Stones

The extract vents in both of our bathrooms are located over the shower enclosures. This was intentional and something I have done with every build except one, where the extract for one shower was outwith the enclosure. That particular enclosure suffered from peeling paint on the ceiling, whereas none of the others ever did. It may not of course be connected, but I certainly attributed the problem to the fact that there wasn't an immediate extraction point over the shower.

+1 From my perspective, its a very annoying rule as I had around £1K of additional haulage costs that I had to arrange myself due to our 'remote' location.

@Grosey, looking good. I take it the tiled area above the fire is for your TV? An ingenious way of camouflaging the TV when off if that's the case. Love the triple circle pendant light.

I can imagine trying to machine off bitumen would quite quickly clog any machinery, but you really want a flat surface to bond to the slab I would say. Anything to stop you machining both sides?

Could get nasty...

We have 14mm engineered oak bonded to the slab. Good heat transfer. A couple of paces it didn't bond due to slightly uneven slab. Tolerance for bonding is limited.

PM'd you.

+1, the added advantage being those of us in this kind of position don't / won't have the same kind of overheads (one assumes) as those professionals advertising this kind of service.

Depends if market forces a.k.a.@Plumbersmateuk results in the fee dropping down to only a few beer tokens! In all seriousness, I am giving this a lot of thought. Like most forms, in of itself it's not especially complicated, but is time consuming and tedious, and the more receipts you have the more time consuming it becomes (hence the scale of fees that seem to be applied). As with other aspects of self build you have to weigh up whether you value your time as equal to or greater than any fee, and that consideration may well be different to your normal assessment of such circumstances depending on how exhausting you have found the self build process to be.

IIRC a previous version of the form allowed you to complete a slimmed down version if only claiming for final fittings and fixtures as opposed to all materials from foundations up.

£235 + ? Tempted to set up a business to do this...

In the long term, electric vehicles won't be cheaper to run, as the government will have to tax use of EVs (be it increased VEL, dynamic road charging etc) to make up the shortfall in current fuel duty revenue.

If fitting simple profiled facings and skirtings, I wouldn't bother, as per picture below ( facings will need to have greater depth than skirtings). If going for an ornate / ogee type profile fit them to make the transition easier and neater.

@Grosey Is the improvement speed based or one of reliability / preventing drop outs / poor connectivity?

@lizzie Good to hear you have got it resolved, although I'm sure not a pleasant experience for you. The big issue here has to be your PM. It strikes me he isn't doing what you are paying him for, and if that's the case, the question has to be what service is he providing and should you continue to employ him?

Hi @Amanda and welcome to the forum. Sounds an interesting project and looking forward to hearing about it. Members of this forum have a range of experiences of their interactions with architects (as we have all had with other professionals) - some good, some indifferent, some bad, so there may well be some interesting debates and discussions as time goes on. Hopefully you're up for the challenge!

This is the scenario we have. In many ways we find it a positive having to close the lid before flushing (soft close seats/lid so you only have to flick them forward rather than lowering them). Prevents aerosol spray from flushing and makes the kids want to wash their hands!

+ another 1 for Osmo polyx clear satin. Lightly sanded before application, and deburred between coats. Picture of our stairs after application, oak treads, pine stringers and risers. As other have said, it's proving very hard wearing.

@Dee J you could have a look at @iSelfBuild facebook page which documents his project. He has done something similar to what you are describing.

We had exactly this problem at our last house. A neighbour 'converted' to a large WBS with back boiler for his heating and DHW (spending all his free time collecting and processing wood), but he insisted on keeping the fore damped down with the result smoke was always belching from his chimney. The prevailing wind meant that usually it wasn't an issue but when wind direction changed, our ventilation system would draw smoke in. The solution was to re-position the supply air intake. Moving it to the leeward side of the house in relation to the problematic wind direction did the trick for us.

How about celebrating the fact you cannot get a signal, sit back and enjoy the silence and lack of interruption?

Welcome. Sorry to hear what you are going through. Finances aside, take your time in getting a replacement kitchen sorted out. A little slippage in the schedule may not be wanted, but a small cost to pay to get a replacement that meets your needs, rather than one which will just do.

I think you need to have a frank conversation with your PM as well as the crew doing the boarding. You are after all, paying your PM to look after your project.

Having completed the initial groundworks last year (see Part 15) it was great to get the digger back and be able to spread the remaining sub and top soil over our site. All in all, there has been around 150 hours of digger time to get all of the site landscaped. Other than using stone excavated on site to edge parts of the driveway and round the back of the house, most of the digger time (supplemented for earth moving with a dumper) has been spent on earthworks. At the front of the house, we had formed our terraces last year so 'only' had to cover with top soil. At the rear of the house, a lot more work was required as we had to spread what was still a sizeable amount of subsoil, before we could finish with topsoil. The result of all that work was a barren 'moonscape' of soil. Having considered all of my gardening options, and in particular the exposed nature of our site, I opted to go for a very simple garden scheme - a mix of lawned grass and wildflower meadow. With 2/3 of an acre to seed, I opted for the big guns and got a local farmer in to power harrow and air seed the meadow areas. He also harrowed and raked the lawned areas for me, but they did require good old human input to get an acceptable and stone light (I won't say free) bed on which I could sow lawn seed. I sourced both lawn and meadow seed from a local merchant, opting for a local species rich meadow mix, boosted with some annual and bird/bee wildflower seeds. On those areas which the air seeder couldn't reach, I used an aero broadcast seed sower / "fiddle" sower. For those who haven't used one, it's a very simple yet effective bit of kit. The lawn seed was sown at a rate of around 45g / sq m, and the meadow grass at 3g /sq m (to allow space for the wildflowers to grow) 6 weeks on, the grass has established itself and our site is starting to look rooted in its surroundings. Looking forward to next year to see some colour in the meadow areas. Stone lined entrance - large stone will eventually have a house name sign on it. Driveway, lined with timer (old 75mm posts) and small stones at the corner Meadow area - depending how this looks, the lawn area may be extended back a little to shape the meadow with flowing curved lines. You can see our treatment plant at the bottom right of this photo. A diversion channel filled with stone and small stones around the plant lid are in place to prevent water running onto the lid and flooding the pump chamber. The slope between the two terraces has been sown with wildflower meadow grass, so the terraces are hidden when looking from the road below. if this doesn't work / look quite right, I have the option of converting to lawn grass. How we have finished the space between the two sections of the house. It will of course take time for the grass to get properly established, and no doubt there will be many changes made, but overall things are looking good and the house feels that it should be there / always has been there. Meantime, we are just waiting for the fencer to come and erect two new boundary fences and replace an existing one to enclose the site from the adjacent field and neighbouring site.

This is what it's all about, hammering the 432 or so individuals that own over 50% of Scotland's land. http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2014/05/2852/298170 Plays well to the electorate, and to the politicans would only effect a limited (and inconsequential in terms of votes) number of people. As @ProDave suggests, I suspect that the introduction of such a tax, would impact on a lot more than the 432 or so identified, as it would also be seen as a means to extract more from the rich (however that is defined). A lot will depend how and what they tax.