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I am really hoping that this will be the penultimate blog on our renovation! The Kitchen is finished (apart from a couple of things) and the place is really starting to look nearly finished. As we aproached Christmas, we decided to have a nibbles and drinks for the neighbours on Christmas Eve, to give everyone a nose around and say hi properly. we say hello as we pass but thats usually as far as it goes. It was a good thing to do as we then had the incentive to crack on with the tiling and finish the kitchen as well as tidy the place up. The OH did two runs to the local tip with his car choc-a-bloc with wood/plasterboard/rubble. We think there should only be one more tip run before we sell - unless we can just keep adding it to the wheelie bin. He had a huge session in the cellar with his DeWalt Chopsaw and chopped up all the spare wood into little bits for the woodburner. All the treated stuff went to the tip but he filled a builders bag! Then he tidied up the cellar and took quite a lot of the stuff home - we're hoping that we will not need it as it will be a pain to bring things back. He also fixed the handrail into the cellar and rubbed down the paintwork before giving it a coat of paint. what a difference a lick of paint makes! So here it is ready for the neighbours. The kitchen flooring cleaned up really well and once we had coated it in Topps Tiles Enhancing Oil, it looked great. we also used the oil on the fireplace, which has eventually had the back painted too. Still not sure about whether to fit a mantle over it?? And this is the view from the lounge corner into the kitchen. before it was a very tight, solid right angle corner but opening it up has made such a difference. the light from the front door gets into the middle room and I love the way the view opens up. The oak posts are great - still deciding whether to oil them or leave them as is...... So now I have to get on with the coving in the lounge and fixing the stone fireplace. We have always planned to use bamboo flooring on the ground floor but now we are having second thoughts. Our Interior designer (sister in law) thinks we should just put carpet down. It will be cosier, possibly cheaper, and means we can get on with fixing the skirting without worrying about gaps due to the uneven floor. The carpet will cover any gaps. Hopefully the next post will be all the finished photographs. And hopefully it will be in the next month................................... or two.......................

What a late Christmas present, came through today!!!!!............. Wokingham Borough Council, in pursuance of its powers under the above Acts and Regulations, hereby Grants Permission for the above development to be carried out in accordance with the application and the accompanying plans submitted to the Council subject to compliance with the following conditions, the reasons for which are specified hereunder. Many thanks for all your help and advice, I was a bundle of nerves when i hit this site but everyone of your replies really helped. Thanks again, have a good new years eve and like the great Arnie, i'll be back...soom

For those that may have missed it: https://www.ebay.co.uk/deals?_trkparms=%26clkid%3D707877382797726552

Not sure whether it was flagged before or whether there is a catch but right now Kindle edition of Spon's Architects' and Builders' Price Book is £30.50 on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B075V3V7QB/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1514478362&sr=8-1

Hello, A piece of 'legislation' I wasn't aware of. https://www.righttobuildportal.org/?utm_source=Custom+Build+Strategy+Main+Database&utm_campaign=f0c0a00506-NOV_2017_PROFILE_1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c5b24ee15a-f0c0a00506-176850693 This info came on an email today, I guess via the people behind Buildit magazine and the Custom build strategy team ( NSB+RS) in Swindon.I assume that's all Castle Media! All very interesting and poignant. I did send them a copy of my book 'Self build home...the Last Thing you need is an Architect' but sadly not a peep. Perhaps they are inundated with literature, or believed the book to be full of b+ll-sh+t., but no 'Thank you, but no thanks'...No matter, it is selling anyway. I freely admit it's not a technical book (there's enough out there, including their own establishment, not to mention, 'The green building forum' if you really want to get into sums and err 'Dense definitional Thickets' to quote Amory Lovins.) The book is more a design check-list, don't forget and why don't you consider? thinking about space, ;light, circulation...all things architectural, and getting more wow factor value and character...and a few references and reviews of great design books.

I've just committed to Deta slimline for our fittings. TBH, they feel better than I expected for the price, and are guaranteed for 25 years so should be fairly robust. Should start fitting a few at the weekend so will know better then.

Got further than I thought with the tiling and got the mirror on the wall!

See section 3.3.4 (b) "Work closely connected to the construction of the building". Includes driveways. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-708-buildings-and-construction/vat-notice-708-buildings-and-construction I don't see a problem reclaiming the matting as hardcore isn't shown on plans either and that can be reclaimed. I haven't used gravel retainers but have used concrete "reinforced grass" blocks.

Been there .... Bought the cheapest fan possible with overrun, and just took the timer circuit out and stuck it into a box in the attic inline with my big new centrifugal fan. Quicker and cheaper than upgrading the fan.

I think step one would be to increase the timer on the fan to run for 20 minutes after the person leaves the bathroom. If you want to draw air in, then perhaps trim the bottom if the door by 6-8mm (?). The issue I have had with HR fans in bathrooms is that the air coming in, even though it has most of the heat in it, will still be cooler than that going out and will be perceived as cold by a person in the shower. Ferdinand

more insulation above the ceiling.

Dag Off

Mind, doesn't the whole self build process make you realise how this country is choked by red tape? Some control is sensible, but the bureaucracy is way out of hand now.

Also I think if you didn’t have to pay upfront You would get a much better service and final product

Yup...

Getting the feeling the LPG joke tanked....

Magnet kitchens...very attractive...

The closest I've found to a RPi, in terms of price and performance, but including a SATA port, is the Banana Pi, or the Banana Pi M2 if you want a SATA port and WiFi/BT, like the RPi3, To all intents and purposes the Banana Pi is about the closest any of the cheaper SBCs come to emulating the RPi, and will run Raspbian, if that's your preferred flavour of OS. Still no RTC, though, but adding one via I2C is as easy as it is on a RPi, or you can just use a time server if the unit happens to have an internet connection. TBH, just having a SATA port makes the world of difference, as it means getting away from having to boot from an SD card, or via a slow USB 2.0 interface, and allows better control of the filing system. At £32 inc VAT for the Banana Pi, or £35 inc VAT for the Banana Pi M2, there isn't much of a price difference with the RPi 3 either. The main snag is that the board is physically a different size, so won't fit in cases designed for the RPi.

It isn't. In the end I had just too many other things to do to buy one of these and have a play, so I am running on an RPi + SSD config as discussed here: I am still unhappy with the RPi -- only 1Gb RAM, no USB3 or SATA. I run my SBCs as a minimal server instance (e.g. dietpi). The main outstanding issue is the SSD support over USB in Linux, as the USB drivers don't currently pass through the ATA TRIM command to the SSD controller.

May 2016 Nov 2017

Things that worked Getting into the foul drain by having external soil pipes. I knew our levels were going to be very tight, but until we made the final connection, we were unsure how tight. We had measured the invert level of the drain we had to connect to (which was about 12m from the house) and concluded that internal SVPs were not going to work without a pumping station somehwere. So we introduced external Soil pipes on either side of the house, which would not be visible from the front. In the end, we had about 10mm to spare. This saved us in the region of £3k, as well as avoiding the pain of having to do regular pump maintenance. Always use gravity if you can! The MVHR. With easijoists, it is very easy to install an MVHR system and I think all the benefits far outweigh the costs. No bathroom fans to deal with or trickle vents that lose heat. A managed passive ventilation system that virtually no maintenance is an essential. But you do need good levels of airtightness. Underfloor heating. Although we haven't moved in yet, we've had the heating on a tickover setting and it's clear it is going to be fantastic - consistent, controllable, uniform heat throughout the house Things that we'd do differently Watch out for messy bricklayers. Our brickies were incredibly messy, leaving piles of broken bricks and mortar all over the place. It took me the best part of a day to hack off the snots from the scaffold poles. This would have been so much easier if we had put down down groundsheets and taped the ends of the poles. Try to get subbies to hire in the plant they needed, rather than paying for it yourself. We didn't have a main contractor and ended up paying £1600 of VAT that can't be recovered on plant hire. This goes for scaffolding too. Keep it simple. We used a Jetfloor beam and insulated block floor. It was fairly cost-effective but I'm not sure it has many benefits over a traditional beam and block with 300mm insulation construction. Also think about when your underfloor heating and screed will be installed. Use SIPs for the roof, especially if like us you have rooms in the roof. A traditional raftered roof is time consuming to make airtight and well insulated. I think SIPs could offer a much more simple solution. Make sure to think whether you need any holes pre-cut in your steels. We have one large RSJ running across our living room. As soon as it went in, I thought how are we going to get the MVHR ducts through that! I considered using a magdrill to cut a couple of holes (no room) and even taking it out to cut them (very time consuming and difficult). In the end we went over the top into boxed in areas, but it would have been so much better to have thought about it before, or use a castellated beam. Understand that good subbies will be busy. They'll always have a lot of work on. Hanging onto them means being patient and expecting they'll screw up any notion of planning and coordinating trades that are inter-dependent.

Around 35 years ago, some bright spark decided that anyone involved in defence research at the sharp end should have a month attached to a front line unit, complete with a temporary commission into your equivalent service rank. This was not popular with front line units, who really didn't want to have to baby sit someone useless (from their perspective). I was attached to 826 Naval Air Squadron, RNAS Culdrose, as a newbie Sub Lieutenant, supposedly straight from Dartmouth. On my first day, I pitched up to the morning brief and there was an announcement that four junior officers were booked for Aircrew Escape, Survival, and Evasion training starting that day, and transport was awaiting to take us to Lympstone Barracks, where instructors from 42 Commando were to give us three days training followed by a two day escape and evasion exercise, where we were dropped in pairs, with nothing but an aircrew coverall, basic kit that would be in the pockets of your survival life jacket, plus a live rabbit, with orders not to kill it in the first 24 hours. We were blindfolded, dropped somewhere on Dartmoor, and told we had a four hour start on the "enemy" (members of 42 Commando) who were trying to catch us before we reached a declared safe objective. If we got caught before the 48 hours were up we were taken back to Lympstone. It was pouring with rain, our bivvy leaked, the bloody rabbits crapped everywhere, we were both soaked to the skin and actually relieved when we were captured at around 4 am, some 15 hours after being dropped off. The relief did not last long. We were chucked face down in the back of a 4 tonner, wrists and ankles cable tied. When we got to the barracks, we were put in individual white-tiled cells, with bright lights and very loud music, on constantly. We were made to strip and stand on the tips of our toes, with our fingertips on the wall, and hosed down with cold water. We were constantly questioned, and for the first few hours managed to just stick to name, rank and number. After around 10 to 12 hours or so of this, the four of us that had been captured were marched into a room, still naked, and ordered to attention. A WRAC officer walked in, swagger stick under her arm, peak of her cap pulled down over her eyes. She walked along in front of us, quietly giving us abuse. She got to me and poked my "meat and two veg" with the end of her stick, saying "call yourself a man with equipment like that?". At this point I lost it, yelling that I was a civvy, that I wasn't in the bloody RN and they could let me go right now. One of the blokes handed the WRAC officer a bit of paper. She shoved it under my nose, pointing out that I'd signed up, and that I was under military law, as Sub Lieutenant J S Harris RN, whether I liked it or not.......................

Just thought I would update our Intro post. Its now over 18 months since we bought our renovation property and its almost ready for selling. Just another few weeks of snagging then the flooring can be laid and we'll get the estate agents round. Most houses in our row sell really quick so we will be trying to get a good price. With regard the house build, we are thinking more and more that it is unlikely to happen for us. Apart from the silly prices of land round here, I am doubting that we could actually do it. The OH is not interested in any part of the project managing/organising. So it would be down to me and I dont think I could do it any more. Unless I have things on a list, I forget them, and if anything is on my mind, I end up awake most of the night. I dont think I could cope with a year or two on 3-4 hours sleep a night. And the more I read on Buildhub, the more I know I dont know and would have to find out - its very scary thinking of all the things the build involves. I admire all of you guys who are doing it and I really would like to do it myself but I have to be sensible and know my limitations. I shall continue to dip into the forum and I shall follow blogs with interest (and envy, to be honest). And you never know - we may find another renovation to take on. I have enjoyed doing Scooby Cottage and we have both learnt lots. so once the OH has recovered from this one, I shall maybe be able to find another one to do - hopefully this one for us, rather than to sell. Happy New Year to everyone and thanks for all the help and encouragement I have always received.

I'm certain that the two main problems with kitchens are deliveries and fitting. Do the fitting yourself and you will almost certainly end up with a much better job than any kitchen fitter will do, but it may well take you a lot longer. Our joiner was hanging doors whilst I was fitting the kitchen and was chuckling about me taking two weeks to fit a kitchen they would have done in a day and a half. Deliveries can be a nightmare from anyone, in my experience. Sometimes you get a really good delivery firm, often you get a mediocre one. Our kitchen delivery driver was hopeless, he smashed up the newly laid drive after being told that there was no way he could reverse up it, as his tail hoist bar would bottom out and rip up the pavers (it did). He flung open the doors and one hit the fascia of the gable roof, putting a big dent in it. And then we found that around 20% of our (solid oak) kitchen parts were unwrapped and rolling loose around the floor of the truck................. We had the drive and house repaired at their expense and had lost of replacement parts supplied for all the damaged ones. Then, when I came to fit the kitchen I found they had supplied a 600mm unit when we needed a 500mm unit, so they had to come and replace that too. Had the despatch checking, packaging and delivery been done properly we'd have had no complaints and they would have made a profit on the sale. Given we billed them well over £2k for damage they caused to the drive and house and that they had to re-supply lots of parts, I'm sure they ended up losing money on the job.

Was thinking about LPG at one time but I didn't have the bottle...