Kelvin

I’m starting think my expectations are too high. Yet again I find myself at odds with another trade on the quality of their workmanship. In this particular case it’s the flat roof and numerous things like long scratches on the rain trim caused by poor materials handling and banging and sliding the ladders about as just one example. There’s a long list. I’ve asked the materials distributor who recommended them for their opinion on it. But it got me thinking that either it’s them and a great many trades just don’t care enough because it’s a house for some reason or it’s me and my expectations are too high. Some of the work on my house has been exceptional but some of it has been piss poor either requiring it needing re-done or I’ve given up and done it myself. In some cases, like the garage, I just accepted it and they gave me a large discount. I can understand why folk end up doing all of it themselves. One of the trades told me that dings and scratches are to be expected you’ll soon not notice them. So i took my screw driver and pretended to accidentally scratch his new van and he nearly had a fit. I asked him what the difference was because eventually you won’t notice the scratch. What’s everyone else’s experience?

Mine is within 200mm of the appliance but on the opposite side of the wall in the utility room. 🙄

Heb Homes have a partner kitchen and bathroom company. They are obviously keen for the business so we visited their showroom and got a design which had three ovens. I asked why three and was told with a straight face, you’ll likely never use three but I read about the power of three (which is a thing in marketing) so always put three in. 🙄 We sacked them off and did it ourselves so now have two high spec ovens. The microwave is rarely used so that’s stand alone in the utility room out of the way for the very occasional time we use it as we valued the larder space more than the occasional use of a microwave. We also have a separate slow cooker by that’s in the utility room too out of the way.

I’ve used Crown trade super covertex for all the mist coating. I’ll then use a mixture of other paints for other coats. This is a good site for info https://www.thedecoratorsforum.com/best-emulsion-for-walls-and-ceilings/ As I’m sure you know no matter the quality of the paint it’s the prep beforehand that matters more. I’ve has to quite a lot of sanding back (and some filling) of our plaster coat. However, it has meant a good surface for painting on resulting in a nice flat finish.

Yep. Building a house is a compromise. I was on-site before the sun was up this morning. I sat on my folding chair by the big wall of glass sipping my tea watching the mist roll up the valley. I’m happy with my comprise.

Upping standards is a good thing but how well the windows are fitted has a bigger impact. Fitting smaller windows bigger still. We have done the whole wall of glass thing largely because we have a very nice view on the south elevation and it’s why we bought the plot. If it was a different view I’d have removed half the windows.

The only issue with the cooker like that is that in an open plan kitchen the cook’s back is to the congregation. Most of the time this is fine but when you have guests round it’s a pia. Less of a problem when the kitchen is an obvious separate room and the cook is shut away anyway.

Do you really need four stools? We only have two. Depends on your family and how you’ll use the seating area of course. There will mostly just be two of us in our house so two stools work. We do entertain a fair bit so guests on the stools as we cook. Then move to the dining table which is in the same room. More than two guests then they’ll be sitting around the dining table or in the open plan living room.

Agree with AliG on the cupboards. You seem to be obsessed with them. 😂 You have loads already. The likelihood of you using everything in them is pretty small in reality. By removing them from under the peninsula you create the illusion of more space.

Islands are fine if you have the circulation space around them otherwise they are an inefficient use of the space so a peninsular layout might make more sense for you. It’d make the kitchen feel bigger too as you wouldn’t feel you’re walking around the island to get from one side to the other. It also means the cook is facing into the room. We originally planned two dishwashers with two sinks until we removed the back wall of cupboards and everything moved to the island. Our island is relatively big though. I’ve mentioned this before but I’ll repeat it. Blum have an office in MK that has a test kitchen in it. All the units are on wheels so you can mock up your layout and see how it works. Handy if you live near enough to MK.

Shame it’s too late to make the window taller. I’d have made it a bit taller as you could have added a blind to then cover up the top bit for privacy until your fence was up. Presumably you’ll add a nice dense hedge too. well done posting this up. It’s not easy presenting something you’ve worked on and it’s then criticised. It all comes from a good place on here though.

I looked at it too and as John says it wasn’t worth the effort and cost. Plus the way we did ours allows us to easily add more services in the future etc which we’d lose if we insulated it.

Ah your window isn’t very tall if those dims are accurate so it does look quite small even if it isn’t. I’d cupboard up to the back wall though. If I’ve learnt anything from building this house is that anything you can do to create a feeling of space and airiness really helps with how you see the room. We’ve removed doors and added a glass door, made a room upstairs open plan to the stairs, removed a whole wall of cupboards and therefore a worktop, added a rooflight in the hall, gone with mostly light tones, using glass shades for pendant lights, exposed the ridge beam in one room etc. If you look at your original layout you have three walls of dark wall cupboards and a smallish window at the end creating a tunnel effect.

Remove the cupboards above the sink and see how it looks. The cupboards all around the window makes it look like a letterbox and rather small. Our previous kitchen had a really long work surface on one wall. Completely useless as what do you use it for other it becoming a shelf. Obviously you have a bunch of cupboards there so hence the worktop. In our case half the cupboards were empty.

We fitted a Quooker so no need for a kettle and use the grill to toast rather than a toaster although we don’t toast much. I hate clutter so everything has been about removing stuff off the work surfaces

Layout looks good in that you have the work triangle sorted. I’d have a concern about having the fridge right behind the hob just because it might be a pia if you’re cooking and someone else wants access to the fridge but it’s a minor inconvenience. It looks like you have a lot of cupboards, will you fill them all? I get that more cupboards allows you to spread items out more rather than cramming them in. However most folk have a lot more kitchen stuff than they ever use. We went through every bit of kitchenware and were ruthless in what we kept. Consequently we didn’t need nearly as many cupboards. Does the island have drawers or cupboards? I realised that having a big island with drawers was more practical than cupboards and you ended up with loads of space. This and the ruthless culling of kitchenware allowed us to ditch a whole wall of cupboards. This saved a few thousand and opened the kitchen up more.

We didn’t fit a wood burning stove because morally it seemed hypocritical to fit MVHR and a stove that pumps smoke into the atmosphere. We are fortunate in that we only have one neighbour who is only there once a month and the fields behind us aren’t arable so no spraying.

Get a hose onto it although more rain is due. Yes a bit disappointed with the flat roof. It performs as designed so there’s no leaks or anything like that. It’s more the quality of the finish detail which is poor in my opinion. Fortunately, for the most part, it’s all on the roof elements you can’t see from the ground apart from two areas. I am getting a bit tired of being told by people that not worry you won’t notice after a few weeks/months.

Good you have got this sorted. I’ve become a bit more sanguine about problems because there is generally always a fix. I have an ongoing disagreement with the flat roof company at the moment over the quality of their work which is just another issue in a long list I’ve had with this build. It could be worse though. I was chatting with a plasterer who built a house not far from us. His wife was taking a delivery in and the driver was getting increasingly impatient with her opening the site up. This stressed her out a bit and she fell down a hole badly breaking her ankle. The driver pissed off leaving her in the hole and she was there for 40 minutes before her husband could get to her.

What I found was regardless of what spec you get sent (and I had a similar problem to you) the guys that come and do the work don’t actually care about the ducting you’ve used as long as it’s electrical ducting and suitable for the job. Even then the guys told me as long as its black twinwall.

But not the surface mount type. Ask me how I know 😂

How many of the Loxone back boxes do you need? I have some spare I could send you.

That’s really thick plaster. I have two coats and it’s nowhere near that thick. We had this very debate too and I cut out all the holes beforehand because the consensus was it can cause this very problem you have. It then means all the boxes are also plastered in. At least you’ll have very clean boxes. 😂

My concrete slab has two cuts made in it the full width of the slab. For the screed I put some thin expansion joint board I bought from the local merchant in all the doorways/cupboards just jammed between the frame. I also fitted expansion foam strip around all the perimeter areas. No cracks.

I have the very same decision to make. They are quite bulky/ugly looking things imo so it’s either make the effort to clean the gutters out a few times during Autumn or fit these. I’m also into a soakaway so fitting them probably makes sense.