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After my horrid time earlier this year I am now going to post something more positive. As of yesterday, I was offered a job, not ideal (is any job ideal), rather than working from home I must go to the office which takes 40mins each way and hubby is disappointed that he will be left on his own all day. That said even with time out for funeral 250 miles away and wet, wet, wet we have progressed. Some pictures. hardcore & binding (take 2 after previous issues) now the expansion foam around the sides The heave protection next then taping next was the rebar here is the pour on top of the rebar - 200mm drying concrete slab with no hint of everything underneath, typical building, lots of expense and nothing to see. the first row of outside blocks added showing the cavity first blocks over DPC with all the rain we have created a bit of a swimming pool It was at this point that we purchased a puddle pump as hubby really didn't like having to kneel and build low in water going up with some windows & doors framed insulation going in joining the existing walls to the new part this is where some of the kitchen cabinets will be hung, so although internal we are using heavier blocks to take any necessary weight On the left hand side you can see part of the existing barn that will be staying. The roof is currently being held up with barrels and wood building from scaffolding is a real milestone, makes it seem like we are getting somewhere. To protect the insulation, we have the original insulation from the barn roof cut up to provide a 'roof' over the cavity. Having made the frames for the remaining to windows these need to be placed in situ for building around. This area will be our front hall and snug. Of course, the front door will only be used by visitors, but we will go through the hall internally to get into the snug. With all the cavities it is smaller than I hoped, but with all the insulation it will be much warmer than our single skin house. Hope you enjoy the pictures, next time I hope to be at lintel and wall plate level, but we would like the weather to improve. Thanks for reading Jill

Thanks to the relatively mild weather this winter i decided to start chipping away at the bathroom project, which is being extended into part of the extension which was finished over a year ago. This gave me the opportunity to install the bath, sink and toilet in the new bit, at which time I’d totally disconnected the old bathroom allowing me to strip it out and that’s worked really well for my as I struggle to do more than 4hours in a single day so I could keep doing a bit and stopping when I’d had enough. didn’t fancy tackling the ceiling for plastering in the new bit so got a pro in to do this bit for me, all done in a couple of hours which was nice. and made the most of the space and got the painting done after putting a layer of 10mm marmox board down ready to accept the underfloor heating mat Next job was to start making a frame to hold the toilet frame and the sink and cabinet Decided on making my own cabinet rather than paying silly money for an MFC one, got pine furniture boards, a pocket hole jig and a new router and came out with this which I’m pretty happy with that all got painted and the sink installed, wall mounted tap and the wet room panels that I’m using both for this and for the walk in shower area all installed. got to work cutting the OSB backing and wet room panel for the toilet in prep for the final big push to disconnect the old and commission the new, that was a hard days work! And then bath and toilet all installed once the shower area is complete the bath will be disconnected again to lay the underfloor heating, self leveller and the flooring before being put back in place, and eventually building the wall and plastering it. Made a start on stripping the old bathroom out Next job is to patch up the loft insulation where the old spotlights were, new wiring in place for a single light fitting this time, airtight membrane adhered to the walls and then battens before reboarding it ready for plastering. Floor is coming up also to be replaced with 22mm chipboard to match new bit.

My initial plans were to have rainwater harvesting, build hub taught me no.. so with that scrapped I needed an alternative, soakaways are difficult due to bed rock levels. In addition to this we have lots of run off on the croft, and the track to the house floods. We have already installed a pond for the ducks and this has a large berm to the back and sides so that the runoff is held back and slowly soaks away, but this winter has proved it overflows regularly, that's around 3000L extra. So the plan was to install an overflow pipe from this pond to a new larger pond. The larger pond also acting as rainwater run off capture. The larger pond will have 2 levels, a pond and then an extra layer to act as a overflow that can evaporate and or be pumped to the rubble drain in drier times. I got a big carried away with the backhoe and ended up with around 10M x 8M and over a meter deep. The overflow capacity will be around 30k - 35k L. We had to peck out some of the rock to get depth, and at the front used "as dug" rock from the quarry to form a rough and rugged stone wall, quite in keeping in Caithness. Time will heal the scars and soften the edges with planting. Due to the two levels we came up with the idea of hiding the liner under some camo net, that we intend to plant up in time. Not sure how this will stand the test of time. From the house the rainwater enters a rock filter, an idea loosely based on a post from @ToughButterCup- thanks. From the rock filter we have created a little stream that the rainwater will flow down and into the pond. In addition to this we have a pump that will take the water via a home made skimmer from the pond and filter the water from the pond through the rock filter and stream constantly. This also has a diverter to pump the water past the house and into the field to reduce the overflow capacity in drier times. This is the rock filter, and some of the pipework yet to be buried. Getting to this stage ticked a box for building control as we now handle our run off. We got our completion certificate on the house this week, yeah. There are some things to finish, the second bedroom needs decorating and trim work. And a few small jobs here and there, but in general the house is decorated, and fully functioning. We started the build in earnest around May 23 I think, so quite pleased with the effort and timescale we achieved. It's was built by me and Mandy with the odd person helping with concrete pours. 3 months in summer were busy with the cabin rentals that saw Mandy spend 3-4 hrs a day turning them around for the endless NC500 travellers.😁 We're embarking on the VAT reclaim soon. To summarise the build: 89sqm True bungalow Floor 0.094U (300mm EPs 120mm concrete) Walls 0.139U ICF with 50mm EWI and 25mm PIR IWI Cold roof 0.1U 25MM PIR 400MM mineral wool. UPVC triple glazed windows and composite doors MVHR, 4kW PV in roof, 5kW ASHP, UFH. EPC A103, Airtightness 0.83 ACH.

This week the roof was cut in. Can see the spaces for the Velux rooflights and get a different picture of the inside - the vaulted ceilings in the rear living area in particular. The builder recommended a ceiling in the upstairs bedrooms at around the 3 meter / 9 foot mark which is high enough even if you're bouncing on the bed! Still leave a bit of space for storage so may leave a small hatch and floor this area after setting it up. It's a warm roof so this is all conditioned space. Next week they'll add OSB and Solitex WA, then baton and counter baton and that's them finished! The roofer is due in after Easter to install the tiles and the Velux will go in sometime then also. There is also an AEV for venting the soil pipe to install. There's a ventilated ridge, and other details that will be interesting to see installed. Should stop ice dams forming! Big decision point is around the rear picture window - it's to be metal clad. There is the option of adding additional insulation on the outside and then stud work for the ventilation behind the steel cladding or just insulate internally only. Also the roof of this feature needs to be worked out. Some drain to the back of the house but that needs a gutter. Most drain towards the house which I didn't realise and the water channels to either side. This junction has to be perfect or it ensures rain ingress. There's a good local team recommended by the builder so I've left word and hope they'll get in touch next week so they can build out the 7 degree backward slope needed for the roof of this area. There is a lot of metal posts in the house which worry me but I had a few hours onsite today to take my time and see if it's something to worry about or not. The contact area with the foundation or wall are very small so there may be cold spots but I feel for a first attempt, the detailing is sufficient. I just didn't realize how decisions about moving walls etc impacted structural changes until I saw them onsite. Decisions made years ago haunting me a bit, but I can live it! It's still a wonderful house. The next two will be better!! The air tightness will be a challenge but I got some samples of Tapes, Gutex and Phonotherm I plan to use by driving to the company I'm buying them off and seeing their warehouse up front. I hope to entice one of their technical guys onsite for an hour to get their advice on a few things. I expect a detailed post at a future date to address this. Lots to think about. I plan on using Moy Metac in the timber frame wall - 220mm worth. The frames are mostly at 600mm centers. I'd calculated I'd need 43 rolls off the plans but now looking like 53 when I did a quic calc onsite. They do a roll that is exactly 220mm deep and 1200mm wide so plan to cut in 1/2 and it should press fit in the space nicely. I could do this before the windows and doors arrive, just need to find a good price! And hope it isn't swiped! Windows to be measured either next week or 2 weeks later due to builders holidays. Delivery 9-10 weeks after that. Bricklayer, still chasing quotes! Hope to get that done Late April / Early May. Waiting on council to approve brick style as the plain red in the estate isn't to my taste, I've gone for a blend of brown, red and beige. As a project there's a LOT to think about, decisions to be made and money to be managed! Spending is SO easy, tracking it and keeping in budget not so much!!

After obtaining planning, i got my building controll aplication under way. I had 2 options - Pay £1100 for Building Notice - Pay £900 for Full Plans. Everyone on here recommends full plans, and it was a cheaper fee. I knew i'd have to either pay for the plans or do them myself. I opted to do them myself after loads of research on this forum (particiularily inspired by @HerbJ ) Here's my version of Herb's spec. Building Regulation Specification Redacted.pdf I paid a structural engineer to do the calcs. And then I did all the details, layouts and thermal calcs myself. EWIPRO-A025.pdfnwtc.01.pdfnrtc.pdfnftc.01.pdfewtc.01.pdfeftc.01.pdfDRTC.01.pdfDCTC.01.pdf

Greetings on a miserably rainy Sunday October morning. Perfect weather for catching up on some blog writing! As the title suggests this blog will be about our external coverings of the house and, by the end of it, the outside of the building will be pretty much finished allowing us to crack on internally. We started many months ago by battening the outside of the buildings. As we are having external blinds and they have a requirement for fitting the blind cassette we needed a large gap between the house walls and the outside of the cladding. This meant 50mm x 50mm timber battens and counter battens. We did this ourselves and saved many thousands and, even though it was slow going (as, it seems, everything is when you do it yourself!), it was very satisfying with the carpenter saying that it was good work and he’d seen chippies do a lot worse jobs than we did. Nice warm fuzzy feeling ensued. We are having a mixture of burnt Siberian larch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakisugi) and, to contrast the black, standard Siberian larch on the ‘arms’ of our property and entrance porch (all will be revealed in photos below) and I ordered all the cladding to be delivered on-site prior to the carpenter starting. The carpenter started on the garage using the standard Siberian larch which we bought from Jewson at a very reasonable price, and quite a bit cheaper than we could get from the usual timber cladding suppliers and we are very happy with the quality of the wood. He then went on to the black charred larch (which gets everywhere and he and his tools looked like they’d been in a coal mine by the end of each day!). We purchased the charred larch from Permachar (https://permachar.co.uk) who gave us a brilliant price. The wood itself was burnt and delivered from Lithuania (https://degmeda.eu) but they will only sell to the UK via Permachar. It is stunning wood, but incredibly fragile and any sort of dragging or scraping will cause the black char to flake off. While he was busy doing that and while the scaffolding was up I thought it a good time to get the guttering started. Our architect specified Zinc guttering and after a lot of thought and looking at stainless steel and zinc we also decided that zinc was the choice for us. We ordered it from Rainclear (https://www.rainclear.co.uk/guttering/copper-zinc-guttering/guttering-fittings.html?color=235) who offer next day delivery if in stock and were incredibly helpful and very well priced. It’s also a clip on system which even I managed to install without any major issues! Around the same time and while the carpenter was busy putting the cladding up our external blinds got fitted. We bought those from a local company called Powell blinds (https://powellblinds.com) who stepped in brilliantly at the last minute after we were seriously let down by Cornerstar Aluminium (long story which I won’t get in to here). The blinds are fitted up behind the cladding above the windows but externally so they will be hidden from view when lifted up. We absolutely love them and during the heatwave this summer we lowered them and this drastically reduced the temperature inside the house. There was still one large south facing window that didn’t have blinds that needed shading. We wanted and the architect designed a Brise Soleil in this area but all we had to go on was a 2D drawing. I contacted a few companies about getting one made and installed and the quotes came back at between £6k - £7k! A figure we simply could not afford. So I did research and spoke to a local forge called Horsham Forge (https://www.horshamforge.co.uk) with an idea I had. He said ‘that could be done but how about this instead?’. He suggested brackets with a pole running through them and vertical timbers slid on. Genius! On to Sketchup where I draw up the brackets and gave them to the forge to be created and spoke to my timber manager at Jewson who procured me some thermowood at the size I needed and got my carpenter to fit it and it cost me £1700 in total. So we saved around £5k by doing it ourselves and we also enjoyed the journey and got a solution that we designed (with the help of the forge of course). We think it looks fab and it does a good job of shading from the sun apart from a couple of hours when the sun is directly facing that side of the house. So we will still get some solar gain but it is definitely reduced and it’s a brilliant architectural feature. 😉 Right, while all this was going on the chippie was finishing up the cladding and now that it is all finished and I have put the downpipes on we have an almost finished external facade to our dream home. We love it and think it’s stunning. So very happy with the carpenter’s work (http://www.kmlcarpentryandroofing.co.uk). Kieran’s attention to detail at the junctions between the 2 types of wood is fabulous as it is in other areas too. He would also discuss any issues and potential solutions with us to make sure we were happy with them rather than just doing something he thought was right. Hopefully the pictures below do it all justice! (Note: please ignore the 110mm brown downpipe in the below photo! It will eventually be a rain chain but this works for now. 😉 ) Thanks for reading and we hope you like what we’ve achieved so far.

I've been looking forward to getting to a point where I can park my car in my driveway again, and finishing my July Post with a part 2 here to mark a finish to my Driveway project finally! Took a bit longer than the two weeks I was hoping!! I just finished adding up the damage and it was @ €7.2k all in all. I think the length of time increased the costs as there were days where I couldn't get to use the compactor and I had to get it back a few times to progress the project on. Some notes observations below: The big Diesel Compactors are heavy duty brutes but also take a specialist skill to start. They are all draw cord and they pulled the arms off me for 25 minutes before I gave up. I was shown how to start it but had to return it to my embarrassment and downgrade! Drainage took a lot longer than I imagined, plumbing in the drain channels was very difficult - I replaced both gully traps and one was encased in concrete by the original builder! Just getting the right couplings and things to fit took me a while to figure out. SDS comes in different sizes, SDS Max chisel bit wouldn't fix my SDS drill so ended up buying an SDS Max drill off Screwfix! I now own 3 angle grinders, started with none! A Screwfix one that won't let me change the grinder to anything else, then a 5" DeWalt, then a 9" Makita. I prefer the cut using this to the block cutter but the dust is gruesome! Grab Hire worked out well, took away 2 x 20 ton loads to clear the site and was able to drop two loads of MoT 804 exactly where I needed them. All moved by hand / wheelbarrow at that stage, was very difficult to find anyone hiring a skid steer for one day. Lots more sand and cement than I thought, all mixed with a wheelbarrow! Using a digger is scary when it starts tipping to the side due to doing something stupid! Two injuries: #1 drilling concrete screw into wall for new side gate, it got stuck and the SDS drill spun violently out of my hand, 6 weeks sprained finger didn't help! #2 seagull poo'd above and dropped inside my goggles, put them on and got acid splash into my eye. Now store goggles between jobs closed to the sky! Broadband issue is fixed - tree roots crushed the pipe on my neighbours property, stump was still there for years. I tried to find the pipe to create a new junction to my new house hear the boundary but only ended up finding the gas pipe by accident with the digger, just the tape over the pipe, where it shouldn't be - should be out on the road according to the gas map. Went to the other end near my old house and finger traced the pipe to a point near the new boundary and created a shore there. Thankfully after two years complaining a crew came recently out to remove said stump, run new draw cord and I'll have no issue getting broadband into my new house now, 1 less worry So I've to finish the very front and put up two more concrete posts and panels. I've to grout using Rompox jointing compound and see how long that takes. Hopefully it will keep the weeds away! But at least I can relax a little bit and use the driveway again. Would I go it again?! Well, I learned valuable lessons, to pace myself, what I can do when I put my mind to it, very useful for my self build next year. My body is certainly feeling the pressure and I'm glad I'm in my 50's and not my 60's!! I overestimated how much work was involved but learnt a lot in the process, not just specifics but about groundworks and hiring plant and grab hire which was new to me. I did get a digger & driver for a day and could see how they made short work of things compared to my efforts so picking and choosing where to spend money best is a wise course of action! Full costings below if interested! I Kept all my receipts for idle curiosity! All inclusive of VAT. Best of luck to anyone out there thinking of doing same! My Driveway area is 75m2. 7265.52 Total 1984.38 Tobermore Paving 210 Paving Block Cutter (€400-sale afterwards) 200 Recessed Manhole Covers 32.69 Spade 690.78 Sand, Easypost, Cement,Gravel 100 Diesel Compactor - unable to start, returned! 32.66 32mm plastic waste pipe as screen level 300 Compactor Rental 39.92 Donegal Quartz stone 89.95 Dewalt Angle Grinder 102.57 Sand/Cement/Gully 44.95 More Gullys 35.47 Lubricant / Sealant 147.08 Donegal Quartz stone & gravel 24.48 Plastering Sand 76.65 Sewer Gullys 11.32 Sewer Pipes 19.56 Sewer Pipes 19.19 Concrete Screws 200 Hire Compactor 500 Hire Digger 19.58 Plastering Sand 86.35 Manhole Cover 292.15 Plant Rental 69.65 Cement mix & misc 45 post and line levels 93 replacement wheel for wheelbarrow & cement 17.7 side gate lock and hook 5.99 petrol can 284.55 rompox jointing compound 12.45 tape 257.31 sds max drill 82.04 kpost 7.15 coupler 38.8 drain caps 15.95 sds max drill 37.25 bits and sockets 38.95 draper cold chisel 700 Grab Hire - removal of concrete/topsoil 300 Delivery of MoT 804