Ferdinand

I would get that done by my timber supplier at the time of purchase. It should only cost a few ££, and will save oodles of faffing. F

As the middle man I get 80%, following normal construction practice.

The best suggestion was Ask Nick and I claim my £5.

Get some angled blocks the right size 3D printed? @Temp does them in black... ?. F

This is an eve; simpler suggestion. Shower off hall where it should be. Your existing walls left alone to save cost save for one. Kitchen able to be bigger since no one up is transiting through it. Patio doors. Decent light to central space. And you have a big flexible semi-divided space, and can put your study area wherever you want. The only fly in the ointment is that the shower is still rather large. I would consider putting a false all in, and making the K side of the shower room a storage wall accessed through holes made in the brick wall from the kitchen. A unique feature.

The underlying stuff you need to answer here is the question: How do we want to live? Ie do you want divided rooms and lots of spaces, or more modern open plan? Perhaps keep a 7 day diary of activities and use that to help reflect on the next version you come up with. Also, this artlcle may be useful where we talked about terrace plans: Ferdinand

in short, the shower room is 2 or 2.5 times bigger than it needs to be. If it is just a shower room rather than somewhere to spend time relaxing or ironing etc then eg 1.8 x 1.4 or smaller can be doable and give a very generous shower space, though it is quite compact. If you need disabled access etc then it needs to be larger. The more significant issues with this plan are, for a start 1 Room arrangement and connection. Eg consider how far the loo is away if you need a wee whilst boiling an egg. It is an expedition. 2 Light. Both your middle lounge and your office have virtually no natural light. 3 There’s far too much circulation space .. hallway, walking between doors through rooms etc. I think’ what has perhaps happened is cross-purposes with the designer. You perhaps have not the background to be an informed client,and your designer has not challenged you enough beyond your immediate expressed requirements. The particular thing to me is the potential opportunities for improvement which have not been addressed. On the positive side, this is a nice wide terrace with heaps of potential, and that could be 95% done within the existing PP footprint which should only require a minor or non-material amendment, or even a phone call. One simple way to change it would be 1 Make the kitchen diner office right across the back. 2 Take a narrower-than-the-hall corridor straight through the LHS of the office to the kitchen. 3 Put the shower room lengthways roughly where the store and the first part of the office are on the RHS behind the stairs. 4 Put a small utility for washing machines etc behind that. 5 Incorporate a study area into where the part of your shower is currently proposed. So on the RHS of that cross-room. 6 Replace those 2 outside doors with patio doors in the single kitchen space. 7 Include a serious amount of roof glazing in your extension to light the middle lounge. 8 The middle lounge would imo be better with the biggest arch you can make to the kitchen. And that room could be whatever you want. That should not require major planning, but it will need input from Building Control, who you would eg dealing with anyway. The principle is better access to the back, simplify layout without major disturbance to existing, and give light to rooms where you spend time rather than services and machines. Other things are possible, and could give major extra benefit, but that is a simple one. or you could do simpler things. But either this or your original proposal are well Into in the 30k-40k+ area imo cost wise unless you do a lot of DIY, and/or Phase it, which is entirely possible. Ferdinand

I hired a joiner and bought one that is designed to be like stone resin but lighter. Being constructive I think hinging it down from the front edge over a small batten using some sort of restraint, and 2-3 people might be one way. You could mount the small batten on something like a 2'x6' piece of board, and stand on it to stop it moving. If it silicone you should have space to adjust it for a bit. Nick will know. F

I had a reply to this. The delay is all mine:

Welcome to the forum. Basically agree with @the_r_sole, can you post your brief "requirements" and "constraints" - then we can comment more usefully. F

Have to get mine done again, so I can boast that it beats a Passivehaus. Currently 74 at 2000 sqft, but has had a 10kWp solar array added since ?. It currently says that 2.5kWp will put me up to 83 Hope it is linear, then I get 110. Bet it isn’t though. F

The shop girl makes the various ice cream confections and deserts and floats using a small row of liquidisers behind the counter.

The bar is tiny .. a couple of seats against the window and about 4 tables. The drinks below are Blood Tonic, which by rights should have blood in it to refresh the iron like a liquid black pudding, but did not, and Espresso served with a chaser of a tooth mug of water which I have not seen before in this country. It is in a place called Rawtenstall in Rossendale. Easy to divert there when heading M6->M1. At the end of a long cobbled shopping street with 1hr free parking ... so much easier than Lancaster ?which was very difficult. They served a nice big minestrone soup in one of those bowls which keeps it hot for about 15 minutes too long. And I love the China saucer. In some ways the feel is like the tea/coffee room attached to the Northern Tea Traders Ltd, which you go passed on Chatsworth Road in Chesterfield if you take the Buxton route across the Pennines. They have 20 or so types of coffee beans in wooden tubs lie a corn stores, but roast about a ton a week so it is always fresh. On t way out I nibbled another one of those chocs which was the last one left on a sample dish on the counter, which she then told me had been step one in preparing the next person’s coffee. Ooops. Ferdinand

Back in April @AnonymousBosch flagged up an evening event in Lancaster for self builders. I made it, and it was quite well attended with about a dozen organisations with stands. this is only some of the people. There was a window identifying architecture as an Art ?, though to be fair another one identified Science as an Art as well. Interesting roofs, including a roof-bush, And on the way back I fulfilled a decades old ambition, and visited the only surviving Victorian Temperance Bar anywhere. Was planning to have a Sarsparilla but I did not realise just how heavily everything was loaded with sugar. Instead I had a thing called a Blood-something, which sounded quite Klingon. I am happy to write a short report, especially on an interesting building society. How would that best be done ... perhaps as a blog plus a resource thread? Also there were quite a few who had heard of BH, so did a little propagandising. Ferdinand

It was quite some time before I realised that was not @Construction Channel, even though CC would obviously never fall through a hole in his own floor. The wide eyed “Qui? Moi?” expression looked similar to CC’s cheerfully ingenuous “You too can do this complicated impossible thing” wide-eyed look. F

Even the revenue projections line up: https://v6.upperbooking.com/en/booking/home/wrap/frittonlakeresortiii?presentation=true&Source=v6&_ga=2.41832994.165252310.1561107166-1424732968.1561107166 ?‍♀️

In this case the narrator mentioned Fritton Lake in the first few minutes, and Google has various things about this development as every entry on the first page of results for a search on ‘Fritton Lake’. Good SEO and ads. Including the interesting back storey. It looks as if there will be 150 lodges, though that may be all of them not just these high end ones. There will have been a planning permission for change of use, though it may have been for caravans not 1000sqft lodges on wheels. I can see an outraged-of-lower-twisleton-under-piddle campaign against these by the likes of CPRE before long. Lord and Lady Somerlyton stand to build a good endowment fund for their Estate, which must be good. https://www.lowestoftjournal.co.uk/news/fritton-lake-shuts-its-doors-on-day-visitors-ahead-of-becoming-a-private-holiday-resort-1-4961887 Though before long, we may have a National Trust Version at Hardwick Hall.They have more land nationally and country estates than any ancient nobility. F

i’ve watched that the AM whilst dodging Japanese tourists at the hotel breakfastime, and On a first look I am disappointed by the alleged premise of the programme. It is put over as pioneering couple discover hidden site in back of beyond in wilds of Essex and engage in an impossible build that stretches their psychological and physical resources to the limit dah-de-dah-de-dah yadda yadda yadda wibble wobble wabble. And it turns out to be almost a show home for something called Hill Wood Retreats which is the posh corner of an Essex version of the Cotswold Water Park, though involving 6 figure sums not 7. https://www.somerleyton.co.uk/fritton-lake/hill-wood/ There is even a picture of the cockerpoo. Fair play and congratulations to the couple for building it, but the storyline is in significant measure baloney, and for Charlie I am disappointed. They are on the surface normal customers for a normal, albeit posh, woodland lodge development. They are actually doing a different version of the build discussed on this thread, except with offsite build. Do I have this wrong? F

Don’t avoid alcohol. Or coffee. Buy in normal quantities throughout the project. Then invite all your BH colleagues for a week long party. The very thought !!!

Which does not seem to apply to baths themselves. The glass mosaic tiles at about £6 per sqm look the choice item to me, from a bargain searching viewpoint.

Only brief as I am just about to swan off to interact with the savages of Timbucthree, ie Manchester. Looking a bit more widely at the plan, which I really like the feel of - esp. the basement and courtyard which reminds of that very early UK passivehaus under the barn in the Cotswolds from GD, I would perhaps consider some element of interchangeability between top floor beds, guest bed/study, and TV room - such as to support: 1 - Kids upstairs now and potentially in the basement later when they start playing trombones or drums needing a bit more freedom. That would be divide up basement, give kids more space, and create parent-snug elsewhere say on GF, but that undermines my point 2 a little. 2 - I like studies to be on the ground floor. I think they (and the TV room) are semi-public spaces and need to be available for visitors rather than locked away. Plus be near the door for callers should there be a home based business. Perhaps studios and writing nooks or craft rooms are different. 3 - Future granny flats etc - which would to my eye naturally fit in the basement. That all depends on which extra items make a TV room for you, and how you will live. Just thoughts. Ferdinand

Up to 80% off at Bathstore. https://www.bathstore.com/sale Includes things like mosaic and tiles at -80%, but about 300 separate lines. Designer Rads look interesting. Not baths by the look of it.

I thank your idea could work OK. However, looking at the plans, I would say that you can get bigger bedrooms where they are. At present Bed3 and Bed4 are approx 10sqm and 9sqm, plus the roofs are into the roof. Your wet room is 8sqm and your laundry is 3sqm. Plus there is all that whatever it is around the flue. I would suggest a look at replacing the wet room with a pair of en-suite shower rooms between the 2 beds. 2 sqm or so will be ample for each of those with a nice big shower say 1.2*0.8. Then take the laundry out of where the wet room is now if you need it up there, and that leaves you at least 4sqm to boost each of 3 and 4 by 20-25%. Is that enough? You might even be able to nick a little from the 2.2m wide mezzanine. You would get 2 larger, similar but interestingly different, rooms, with equivalent facilities. If that staircase is steeper than 40 degrees, I would nick a foot or two of space and make it less than forty. That is my hobby horse, but you will not regret a relaxed staircase.

For some, that would be a usp ?. Can you point us to a plan you have posted? Is there a possibility of reconsidering the roofline?