ProDave

What is the flooring? I made a mat well by our front door in a slate tiled floor. The well is "un trimmed" just the (neatly) cut edges of the tiles abutting the mat. I wouldn't want to stick trim over the edges, unless someone has made a pigs ear of cutting the well.

I got my builder to install mine. Cost about £2K but I have a LOT less windows than you. Mine were Rationel. I had done all the negotiating to get the quote from Rationel as cheap as possible. I then got my builder to do "supply and fit" so the builder ordered them, fitted them and invoiced me for the total. That of course meant there was no VAT to pay which helped my cash flow. If I had ordered them, I would have had to pay the VAT and would not be able to re claim it for some time. The fitting was simply charged on an hourly rate

Q: How many forumites does it take to manually lift an 800Kg window? At 4.7M long you can probably get 6 or 7 people along each side so that's a lift of 57Kg per person. Less if you can fit more. Do able?

Our requirement is either (preferably) a wet rom, if not a large low profile shower tray, with fixed frameless glass panels. Having had a variety of hinged or sliding, framed glass doors before, we no longer want frames, hinges, runners or anything else that can go mankey, just simple unframed fixed glass panels that might stand a chance of being able to be kept clean. And NOTHING that relies on any form of sealant to seal said glass panels.

Hi HighlandStew and welcome to the forum. First I am sorry to rain on your parade, but of you are building the house to sell in 5 years you are going to become very frustrated and disappointed. There is almost no market for large detached houses in the Highlands at the moment (for reasons I won't dwell on for the sake of my blood pressure.) Our present 5 bedroom, double garage detached house has been on the market for 20 months now, just 4 viewings and none since the summer, and no offers. The few houses of this size that have sold around here in recent years have taken over 3 years to sell. Any estate agent who is honest will tell you expect it to take 3 years to sell. Trust me, you don't want to be in the state of limbo that we are in, not knowing when it will sell or for how much. I know of a builder (the one that built our frame) that speculatively built a large detached house to sell. It's been on the market over 6 years now. He says if he knew that, he would instead have built a pair of small semi detached houses that would probably have been easier to sell. And my last bit of doom, I would be very surprised indeed if having built it, you are actually able to sell for enough to actually cover the cost of buying the plot and building the house. I am not being a doom monger, just saying how it is at the moment. Hopefully in 5 years it will be better, but a lot can happen in 5 years, good or bad, and we don't know which. If your motive is to make money, I would forget building anything. Your plot is big enough for 2 houses so I would seek permission to build 2 houses, and sell it as two plots, that way you might make some money. Back to the house. If you are building it to live in it looks nice. Re the "waste of space" on the landing and in the hall, our present house is exactly like that. Yes it's a waste of space but it does have a certain wow factor with a nice staircase. Re the stairs, I would be surprised if that arrangement meets current Scottish building regs. These days you have to have a solid wall down one side of the stair, and a certain amount of solid wall at the top and bottom of the stair to allow for the future install of a stair lift. I can't see how that stair complies. These restrictions are a great shame as that's almost exactly what we have in the present house and everyone says "wow" when they see the stairs.like that. Re the en-suites. the master gets a pokey small en-suite at the moment. I would put the en-suite at the right of the master where a wardrobe is currently and make it much bigger. Presumably the master is the one with the best views, and gets the most sun?

Interesting the different approach. I have not done a thing to the interior yet as I am still working on getting the exterior completely finished so it's totally wind and water tight and I don't need to worry about it. And I am just started on the landscaping, so soon we will have a flat (ish) piece of ground with some grass growing on it. I will admit landscaping at this stage is a little unusual but it means i will be finished with the digger and can then sell it, rather than having to keep it longer, or horror of all horrors have to hire one.

Be VERY careful with your lighting design.

Agree with the sun pipe for the landing. I am not sure you are allowed a step on the half landing. Design for two straight flights of 7 steps, i.e. make your stair well slightly bigger. you don't want to be finding out at build time that it's impossible to fit a staircase that complies with building regs. You will need 13 or 14 steps depending on your floor to floor height. Staying with the stairs, check your local regulations. they would not comply in Scotland as we have to allow a bit of free wall space at the top and bottom of a flight to allow for adding a stair lift in the future. Make en-suite 2 bigger, or abandon it. I am only seeing one "door" into the ground floor, unless that's patio doors or similar in the sun room or lounge. I would want a normal single door from the dining area out to the garden, otherwise you will be cursing when the kitchen bins need emptying. Building regs will probably require more than one door as well.

My plumber friend who is building his owh house is fuming, because the builders have sett the doors in with the threshold just 1r5mm above the cioncrete slab. So whatever tiles or wood he chooses is limited to 15mm including adhesive. That would not be enough for us. Our present hall is tiled in slate and as mentioned they are very uneven thickness and I doubt 15mm would be enough for those.

If putting an mvhr in the loft, do check access. I am working on a house where the loft is tiny (room in roof). The mvhr JUST fits. There is 1" clearance each side to get the side panels off to change the filters, and it's impossible to get passed it in the loft, so he has to have a loft hatch each side of it.

Re the "load swinging in a breeze" thing. My boat is craned in and out of the water each year, arranged by the harbour master as a group lift. We never just lift a boat and let it swing, there are always two long ropes with 2 people on the ground holding them to control any swing and keep the "load" pointing the right way. I am sure the windage of a boat is more than that of a window, and certainly the weight is more. A few of the boat owners are trained as banksmen so we only have to hire the crane, not a contract lift.

Stress is an integral part of a building project. For most of us, it will be the most challenging and largest project you will ever tackle. The stress won't stop when you actually get building, nor will the problems get any easier. My own "challenge" at the moment (and has been for some time) is the inability to sell our existing house so for almost a year now I have slowly, oh so slowly, working mostly on my own been inching the project forward trying to make the last dregs of a tiny budget stretch as far as humanely possible. Today was a milestone. Roughly 10 months since I started, I have finally finished tiling the last bit of roof, the garage roof, so now the house has a proper lid on all of it. I shall be partaking of the "good" whisky tonight to celebrate. There have been times when if someone had come along and offered me a pile of cash for the part built house I would have sold it without question. I still question the financial wisdom of building the new house given the state of the housing market up here. until that issue is resolved, our build will continue to inch forwards but will not reach anything like habitable, let alone finished for many years or until a buyer is found for the old one. The build itself I am enjoying, but I can honestly say this will be the last, if for no other reason than I just cannot face the prospect later of of having to sell a house again. Time out from the build is important, so do go off and have fun from time to time.

Don't do it. A blanked off tap hole just screams "cheap" like budget kitchen sinks that have a tap hole at the front and the back so they can be used left or right handed with a blank in the unused hole. If the bath has tap holes, fit a tap into them. That's just my opinion. P.S why is it some bath manufacturers make the tap holes so big? i have an ongoing problem with a bath that has a shower over it, and the tap hole is so large I struggle to get the hole with the tap in watertight as so little of the tap actually touches the bath, I reckon about 2mm all round in contact with the bath.

Looking at that "diagram 1.4" is seems clear that the doors open outwards so as not to swing over the "activity space" Yours is very tight. you only have .75 from the edge of the "activity space" to the wall so in all probability your door would swing over the activity space if hinged inwards. But it won't take much to make it so an inward door does not cross the activity space. How about a back to the wall wc with a slimline hidden cistern that you may be able to partly recess into the wall and choose a particularly small toilet. That might nudge your .75 metre clearance for the door up enough to make an inward opening for work. your regs seem to be the same as here in that a basin is allowed to partly overhang the activity space.

The outward opening is silly. We don't have that here. We need to provide a set amount of "activity space" in front of a WC and in front of a bath or shower, and the door swing is not allowed to encroach on that activity space. Yours would easily achieve that with an inward opening door. If this were me forced to comply with that silly rule, the door stop would be fixed with just a few panel pins, and the day after the completion certificate was issued I would reverse the door swing. I think the cupboard you have created between the two rooms is the issue. I would make is smaller to give room in the shower room for the basin.

I thought about knock down the wall and extend the lounge into entrance area. It would certainly give a much bigger lounge, but it goes against my personal hate of having stairs going up from a lounge. If that doesn't bother you, it's an easy way to gain a bigger lounge.

If you can't find a "timber frame supplier" to do it, employ a good joiner. Perhaps because TF is much more common up here, you often see houses or extensions built of timber frame, not by a "timber frame kit" supplier but by a joiner. 2 blokes with some basic woodworking tools can build a timber frame kit, either on site or off site. That's how our house was built, by a local firm of builders who built the kit themselves in their own workshops then brought it to site to erect.

I am going to ask a very dumb question (I am an electrician so not used to the "ways" of plumbing) These are thermostatic mixer valves that can send the output water to a primary or a secondary port as explained. So here's the dumb question: Why have a different one for the shower and the bath? They both do the same function, so I am staggered there is a "bath" version and a "shower" version, and even more staggered at the stupidity of having the ports opposite way around depending on which one you buy.

There was a spate of "sheds with hot tubs" here when Tesco were selling them very cheap.

It took me a while to figure the satellite photo of the house is North Up, but the layout drawings are West Up. I would move the front of the garage (and extension) about 1 metre towards the road. the reason being, the front wall of the extension would then line up with the dividing wall between the two first floor bedrooms. That would then leave the possibility to later add a second storey to the extension, and create a corridor through the back first floor bedroom to get to it.

My only experience with "rising damp" was in a previous 1930's semi. The root problem was a fault with the rendering, the base portion bridged the dpc, it had cracked, some away from the wall, and soil had got into the gap so wet soil was bridging the dpc. the problem was compounded by the previous owner sticking polystyrene tiles to the wall to "hide" the damp and wallpapering over that. Stripped off the wallpaper and tiles, fixed the rendering and dpc bridging and it dried out fine. Check outside first that the ground level is not above the dpc and there are no leaking downpipes. If it's behind kitchen units, I would strip off the old damp plaster up to worktop level and leave it as bare brick behind the units. Try to install some vents somewhere to allow some air movement behind the kitchen units perhaps.

That's the point when you see it all marked out on the ground and think "Gosh that's small, better make it a bit bigger......"

Om my what a disaster!!!! All I can say is my Rationel windows arrived when they said, were all packed well on substantial pallets,, unloaded by hiab without problem, all unpacked without any damage found, and all fitted perfectly. Only one "issue" is I got the order slightly wrong an have keys inside on the doors when I really wanted thunbscrews, but that's something I will change later on.

I have been considering roof windows (see my recent thread) I have decided I don't like the plastic velux ones, but I do like their painted wood finish version which I think will work well with the painted wood interior finish on the Rationel windows. I quite understand the scaffold issue re a spray render. Let's hope they mask the windows properly!!!!

Why is the scaffold coming down for the render? how will they do it? Normally you just remove the hop up's leaving the scaffold with a greater clearance between the scaffold and the walls.