ProDave

I would throw 4 out. They are trying to remove your permitted development rights. If they are going to enforce approval of your plans, that must be at zero cost to you.

I think the flush plate is grossly over sized, but I also think the devious women folk chose it because you have to shut the lid just to reach the buttons. No it's not in use yet. No hot water tank yet (next big purchase) so only a cold bath or shower available at the moment. The panels were £104 plus VAT (which we will get back later) from Jewsons. They have a stack of samples so you can see the colours as they really are before ordering.

An internal wall can also be a racking wall. The clue is if it is specified to be clad in something like OSB. Our 2 internal load bearing walls are also racking walls.

Ours are the Grant Westfield Multi Panel boards, but the ones with just a square edge and you join them with an extruded aluminium profile. There was only one straight in line joint, so it seemed pointless buying the more expensive click together version with a hidden joint. We got them from Jewsons.

It's a job to see how how he could fall off the first lift of that. It has the correct toe boards and double hand rails. It's also a mystery how the roofers tiled the roof or has the top lift been removed post tiling? We had a near accident on our first build. That time a main contractor had been contracted to build the house shell and they organised everything. One of the roofers lost his footing and slid down the roof and barely saved himself from going over the scaffold. After the incident (I don't think it was reported to HSE as no actual injury) the main contractor shut the site until the scaffold company had been to check the scaffold and put back the handrails that had aparantly gone missing.

I am re visiting this as I am getting close to ordering. The two local glazing companies both claim to supply bespoke toughened glass and cite shower screens as an example so I will be speaking to both of them. These look good for the hinges, just 2 holes in the glass needed per hinge, no complicated cuts. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Di-Vapor-R-180-Degree-Wall-Mounted-Shower-Door-Glass-Hinge-Chrome-Plated-Pin/122969345040?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649 The questions are what thickness glass? 6mm I think would look and feel flimsy. Thinking of perhaps 8mm but how much would that weigh? And how many hinges? 3 or 4?

1200mm is NOT deep for excavations. I stripped all the top soil off and levelled the house build area. That put my "platform" already a metre below ground level in places. Into that I then dug the strip foundations up to a metre deep in places.

The room is 2.4 metres to the flat ceiling. The wet wall panels come as 1.2 by 2.4 metre sheets. Of course with the tiles laid on the floor, the height is a shade under 2.4 metres now so it bit had to be trimmed from each panel. Roof is 45 degree pitch, the "standard" for these parts, but to be honest I like 45 degrees, everything is just so much easier to mark out. That cardboard template is a shade under 1.2 metres wide (to allow for the corner profile to join 2 sheets) and the height at it's left hand side is 1.8 metres

At £100 per sheet, I did not trust my ability to measure, mark and cut out a sheet and hope to get it right. So I cut cardboard templates first to get it right, then used that to mark the final sheet, remembering to cut from behind.

I only really started just after Christmas and today I finished it. A little quicker that another famous forum member. Strictly speaking it's not completely finished as I have not found the right glass screen to go between the shower and the bath. More pictures on my blog at http://www.willowburn.net/ look for the entry "main bathroom complete"

It's just been marketed as a house with "B&B potential" something you see quite a lot. If it were to be sold as a business, the value would be a percentage of turnover so would value the business a lot less than the house. In effect you buy the house and get the business for free. The other trouble with marketing it as commercial, is possible tax implications, and the fact the only commercial agent we have had a conversation with wanted a huge up front fee to market it, unlike a conventional estate agent that only charges a fee upon completion of a sale.

We only got barely 1 MB when our new line was connected. We were getting about 2 at the old house. I do remember one of the many "engineers" muttering about there was only 1 "good" pair left in the cable coming down our road (and one pair that tested as dud) Anyway after a few weeks, I complained about the speed. A much younger and much more clued up engineer attended and he traced the line through the 4 joint boxes just to get to the top of our road. Every joint box he opened was full of water, and by cleaning up and re making all the connections, he had got the speed up to about 3.5MB by the time he left. Your dialing tone and internet for a few minutes was probably someone elses line. During the 3 week saga of getting our connection made, one day they said the connection to the exchange was made, then they were back next day because what they thought was a spare pair was someone elses leased line and they of course complained when it stopped working.

I thought I would just drag up this old thread. It has been let now for 1 year. The tenants are generally looking after the house (but not so much the garden) The rental figure we got was more than my previous estimate. The tenants are running it as a B&B still and by advertising a lot more than we did and using a number of booking websites getting good occupancy. They stated at the start they want to buy the house in a couple of years. I yet remain to be convinced that will actually happen. It proved challenging sorting out a rental agreement. I spoke to our solicitor about doing it as a commercial let, but he said no, that's far too complicated and comes with a whole host of other issues. So it is let on a short assured tenancy, with a standard contract except the no business and no sub letting clauses removed. From an insurance point of view it was already insured on a guest house policy and checking with the insurer, as far as they are concerned we have just put a manager in to run the place so no changes to the insurance needed. Anyway what prompted me to drag up this old thread is there is a house at the top of our road that is very similar sized. Ours is a little larger, 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms and double garage, theirs is 4 bedrooms 3 bathrooms and no garage. This was in fact the house our surveyor used as a comparison to arrive at a valuation for ours as it was the most recent sale in the street. On the basis of the differences he valued ours £15K more than this house. Well today, a for sale board appeared at that house. On looking it up, the asking price is just slightly higher than it's last sale price, and only £10K less than our valuation. Indeed our asking price at the end was less than they are asking. I will be watching what happens, and will be mighty peeved if someone comes and buys the damned thing.

Been there, done that and posted the saga at the time. What I did also notice through a lot of peering into water filled man holes, is what a decrepit, fragile, 19th century network it is. It's a wonder it works at all for voice telephony let alone (slow) broadband.

10% off at https://www.bathroomsupastore.com/ I just made a purchase and the service was good and quick delivery. With my purchase came a flyer offering the following: "Create an on line account and use the 10% off code on your next order. Please tell your family & friends" 10% off code SUPA10 Enjoy.

At a recent ceilidh in the village hall, one of the parents was notable by his absence. He was apparently at A&E having missed with the axe and hit his foot (no steel toes) They were stitching his foot back together. His wife has now vetoed his purchase of a chain saw.

Don't tell me, it "fell off the back of a lorry" you know nobody believes that.

How close are you building the garage to the Willow tree's? Our house is less than 10M from Willows. The Structural engineer that designed the strip foundations specified we must dig down to the sandy clay sub soil (he had witnessed me dig 3 test puts so he knew the ground conditions to about 2 metres deep) and specified a strong (I think it was C35) concrete mix, and reinforcng meshing in the pour. The reality was when digging the foundations no tree roots were encountered. Our site is unusual that we have a burn running through it and the Willows are all along the edge of the burn, so no prizes for guessing where they get most of their water from.

We have been living in the 'van since last April, so just coming up to a year. Our old house is now rented out. It's only me working on the build now. Site office and laundry is in the part built house. If you are planning on living on site it's normal to include temporary planning permission for the static 'van on your planning application and you pay band A council tax for it. Though we negotiated that the static 'van can remain after the build for use as a workshop and studio (not for habitational use once the house is complete)

Because for the last year i has been what we call "home" And for that use our 28 ft 'van is at the smaller end of the scale, but we bought it for it's unusual room layout.

No 4 by 2 on the gables. It didn't quite go to plan as I detailed that before I got the tile end caps, and when I put it all together, it left a sliver of wood exposed, and in keeping with my low maintenance goal I did not want that, so I fitted a plastic strip before the tile end caps went on to both protect the wood from getting wet and create a drip bead (much as there will be a drip bead when I add the aluminium cladding to the fascia)

@Dudda beat me to it. They are braces for the long sides, might even be the ones meant for 6 foot ledgers if they are too short for an 8 foot setup. I have never seen really short braces for the ends. Your "solution" or a bracing tower on a longer run :

It is just style. Ours are not like that. Just lengths of 6 by 2 regularised timber, that will eventually be clad in an aluminium profile (so painting or varnishing wood is not a regular chore) This is typical of how older cottages were built for instance. It did create an "issue" with the downpipes. The standard bends were too bulky and I had to trim them a bit to get a small enough offset

Can you squeeze that 8M to 9M? A small static caravan such as the one we have 28ft by 10ft (8.5 metres by 3 metres) might fit and would provide all your needs. You can get smaller static 'vans but they are not so common. An old (and hence cheap) large twin axle touring 'van might be a better bet.

On a former job I visited a factory regularly. Visitors had to wear steel toes and if you did not have your own, they provided a pair of very uncomfortable steel toed wellies. So I got my company to buy me a pair of steel toed shoes for the next visit. When I told my host at the factory my shoes were steel toed, he stamped on my foot to "check" I was telling the truth. My boots on site have saved me many times from standing on a nail (steel insole) probably more times than the steel roe caps have done anything.