2018. I finished the Tata Colorcoat Urban roof, tricky around the Velux windows and fitting the ridge trying not to get sealant everywhere. No leaks 2 years later. Kwikstage very useful, heavy but a worthy purchase on a long self build.   I made up  one of the roof trusses for the garage and thats where it sat for another year.      Back inside and started to put down 150 Celotex

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

Planning and Design Process - take your time!

Having never thought we'd be in the position of designing a house from scratch, we were overwhelmed by the prospect. Through a work colleague of my partner, we got in touch with an architectural technologist that specialises in passive houses and low energy homes. His style is quite simple and very much what we were after.   We met up, got on very well, and spent the next 9 months designing our future home.   We went through 12 drafts before we were happy. To say we're indeci
  • Conor

Renovation to New Build - oops!

Back in June 2017 we found a house for sale close to us in Holywood, Co. Down - 4 bed bungalow, 115m2 on a large plot on one of the best streets in the town. Within our budget. Couldn't believe it! So we put in a offer at the asking price. Didn't hear anything back. Phoned the agent a few days later and bidding was going on way above our offer... developers with cash. Obviously they saw it a potential site. So, we accepted our loss and moved on. Then, two months later, it appeared back on the ma
  • Conor

Kitchen almost complete!

So this one has been 10 years in the making, which is when I originally built this extension, and not long after i'd built it, the outdoor bunny became an indoor bunny! So the glorified rabbit hutch has now become the kitchen it was intended to be. Worktops just been installed. Will crack on with tap, dishwasher, hob, and oven later this week. Really pleased with it all, just need to choose some paint, but will sort that in the autumn, as I've got the old kitchen to rip out and the room to bare

4 Paddocks and a garden - loads to do

During the year of waiting for the planning refusal, we (or more accurately Peter) has been busy in the gardens, getting things sorted.   The kitchen garden is coming along nicely.  The trees and bushes have settled down and it looks like we are in for a bumper crop this year.  We have 6 IBCs that will be filled over the winter to use in the drier months.   We have an additional 2 IBCs by the house which will collect the initial rainfall, before it is pumped to where we need it in the
  • Sue B

Goodbye and Hello

Phew, today we said goodbye to our house and moved out and said Hello to our new house, approximately 8 minutes down the road - about 6 miles away to a caravan site. With Covid we were able to negotiate a 4 month deal (we weren't due here til 1 July but our existing knackered flat roof started to leak so negotiated coming early).   It's luxury compared to our living arrangements for the past 2 years. We aren't eating, working and sleeping in the same room, have instant hot water, heati

Oops!

We purchased a kitchen - oops!   I've been set on handless, but haven't been keen on the J handles I'd seen and I wanted a mixture of wood handleless and another colour though the other half wasn't keen on handleless. I had in my head orange but I couldn't quite get the shade I wanted without customising it (so decided something neutral and paint the walls would be cheaper) and then DIY kitchens didn't do wood effect handleless although the quality of the base units was better than som

We found - water!

Drama broke out earlier today with the discovery of our water pipe. Discovered by the digger going though it....   A few months ago in the absence of locating our internal stop tap (likely because it's somewhere behind the fitted kitchen units) the water company came out to try and locate the external one. Three house after they arrived....   No.such.luck   They did say it's somewhere between the houses the other side of the bridge and us - but there is a canal and

Bathroom/Ensuite/Outside work 2

In the last few months work on the house was on hold because of the COVID 19 pandemic. With the rules starting to be relaxed we have now been able to make some progress.   A few months ago I posted on BH about being a bit concerned about the bath being a tight fit as it’s 1800mm and the distance between the wall was 1802mm. Not sure how the plumber got it in but happy that it fills the space.     The bath is made from Carronite so it should feel more rigid when sho

Happy Anniversary

Today was our four year wedding anniversary. It was also Day 1 of the builders starting promptly at 730am and as we got the day off work we decided to leave them to it and escape.   Since the cancelled Ideal Home show and home associated birthday plans in March I've been online adding things to my ever growing Pinterest board and my particular obsession has been a bath and although we had done some browsing before lockdown I hadn't seen anything that really caught my eye.   

Now the fun/hard work begins

<drum roll>.....we have our planning application approval! yay!!   I was really expecting a long drawn out process but pretty much a month after we hired our planning consultant we got our approval.    I'm pretty gobsmacked to be honest but we're over the moon. can't believe it all happened so quickly.   I had discussions with the planning consultant about what we were willing to compromise on and what we weren't. we also determined what we could potentially b

Twiddling our thumbs

With the lock down continuing it’s been hard to keep our enthusiasm levels up without the required supplies to continue any major projects. It’s been a case of “what can we do today” picking off tasks.   The gas boiler needed to be plumbed in, nice easy job as screwfix and toolstation were operating click and collect. Good to get a job ticked off.   Our electrics had got to pretty much second fix stage, so we ordered an 12 way RCBO consumer unit, sockets and isolator switches

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