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wonderful detailed photos

Get someone who they won't link back to you to enquire direct to the staircase company for a ballpark cost of a similar staircase?

Well, we finally made it, 3 years from when i first started! Just got some blinds to go up at the windows which haven't come yet, but otherwise done and dusted. Just wanted to say thank you for all your help, both from this forum and ebuild (thats how long its taken me lol!) The room itself is performing as expected, with an average temperature of 21C and humidity of between 40 and 50% (with hardly any ventilation at present, just the vents in the roof windows). The radiators I put in were massively over-specced, but at the time it was hard to imagine the room being easy to warm, indeed the calcs were correct and they rarely come on, even on the coldest of days, though it hasn't had its true test yet, but overall really pleased with this.

The attic trusses arrived today after making a three hour journey from Inverness to Skye. Offloading took place at our site entrance. Our joiner did a great job weaving between odd trees on our access. Trusses unloaded and ready to start being fitted over the next few days. Had a sneak peak on the top of the scaffolding to get a view from where the treble velux windows will be fitted.

Following the completion of the foundations, we now moved onto putting the kit up. After putting together a list for our timber merchants we are now ready to start. The materials for framing and sheathing arrived last week. The house will be stick built by a team of two joiners, with prefabricated trusses arriving on site in a few weeks. Today marked the first day of joinery. The first job was attaching the wall plate followed by cutting the suspended timber floor. And on day two, joists finished. Next job will be ground floor framing.

Our joiners finished our ground floor joists last week and have been making our panels this week. Hopefully tomorrow we will have the ground floor panels raised.

Some day for it. Today was one of those special days where suddenly years of work starts to come together in front of your eyes. No machinery here just elbow grease. It was all going so well until the building inspector turned up. A few internal load bearing walls to be finished and then on Monday we have the telehander coming to stay for a couple of weeks, followed by the delivery of the attic trusses on Tuesday.

This was one of the days that I was most excited about, the raising of the roof trusses. Our joiners used our trusses as a template for constructing the gable end panels. The trusses then just went in one by one. 3 lengths of Kerto were spiked together to form our central ridge beam. The middle section of the 1st floor is being hand cut on site by our joiners. Our children will have a room on each gable. The middle section on one side will consist of a cupboard and WC. The other side will be partly vaulted above the living room and this required a steel beam which was fitted by our joiners.

It looks like an expensive one to build to me - lots of 'interesting' angles and change in elevations etc Bet that chews through £400K fairly quickly.

Ach I believed you and looked...load of dignitaries posing for publicity shots...and ONE of the front door

That would certainly be helpful if it could be done. I gather the builder did say he should be able to do the wet room using ladders to get in and out till the roof went on. He didnt look too keen but understood the reasons for it, particularly as it will be winter during the build. The Planning Officer said it would need planning. And unfortunately the porch was added about 10 years ago so not origonal and the main reason for any building work, is to provide a toilet and wet room close to Mums room, so it has to go in the planned position. I have arranged to see the Architectural technician chap tomorrow and will see what he says about the likelihood of gaining planning. Fingers crossed!?

Indeed. Another reason for having the switch near the sink, so you can easily test it by turning the tap on from time to time, and operate the switch to see the water stop.

Will it work on my air guitar? If so, Debbie'll buy one.

It sounds to me like you need to buy yourself a digger. You can get forks to fit on, or in place of a bucket, and a boom extension can make a handy crane, e.g our builder lifting the big ridge beam onto the house

Pallets, timber wrapped in bundles and bags of aggregate can be delivered by one of these. For an attic truss, you would need a different type of forklift called a telehandler. Or prehaps a crane or lorry mounted hiab, but if access is tight might not be an option? We paid for two weeks hire of the telehander which I believe would be a lot cheaper than a single day of crane hire. This also allowed for us to put in the ridge and steel beams over those two weeks. Here is one of me 'helping' the joiner navigate through our access!

Hi @Ben100, I'm in the middle of a stick build timber frame self build. I weighted up the options but choose a stick build timber frame because: It was significantly cheaper and it is the opposite for cashflow, instead of paying upfront for a kit package you get building merchant's credit (two months) We have a great joiner We cut and build the kit in June/July so it was great weather. Stick building allows greater control over the quality of the materials and the time when you need them. You can more easily adjust for changes and if for any reason your measurements between your timberframe and foundation are slightly out this is not a problem, but would be disastrous for a manufactured kit. Fitting the insulation and ensuring air tightness will take time but my time is free in the evenings Of course there are plenty of reasons for arguing the opposite. But for me I considered the self builder's triangle (quality, time and cost) and being able to only select two, I was happy to take cost and quality. It also worth considering where a stick build ends and a kit starts. I.e what was done on site could have been built in a factory/large shed and perhaps some would call this an open panel kit? Here is my blog which has a few entries on that part of the build which might be of interest.

The simple answer is somewhere. The most important thing is to have a clear end in mind and stick to it. It really doesn't matter where somewhere is. Choose one of the millions available to you and think about it's dependencies. Follow each one of those dependencies to the bitter end. You'll find there are thirty or so things that you need to be thinking about in any month, of which 10 are important and 5 both important and urgent. Lists and lists of lists are helpful. If you need to share those lists, consider some of the free list apps that abound on the Internet, we use Google Keep. But paper and a whiteboard are just as good, if not better in some ways. The most difficult thing to judge is how to penetrate the appropriate help network in a way that those network members approve. Make no mistake: trades people act and communicate exactly as a more traditional elite. They are harder to talk to than the average mortgage account manager. Harder to reach than your MP. Banging on a contractors office door (because they don't answer the phone) may be exactly what's needed to break the log jam but a turn-off for others. Find out which pubs they use. Listen. Welcome to sleeplessness. Welcome to networking. Welcome to compromise. Welcome to a lifetime's reading.

One example springs to mind. A company with what seemed to be an excellent online reputation, a very informative website, a "proprietor" who seemed highly respected by many people for the knowledgeable views freely shared on internet fora, and whose "proprietor" seemed to be genuine from several 'phone calls and emails, over a period of several months. Having spent a significant sum to go and meet with him and look around his factory and some of the houses he'd built I discovered that he'd not built the houses he showed us, didn't own a factory, in fact didn't even own a car. A check showed that the company was registered to someone else and had never traded, with nothing other than an annual accounts submission showing very little capital and no trading activity. A follow up check using the name of the supposed "proprietor" revealed a prison sentence and couple of failed companies in the past. A bit of digging around on the internet revealed a few other people who were less than happy with this person, including one who lives quite close to us and who lost a great deal of money via him on a system that never worked, and which had been sold with performance claims that were wholly unrealistic. I should have checked out the company and it's supposed proprietor long before I did, as it would have saved me a couple of months of wasted time and the best part of £2k in wasted costs. I was lucky to be able to get away with just this loss though, I think.

Yes, should do with no problem. I have used the bigger double width ones that have multiple functions (frequency, current, voltage, power, energy total and energy resettable) and they will probably take 25mm² at a guess.

You can just move in anyway and finish off once moved in. It’s quite common. You can generally extend the self build insurance but this is often pretty pricey. A better option may be to use a company like GSI and take out a ‘normal’ insurance policy that covers this scenario. A few people on here have used GSI for that purpose. https://gsi-insurance.com/ Best to weigh up the price difference between extending the self build insurance and taking out a new policy covering an almost signed off house. You can convert to a standard household policy as soon as you are signed off (or at the end of the new insurance term).

Welcome ignore the CIL..! If you are building for your own use, and you follow the process to the letter, then self builders are exempt from paying. Just be careful though that you don’t time out the original permission whilst waiting to get permission for the new build.

In this case there were a few boxes, one with my address, along with other rubbish. They assumed it had all originated from me.

Progress

Thanks @Redoctober. Like many others have complimented you, that stone work really does look great!

The Planning drawings don't have to be done in CAD although most are these days, I still see plenty of 'professional' planning drawings that are not much neater or detailed than your sketch but seem to get the job done! If you are going to use Building reg drawings then the plans will need to be more detailed but much of it can be covered by typed standard notes. However with such a small extension you could go ahead under a Building Notice without any formal plans:- https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200137/how_to_get_approval/78/pre-site_approval/3

2.9m

The window does sit on the membrane and this is the detail that the window company asked for. Should be all sorted now, a guy will be here in a couple of hours to re-do the seals at the bottom. Once this is done, the membrane will be turned up against the frame and made airtight by MBC. I will take plenty of photos once it's underway as it's all a bit of a dark art as far as I'm concerned and details are helpful for the uninitiated like myself.

Checking impressive looking companies on the Companies House site is one of the first thing I usually do, and I will often follow that up by having a look to see what the directors have done before. Always gives a pretty good indicator as to whether a company is real or just a nice looking website. I learned a lesson some time ago that it's far too easy to trust a credible looking website and a chap with the gift of the gab...

Updated photos as promised. The light fittings are lower than their final position, i've had to put the step ladders underneath them as I keep banging my head! lol Grey one is going to get put on a hook to move it nearer the radiator wall, and the other just needs shortening, i made it longer so that my wife couldn't say can you make it a bit longer, covering all bases and all. Big pile of wood flooring will hopefully be down very soon!