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I always suggest that people practice before hand. If you can get yourself a small kit, and you have a bit of dry space, give it a go. You will learn more in 3 practice runs than doing a roof for the first time.

Ours are doing surprisingly well and we’ve already had some of the snowball turnips and lettuce, had to lift all the turnip as their shaws were overshadowing the beetroot so we have another crop of them in and the beetroot should be harvested before the shaws get too big.All the turnips have been wrapped in wet kitchen roll and put in a bag in the veg drawer of the fridge which is what was advised for storing them.

If he comes back with anything other than a 'yes' then ask him what professional qualifications a MVHR 'commissioner' needs and ask to see the bit of the regs that defines that. Good luck!

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, heating and can shower without a bucket under the pipe! We will still be on site pretty much every day and we still have our garden to maintain so will be keeping a close eye on things...

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 brick, and floor to replace first!

Covid Face Coverings I have just bought a pack of 6 of these Neck Tubes (Snoods) for £11.99 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01GFQEBC0 Light so OK for summer and fit me, and delivered next day. £2 each which is not that much different from a disposable mask. Patterned. Perhaps the only issue is that they seem to be designed for the sporty community, so one of them looks like a skull's jawbone. There is also tartan and various patterns etc. Also useful for robbing banks. Ferdinand

Morning all, Thought I’d share some pictures of the plot. We are incredibly lucky with it’s size, 6 acres as well as the Burn running through. On a clear day we also get brilliant views of the Isle of Arran. Architect was on site last week (socially distant) and is meeting with us again towards the end of this week. We now have a list of rooms and rough floor dimensions, he will workout the “flow” of these and start the process of design. Our solicitor has been instructed to separate the title (from our existing house next door) so progress finally feels like it’s being made!

"fitter " is an even much more maligned job title when my dad was working at gorton tank --railway engine maker in manchester in the 1920,s the "fitters" were very skilled as the hand scrape/fitted all bearings on steam engines and even the beds on lathes and milling machines etc were hand scraped to alow pockets for oil to sit in to keep beds lubricated then the term mechanic got the same treatment , they were not just "fitters" as the modern meaning of the word is used . when I started in motor trade you were a mechanic --now its a technicain i think fitter /IT nerd would be better descripition for modern motor engineer - not much mechani ing going on or actually repairing or rebuilding of things no one rebuilds an engine or a g/box --you get one from the breakers -lack of skill +tools and cost of labour and bits make it the sensible way to go when you can buy a low mileage engine for £500 -and just the cost of a set of pistons +bearings+gaskets is more than that ,never cost to regrind crank and rebore +hone block .-add another £300 then the labour --no wonder the skill s required for such things is dissappearing in all but the motor sport section of the trade

In a conservatory, yes, with what you are designing, no. Corner posts are designed for light loads, you’re taking about taking the full load of a 4m lintel and all the roof loads into a single point. That’s not something you can do with a length of ally tube. Unless there is a compelling reason to have a frameless corner, I would bring both windows back slightly and use a 126x126 UC and box round it to make a feature and then you will have a simple and stable structure.

I am finding our “garden “daunting”, just got rid of 53 tons of clay and slowly levelling the plot and trying to get topsoil roughly level with the JCB. The plot (including the meadow) is an acre. Problem with the “meadow “is stones, millions of them and the only route is to hand pick them up ?. Still it’s getting there and I am really looking forward to growing plants and veg next year, I bought loads of scaffold boards fir the build and they are earmarked fir raised beds over clay fir the veg behind the workshop

I only have a tiny patch of earth to work with, so have most things in pots. Last year I decided to get rid of a lot of the pots, so just tipped them out onto the ground, levelled it off, and decided to see what would happen. I also had some bamboo that I dug up and put in pots, then neglected, for 6 years. This spring I made a planter out the front, moved the small grass that was growing and put the bamboo next to it. All taken very well. Including the wind blown/bird pooped echiums.

I did a 30-ish sqm L-shaped roof with 4 rooflights on upstands, having taught myself from online tutorials and advice here. The actual GRP wasn't a drama. However, the entire process took a lot longer than I expected - it takes a fair while to detail all the corners, upstands, etc both for the boarding out and then again for the GRP - and far longer than any likely spell of continuous dry weather in Edinburgh. So my boards got wet, and things went downhill from there... It might be possible to go faster with more hands, but I think when you've upstands etc to do there's a limit on how fast you can go even with help. Once I admitted weather-defeat and built a heath robinson tent over the entire roof and got it all dried again it worked OK and I'm very pleased with the end result. So, if you can get the weather for it, or you follow @SteamyTea advice to laminate the boards inside first, or you build a tent from the get-go, then it's a great product and it's very easy to DIY. But there is scope for a lot of drama and stress if you time it wrong / take longer than you think you will.

It’s taken 5 years to get only this far. However this is the first year I’ve actually been able to spend some time out there and think about what to do out there. We’ve planted 20 x 3’ Portuguese Laurels which will take some time and desperately need a fence between us and next door. Raised bed is new, had to get 2 bags of topsoil in.

We are just getting started with the garden, we have about 600 sqm of garden space (wish we had more). So far we have planted a laurel hedge at the back of the house to provide privacy as most of our family room, dining and kitchen are at the back of the house. Plan is to grass the whole area first, then start to add various flower beds. We will be planting in a modern modern style similar to some of the Charlotte Row designs https://www.charlotterowe.com/

Well - there'll be no canoeists down that burn, unless it is in spate.

If you lived down here I would come over and make a video of it, with @joe90doing the work.

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Oh how long ago that last post seemed. So a quick recap. Planning put in April 23rd 2019. In September we went for non-determination to the planning inspectorate, fairly confident as a similar property a few plots up had been approved with a surprisingly similar design. We knew the approx. waiting time for the planning inspectorate was 6 months but as we'd lost the winter anyway, what did we have to lose? The site visit from the inspectorate was arranged for 24th March....... Yep, that was cancelled by the lockdown! Finally we get our site inspection 18th May. We did what we were told - opened the gate, let him wander round by himself and off he toddled. We got the refusal on Thursday. The architect was furious but to be honest, I was so fed up by that stage, any answer was better than nothing. There is no appeal of course and apparently because we are more than a year since the application went in, we are unable to get a free go with the next planning application. The architect is drawing up a second design with no charge - that is the contract that we had so good news on that front. So we are back to square one. We may as well go back to the drawing board and re-think exactly what we want from scratch. It will have to be a chalet bungalow to reduce volume but I know we can easily lose a bedroom without causing us an issue. The journey starts again but we are perilously close to not being able to fulfil the dream of a nice house here! We are getting older and will need a mortgage to build. We are borderline now over the affordability of the mortgage because of the short repayment period that we will be forced into so all a bit doom and gloom right now.