Calvinmiddle

Certainly wasn't the plan when we started the planning battle 7 old years ago!!! But life goes on and things change. Looking for a house near the beach about 4 hours north of Sydney so no plans to build again anytime soon, maybe when the kids have grown up and we don't need to be near a school and town we will do something again. The learning curve is so steep it seems silly not to use all that you have learnt doing it again.

This is what we have done. But we didn't just use an L shape, we added a further up stand as per the last picture. The idea of this was to ensure that any water dripping down the wood ended up away from the frame. As we didn't have the twin wall we had the issue that the frames didn't over hang the EPS so we would have had to have thick battens to ensure we were clear of the EPS, using the profile saved us some making it really thick.

Yes and the skirting as well here is a closer photo, not 100% happy, but part of issue was not having a skim coat on the plasterboard, something that looking back I just should have done

I have 2 young boys so it never looks like this. We have decided to move so these are the agents shots, we are heading off to Australia!!!!

Again Spot on - he occasionally has sales so that one was half price

Spot on!! I couldn't find a bath tap that I like (and would risk giving the kids a head injury when they play in the bath) so got an overflow filler. I think it looks nicer with out the taps - but then I like the minimal look.

Here are some photos of the finished house.

It's about 110 sqm and no loft storage, vaulted ceiling instead.

Just worked out the the heating element of the gas bill works out at about 65p a day - about £20 an month. Or in kWh it is about 29 a day on average for period Oct to April. Not sure where that is on the scheme of things, but seeing we came from a solid walled 1930's detached house we used 2 WBSs in to keep warm and it was still cold I'm pretty happy ?

I have a slatted fence to finish - and although it annoys me it doesn't annoy the boss!

Hmmm. All the waste bin and various recycling bins fit in around the pipes, if I change it now it may not fit!! I think I'll put it in the same category as the boiler manual timer of "it's not 100%, but it works and there is a work around"

Not sure how I did ours but we get the "dishwater loudspeaker" effect out of the half sink. We have to put the sink plug is as our kitchen and living room are open plan. It annoys me everytime I hear it - more so as I spent a hundred quid on marine insulation to deaden the sound of the dishwasher as it's on an island. That works great can't hear it run, then the sodding thing pumps water out and it's ridiculously loud.

That's not the detail I've seen before, and looks like it is a brick/block cavity wall. Don't think I've heard of anyone combining that with a passive slab. TerryE may be the only one that have something similar.

Ian, sorry to hear this and it must be very frustrating, enraging even to find out you have been paying your hard earned money to someone who hasn't shown the care and attention to detail that you expect. I have to said that was the hardest bit of our build, the thinking that if I had the right tools I could do a better job than some of the tradesmen do - despite the fact I have no training, other than wanted to do something right. To echo everyone else, I think you have made the right choice and yes the extra costs will get lost in the larger total.

Just to round things out, here is a picture of the finished fence, well one side, got another 12m of fence to go

Have PM'd you should have a notification

I can recommend that you don't use a hammer ?

Granola and Greek yogurt got me when I need a change from the Weetabix

Just though I'd add to this thread that the idea that is the topic of this thread does work, experience described here on a different thread

As mentioned earlier I decided to use 50x50 posts concreted into the ground to take the vertical load and then screwed into the existing fence panels to help keep it upright, got a the bottom third of one fence done with the old sanded back Larch and the new Larch arrived next week so dining the posts on the other fence. These posts have been a pig to do as trying to keep the holes small in diameter (10-15cm) and 30-45cm deep and also tight to the exist fences concrete gravel boards. As we discussed over on this thread about used a vacuum cleaner to clean the holes out I can say it works a treat! We have very compact clay soil, nice a fine once to get it broken but hard to do that with a trowel like I've hard to do, but a couple of bangs with the chisel end of the crowbar to break the soil and then the vacuum to clean it out has seen me just do 4 holes in the time it was previously taking me to do one. So can confidently say that using a vacuum cleaner to clean out holes is a great plan and works fantastically

Unfortunately I couldn't find a thicknesser for hire at a sensible price, none of the hire places near me had one (the place I normally use sold theirs last year as no one was hiring it) and the rest said they could get it in from a partner but it was going to be way to £££ as it was a min 1 week hire and carriage £40 each way so all worked out about £300. So back to sander plan, which actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

So do I, only issue is I don't have enough Larch left over so have to sand back to old to match the new ones I'm buying

Just to close this off, couldn't get the sink by itself from anywhere - and didn't want to risk the sink above as the radius on the corners looked different. But the unit below came up on the VP sale so got it and knew for sure it would fit. So now have a black 800 vanity unit (without the sink of course) that I need to pass on, anyone interested? Any sensible offers considered, collect from near jct 10 on A1(M)

I had to use this to make a turning circle on the grass we have, says it's good to 8 tonnes per axel. Means you don't have to remove anything after the build and the grass grows through it so you wouldn't know it's there. https://www.grassform.co.uk/buy/heavy-medium-duty-mesh/ just google grass reinforcement mesh and there are a few companies selling essentially the same thing

Windows nightmare here as well, this was with Munster. Thing was they didn't want to deal with me as an individual (probably because there is lots of legislation protecting company/public transactions but not much for company/company transactions) so MBC kindly acted as the go between. Don't think they do it anymore and I told Joe he shouldn't because yes it was great for me but as Munster wouldn't talk to me everything had to go via Eoin at MBC, but for him it was a huge drain in his resources for no money, just to help the clients. I reckon we spent about 10x the effect sorting out windows compared to the rest of the build put together. They were just rubbish, rubbish. But I suppose on the Value Triangle you have Cost, tick, Quality, tick (well when they finally got it right) and Time, abysmal.