Jeff and Emma's self-build blog

2012-01-23T05:14:00.000-08:00

Ooooh, new tellybox :-D

Apologies for really quite poor pictures, they in no way show off how good this thing looks! Sony KDL-40NX723 for anyone thats interested.

2012-01-09T09:29:00.000-08:00

2011-11-28T01:57:00.001-08:00

We managed to get quite a bit done over the weekend, starting with a good clean and tidy up! I put up a shelf in the bedroom, and we moved Emma's stereo onto my old Ikea unit which matches the shelf. I didnt realise there was a right-way-up to install the bracket for the shelf, so naturally I installed it upside down. Not too much of an issue, will just have to get the drill out again.

We put up Emma's three digital photos on canvas, which look really good. One nail into the wall (and filler/paint covering up the six nailholes I made prior to finding the stud) was all it took to mount these - and a dab of blue tack in the top two corners to keep them perfectly level.

We finished the functional install of the extract ducting through the loft. There is a little bit of tidying up to do inside the loft, putting the plasterboard back on etc, but its fitted and tested and that was the main thing. What a chore that was, I dont blame me for putting it off! Remove plasterboard / vapour barrier / insulation, mark circle on inside of OSB, drill a series of holes and pop out the centre (hard work), then do the same through the external board and render, chop the duct down to length, manhandle it into the loft (not easy) and stick it through the hole, then up a ladder to mount the external vent. Twice, one for the kitchen and one for the bathroom.

2011-11-25T05:32:00.001-08:00

New high level media unit.

2011-11-24T04:25:00.000-08:00

The Ikea high level media unit is up and looks good. One thing it does do is allow us to exit the aerial cable inside the new cupboard, and re-enter the wall on the other side of the stud that is inbetween where we put the socket and where we put the tv. A picture will explain everything, but I havent taken one yet.

2011-11-23T05:40:00.001-08:00

So, quotes for home and contents insurance are coming in under £300, but not by much. A company called Towergate is the cheapest so far, at £260.

This weekend we might actually be able to get some work done on the house :)

2011-11-17T05:43:00.000-08:00

Trying to get quotes for home and contents insurance, it seems none of the major companies are interested in insuring houses with timber frame walls or a flat roof, so as ours has both it may prove to be more expensive than a 'normal' house. The only quote I've been able go get online so far is about £300 for home and contents. Although bearing in mind the apparently 'specialist' nature of insuring our house, it may be better to get contents cover seperately.

Again the prospects of any work to the house this weekend are slim, with Emma away and my brother and I going to Rockingham for a trackday, so we have set our sights on a Christmas deadline. Whilst in any normal circumstances, this would be the absolute worst thing to say, we are already living comfortably in the house so its merely motivation for us to get up and do stuff, rather than it being an enormous let-down if we dont hit it.

2011-11-15T05:11:00.000-08:00

Confirmation of receipt of our VAT reclaim arrived yesterday, but they want to see a copy of the previous planning permisssion approval - dont know why, going to ring them and find out in a bit.

Went to Ikea yesterday, picked up some upside down wine glass holder thingies, and the high level media unit for the living room. Photos to come once Emma is back to help me put it on the wall.

2011-11-07T05:07:00.001-08:00

Word.

2011-11-06T09:39:00.001-08:00

Yesterday we sorted out our wifi and computer stuff, with a 3 mifi gadget and a Macbook Pro, on which I am typing this right now :)

Emma also got a new iPhone, so now that we're fully Apple'd up, we both basically do nothing but play Angry Birds now :-D

2011-11-02T05:51:00.000-07:00

Completion certificate has arrived. Also, the LED lighting strips for under the media unit in the living room, but I couldnt install them last night as they dont ship with a plug. With them, came the extra connectors I ordered, so I was able to re-connect the part of the plinth lighting that I had to cut to get one of the cupboards out to plug in the deck lights.

We've completed filling in all of the VAT reclaim forms, what a chore that was! Found a couple of mistakes aswell, but now its all done and we think we are entitled to just under £4400 from the VAT man, which is nice :)

We have decided to get a digger after winter to do the gatepost foundation, dig the rest of the garage foundations, and fill in the soakaway. So with that now a few months off, the outstanding list comprises three items: bathroom windowsill, bathroom tiling, extract fan ducting.

2011-10-28T05:11:00.000-07:00

Work in progress on our bathroom feature mosaic thingy:

The 'pre mixed adhesive/grout' we bought was great as an adhesive, completely useless as a grout! It was sticky, so trying to get it off the tiles afterwards just meant you had to rub so hard you rubbed most of the grout out of the joints!! So we bought some proper cement-based grout and we'll have to do it again. The LEDs are deck lights from B&Q, but they have the correct IP rating to go in a bathroom aswell :)

Gutters have been amended to suit building inspector's comments.

Still not got the actual completion certificate in the post yet.

Initial mortgage search reveals an HSBC mortgage, fixed rate for 5 years, at 4.5% with no fee for a 90% LTV. Which is quite good :)

2011-10-21T08:53:00.000-07:00

The End !!

Strangely, exactly three years to the day since we submitted our planning application for our house (October 21st, 2008), we have today signed off on all outstanding Building Regulations and Planning requirements, meaning that our house is 'officially' complete :-)

We do, of course, still have things to do - like finish the bathroom, fill in the hole in the garden where the soakaway is, tarmac the last few metres of the service trench, but the paperwork is all signed and sealed now, which is a great relief. The ten year NHBC guarantee has now come into effect, and we can look at our options for buildings and contents insurance, and of course re-mortgaging the property to pull out some of the equity we have worked so hard for. Unfortunately, most of this will be going immediately to pay off our debts, in particularly to my parents who were kind enough to lend us the money to re-do the rendering - without which I'm not sure we'd have been able to actually complete the project!

www.selfbuilder.tv has the full episode from Wednesday night (episode 15), if you would like to watch us talk about the experience, and see some cool shots of the finished house.

I'm not going to do the whole Oscar speech thing just yet, I'll continue posting to update this blog until the house is truly finished (probably into November), and then I'll sum up the experience and do all our thank-yous etc, but suffice to say we're going to have a few bottles of wine tonight. I think I'm finally happy to say we deserve it :)

2011-10-19T05:18:00.000-07:00

We did indeed finish the front path, and the film crew came on Monday to shoot the episode that's going out TONIGHT!! 9pm Sky channel 166 :)

Building Inspector will be coming out tomorrow lunchtime to do the final inspection, which (if we pass, which we should) we will get our completion certificate!!

Few last minute things to tidy up tonight then, including putting the second rainwater downpipe into the gulley, preparing a drain test, filling in the last bit of our soakaway, attaching the bathroom windowsills, and we should be good to go. Also need to send a picture of our completed driveway to the man at the council.

2011-10-14T05:08:00.000-07:00

Now confirmed, the film crew will be coming on Monday afternoon :)

This weekend, therefore, we will be finishing the front path and slate chippings, doing as much of the bathroom as we can, and cleaning and tidying the whole house.

2011-10-12T03:21:00.000-07:00

Wow, 6 days of probably the hardest sustained physical effort we've endured in the whole project! 16 tonnes of gravel, 3 tonnes of tarmac, 3 tonnes of slate chippings, breaking up old tarmac, edging, and a new gate! It took something like 10 phone calls to get the tarmac delivery confirmed, people telling us the wrong things and generally not being helpful, until we managed to speak to the person who quoted me via email and then it was all sorted. And Farmington gave us bad advice aswell regarding their delivery, meaning we ended up paying extra for a less convenient method of delivery. Still, at least our neighbour Alun sorted the compactor for us, which was very generous of him. Here are some pictures: Front path area under construction. We have a few more paving slabs to lay and the rest of the chippings to put down, this will be done at the weekend:

We had a little gravel left over, so we moved it here next to the decking:

The good news is we can claim VAT on all the gravel and the tarmac too.

Also, I put up a shelf in the airing cupoard, finished the improvements to my poker table, cut up some more tiles for the bathroom, and helped my brother with fitting the new suspension to our car.

The people from Niche are coming on Monday it looks like, to film the piece about our house for selfbuilderTV.

2011-10-05T05:08:00.000-07:00

Havent written much lately because we havent done much lately. The weather was, in fact, too hot to really do anything, which is surprising for late September! It's cooled down a bit now, and we have a few days off to get some gravel and tarmac down on the drive

2011-09-26T03:13:00.000-07:00

Laid our tarmac on sunday, turns out we need another 10 bags to reach the end of the drive! The original bit we laid is starting to harden up, so it looks like its going to take about 2 weeks to set.

This week the weather looks good, so I want to finish the rest of the tarmac and the rest of the front path.

2011-09-23T05:15:00.000-07:00

Last night I cut the tarmac back to two straightish lines, ready for tarmaccing at the weekend. I so wish I'd done this before we dug the service trench, would have made the whole job so much neater. For some reason I didnt think my grinder would go through it!

2011-09-20T05:07:00.000-07:00

Four more paving slabs laid on the front path, the plinth bit at the end of the bath is taking shape and we have mosaic tiles for it ready to go on, and lots more tiles are marked up ready for me to cut. I cut and laid the final piece of chipboard in the loft, which also clears the way for the extract fan ducting to cross the loft and exit out of the wall. Still doesnt sound like very much work to me though, but it took all weekend and I'm totally knackered! The last little bits of the build are extracting every last little bit of energy from me.

2011-09-16T03:06:00.000-07:00

Last night I laid two bags worth of tarmac on the first section of trench. It goes down quite well, but driving a car over a plank over it doesnt seem to compact it enough, and hitting it with the back of a spade is the same, so I think before we lay any more we'll have to hire the correct vibrating compactor. Although a long plank resting entirely on new tarmac might do the job. Anyway, it was still soft this morning, so Im not sure it has been a success. We'll see how it is tonight.

The quote from Tarmac (the company) for the tarmac (the material) is about £600 for 3T to do the larger part of the drive, which is ok. Desperately need to sell the Mondeo now though!

2011-09-15T02:23:00.000-07:00

Both drawers installed in media unit, DVDs and computer games moved in :)

10 bags of tarmac purchased, currently in living room to warm up. Drive weeded. But I think I will treat the whole lot with weedkiller just in case.

2011-09-14T03:36:00.000-07:00

Last night I drove from Cheltenham to Swindon to pick up a steering wheel, then to Ikea in Bristol to buy the drawers for our media unit, then back to Cheltenham to do food shopping, then to my parents to assemble the heaviest, most substantial solid oak dining table in the world! When I got back home it was midnight, but I still wanted to put one of the drawers in, and it fits lovely. I'll do the other one tonight.

Also tonight I'm going to start tackling the resurfacing of the service trench, using cold-lay tarmac bags from Wickes. The bags will have to warm up, so tonight I'll do the weedkillering and disc cutting straight lines down each side of the trench, then tomorrow I can lay out the tarmac and squash it down.

2011-09-13T02:50:00.001-07:00

Last night I hauled up all the broken paving slabs from the drive, and deposited them to fill in the low points in our front 'garden', and to save mortar when laying our path.

2011-09-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I took the kitchen cupboard out again, to plug in the deck lights that I bought from B&Q on Tuesday. The lead runs from the plug socket in the wall behind the units, under the trim piece at the junction of the kitchen tiles and walnut flooring, and under the skirting boards to be poked out of a hole in the aluminium sliding folding door frame, right under the decking where I can plug in the lights :)

Coffee table experiment has turned out quite well I think. Tonight I'm going to (hopefully) make a poker table! And Emma has ordered our dining chairs, although only four of the six we want, and not in the colour we wanted either, as M&S are low on stock.

2011-09-07T05:11:00.000-07:00

For some reason the tiles look a bit pinky, they're not really.

2011-09-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

Last night I completed the sealant to the tiles in the bathroom, also did the sealant round the toilet and glued on the backplate to the shower valve. I also shortened the legs of a table and painted it matt black in the garage, as a bit of an experiment that probably wont work.

2011-09-05T04:50:00.000-07:00

Most of this weekend was taken up with my niece's Christening which we were helping with, although we did manage to do some work saturday lunchtime and sunday afternoon.

Installed HomeEasy remote controlled double socket bought from B&Q a while back for a bargain £5. I put this behind the kitchen units to control the plinth LED lighting - and it works 100% every time! I think, therefore, that the problem with the lights is actually the light switch rather than the remote control.

We completed the grouting of the bathroom wall beside the bath, sealed around the bath and the vanity unit, put on the shower control valve and the showerhead and tested it out, put up the shower curtain and removed all the stuff from the bath and took off the protective plastic sheet. I think its going to be an amazing shower. Need to do the final coat of sealant and finish the extract fan ducting before we can actually use it though.

2011-09-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

Started playing with our universal remote control on Wednesday night. It learnt all the tv remote and blind remote functions, but its not without its problems. The blind control wont continuously function - it seems to want to emit a control signal for a predetermined amount of time, regardless of the fact that you're still holding the button down. Which is strange, as you can hold the channel up/down button and scroll through tv channels really fast. It also seems a bit hit-and-miss when controlling the lights from our sofa - being closer to the light switch is no problem, so I think it might just need some decent batteries. It also operates the 'mood' setting by operating each individual fitting one by one, not all at the same time. With all these issues, £50 doesnt seem like such a good deal any more!

I also cleared out the garage, and reorganised it so you can actually see the floor, rather than trampling on about 3 different layers worth of stuff to get to the other side!

2011-08-30T05:42:00.000-07:00

Ordered shower rail and curtain, and also ordered the remote control unit for our lights.

2011-08-24T07:53:00.000-07:00

Bathroom walls around shower are now completely tiled, and first coat of sealant applied. I might have to wait until we get back from Newcastle before we can grout it all up. I also have my paperwork to sort out for my Part 3 exam, which has to be in by the 1st of September! So, yet another delay to house stuff.

2011-08-16T07:35:00.001-07:00

2011-08-15T05:12:00.000-07:00

This weekend I spent 2 hours in a scrapyard, went to a house warming party, watched the MotoGP, and did a small amount of work on the house in the form of some more tiling in the bathroom. The walls around the bath are now pretty much complete. So just sealing and grouting to go, then we can use the shower!

2011-08-11T05:35:00.000-07:00

We laid the first four paving slabs in front of the front door, using an entire bag of cement and four bags of sand in the process!! Didnt realise it was such a height difference.

2011-08-08T05:13:00.001-07:00

Some more bits and bobs done over the weekend. Fitted a towel rail to our vanity unit, which is actually a kitchen cupboard handle but dont tell anyone: Started cleaning up the paving slabs for our front path, they're covered in mud and render:

Also we fitted the last 3 cedar boards to the roof overhang, the window sills to the bathroom window (which isnt finished because we ran out of glue), and the scotia to the dressing room. We also filled in a good proportion of the soakway, and fitted the extra gulley in the foul drainage run for the washing machine to drain into.

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2011-08-07T13:12:00.001-07:00

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2011-08-07T13:10:00.001-07:00

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2011-08-07T13:09:00.001-07:00

2011-08-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

2011-08-05T09:50:00.000-07:00

2011-08-04T09:47:00.000-07:00

Half present to myself, half facilitating the paying off of some debts (by it costing half what the Mondeo should be worth), here is my new '93 Nissan Skyline:This one is a GTS-t, as opposed to the GTR which I had before, which means a) 2l turbo not 2.6l twin turbo, b) rear wheel drive not variable four wheel drive, c) it cost me about £2k not £8k. Still looks and sounds awesome though, and whilst it doesnt exactly have the near-500bhp my last one did, it's still an event to drive it and it still pins you in your seat as it comes onto booooost. Or maybe I've just forgotten what a fast car feels like after all these years :-D

That seat + rock hard suspension = back breaking! Set of GTR seats required ASAP, although that is all under control. Happy Jeff :-)

Normal service will be resumed (ie talking about house stuff) at the weekend. It's been UNBEARABLY hot lately, so we havent slept very well, so we havent had the energy to work this week. Hopefully the weather will return to some sort of normal at the weekend and we can get on with a few jobs.

2011-08-01T04:09:00.001-07:00

House well and truly warmed :)

Now for the final push to finish the few things left for Building Control to sign us off, gravel the drive, install the gate, tarmac the drive in front of the gate, finish tiling the bathroom, and of course all the paperwork to do for the VAT claim (not looking forward to that!). Still work to do, but then that's always going to be the case as we build the garage, landscape the garden, and there's at least 4 small extensions planned for the years to come :)

2011-07-29T05:56:00.000-07:00

Bathroom lock installed and fully working :)

2011-07-27T05:04:00.000-07:00

Finally the last bit of demolished render is in the skip, and the skip is full ready for collection. Must concentrate on fitting handle and lock to bathroom door before party, other than that we're just about ready for it :)

2011-07-25T05:18:00.000-07:00

We cleared most of the rubbish into the skip, trimmed the bathroom door so it fits in the hole, and fitted the last few pieces of skirting board in the bedroom. Which doesnt sound like very much for a weekend's work, but we got up in good time both days and I'm completely shattered!! Good job this is coming to the end now, as I dont think I can handle much more of it!

We found one section of rainwater pipe in the back garden that has been cracked by Dot'n'Dab sweeping all the demolition debris over it, so we'll have to replace that aswell.

2011-07-22T05:04:00.000-07:00

Some quick pictures of the cedar boarding to the canopy areas:

Got a busy weekend ahead, must finish all outstanding jobs before party!

2011-07-21T05:19:00.000-07:00

Just about finished the cedar boarding on the underside of the roof cantilever yesterday, just need to do something along the edge. Same for the porch canopy

Photo0072.jpg

2011-07-18T05:40:00.001-07:00

2011-07-18T05:14:00.000-07:00

Cedar cladding:

And that's about all we managed to do this weekend, and a trip to Habitat to find the dining room table we want is half price :)

2011-07-14T05:02:00.000-07:00

Soakaway under construction: We have one last (hopefully) skip, and the replacement glazed unit arrived today aswell, to fix the door that Dot'n'Dab broke.

2011-07-13T03:56:00.000-07:00

Some interior shots including the new decking:

And one of the kitchen. Mmmm, shiny:

2011-07-12T06:36:00.000-07:00

Met with the man from the Planning dept on site today, which was useful and productive. I found out that we actually dont need to do the foundations for the garage to comply with the clause that says you've got to make reasonable progress before 3 years is up - because the construction of the house means we have done that already, so its nice to know we can work on that at our own pace now. He measured the height and looked round and said there were no problems. There are 3 outstanding planning clauses, two relate to the drive and one to the rainwater drainage. He was happy with the drive inside the gates, and he just wanted me to let him know a timetable for resurfacing the tarmac part outside the gates. And I need to submit the calc for the soakaway, which is fine :)

Speaking of the soakaway, we started building it last night, but it got dark before we could finish so there's a bit more trimming to do to get the last crate to fit in there, and the pipe is in slightly the wrong place so needs a bend added to it, then we can backfill it and cover it over with earth - and for the first time in well over 2.5 years there wont be a big hole in our back garden :)

2011-07-11T05:07:00.000-07:00

Ok, date for house warming is set for the end of the month! Giving us just under 3 weeks to complete all remaining tasks.

2011-07-08T02:01:00.000-07:00

Me being me, the blog is periodically interrupted with pictures of cars, generally battered old ones. I use it for photo hosting when I want to put pictures on Driftworks :)

Decking built last night, one board short rather annoyingly, but just for trim around edges. We cunningly utilised some concrete fence posts that had been on the plot since we bought it, levelled them up and covered them with weed fabric, then the joists laid across them:

This saved us spending the whole evening barrowing in soil from across the garden. Then we nailed on the edge members and screwed down the deck boards themselves:
Voila - decking built and finished (99%) from scratch in an evening! Its a rather nice match to our walnut flooring aswell, spot on :)

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2011-07-07T05:52:00.001-07:00

2011-07-07T03:58:00.000-07:00

Ordered cedar cladding and soakaway crates today, which should be the last of the major orders necessary to complete. Decking boards from B&Q, and joists from Griggs, arrived yesterday, and we're hoping to build it tonight. All the work is in the prepping of the ground, once that's level it should only take about 15 minutes to finish it!

Came home last night to find our neighbour Alun with a hosepipe down our manhole. Not good! Turns out all our waste has been collecting in the last section of pipe before the manhole, seemingly unable to drain freely away! I checked in the rodding eye halfway up our drive and that was clear. We put the hose pipe down the rodding eye and within 10 minutes it had all cleared out, so I think the fact that we're not using the shower or bath at the moment, but we are using the toilet, means the drain is not getting 'flushed through' as it would be under normal operating conditions. It took about 6 weeks to collect enough gunk to start smelling, so at the moment I'm working on the theory that two showers a day and a bath every so often will be enough to keep the drains clean. The other thing that crossed my mind is maybe some render got lodged down there or something. Not cause for alarm right now, but we're back to a 'no solids' policy until we can get the bath operational, which basically means finishing the tiling in the bathroom. If the increase in water flow to normal working conditions doesnt solve it, then unfortunately it looks like we'll need the pumping station after all. This is not good news at all, as they're quite expensive :(

2011-07-04T05:52:00.000-07:00

Reinstated burglar alarm, security light, roof trims. Finally attached the edging to the laminate worktop: Some photos of the finished exterior:

Pretty nice now, although you cant see the rough texture from those pics. Its a bit rougher than I wanted to be honest, but its fine.

Building Inspector came over today, confirmed that we need to finish the drainage and make a flush threshold to one of the doors and he can sign it off as complete, which is brilliant news :-D

2011-06-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

The finished rendering: And some pics of my battered car:

2011-06-29T05:14:00.000-07:00

Used the washing machine last night, very impressed. Although we appear to have lost the instructions, all we have is the little guide card thingy, which doesnt exactly explain much.

Building Inspector coming on Monday to check the finished render, and advise on anything else we need to have the project signed off.

2011-06-28T04:33:00.000-07:00

Sofa came yesterday, we've only been waiting since the end of April for it!

It's great! But not quite as great as the weekend I've just had at Buxton, which requires me to spend the rest of the week fixing our car as I piled it into a solid steel wall and bent quite a lot of it! The car that is, not the wall.

Emma has ordered our replacement glass unit, and we have reduced Richard's payment accordingly. The render is all finished and the scaffolding was coming down as I left for work this morning, so should be able to get some photos of the house this evening :)

2011-06-24T05:05:00.000-07:00

Last night I made up the cooker hood ductwork, which has turned out very well I think. It's not shiny, it looks industrial, a little bit rough - which is exactly the look I wanted:

I even profiled the bottom of the plenum box to fit the curved glass, but I havent taken a photo of that. It was only to get the box to sit flush with the wall, not for any aesthetic purposes, although it does look quite good now I've done it.

Here's the loft side of it, and you can also see the duct popping up from the bathroom extract fan. These will be completed by cutting holes through the wall on the right, and I have some stainless vents to go to the outside world:

2011-06-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

Some gubbins:

I should have paid more attention to the little drawing I did of this, the pipe diameter is 100mm, whereas the outlet from the cooker hood is 150mm. D'oh! Hopefully it will still work!

2011-06-21T05:01:00.000-07:00

Telescopic towel rail - £26 from Homebase, or £free from my parents garage :-D

2011-06-20T05:09:00.000-07:00

Stupid Blogger website lost everything I typed in the last 10 minutes :(

Cant be bothered to type it all again, so here's a pic of the washer installed. We also did some skirting board in the bedroom and tidied up the front room.

2011-06-16T05:00:00.001-07:00

Dishwashers are amazing! We used ours for the first time last night, very impressed! I just put a bucket under the waste pipe, wont be able to do that for the washing machine as it uses 4x as much water!

Dwell have just emailed me to say our sofa can be delivered on the 1st of July. Which is a shame as neither of us can be there, and neither can my parents, so we might have to think of something else.

2011-06-15T05:01:00.000-07:00

Some progress made on fitting the appliances:

You can see the door fitted to the front of the integrated dishwasher, we've basically just got to turn the water on and sort out the waste pipe, and then the washing machine can go in its little cubby hole aswell.

2011-06-14T03:09:00.000-07:00

Both washing machine and dishwasher arrived Monday morning: So we now need to make up the corner piece, and space it correctly so that the dishwasher door just overlaps it when closed. I've taken off the blue plastic handles on the isolation valves, as that gets the appliances another 6/7mm further back - looks like they're still only just about going to be flush with the edge of the worktop though! Something we've learnt for next time - dont put the isolation valves directly behind the appliances, put them to one side.

We also need to move the waste pipe, as this fouls the washing machine.

2011-06-10T05:53:00.000-07:00

Bosch Classixx dishwasher purchased. Was debating whether the cheap Currys Essentials dishwasher for half the price was worth a gamble, decided probably not.

Both washing machine and dishwasher should be with us on Monday :)

2011-06-10T05:02:00.000-07:00

Dot and Dab's machine went wrong AGAIN yesterday, so they've still not quite finished the skim on the back wall, and the machine is back to the shop to be fixed. They suggested coming back Sunday, but heavy rain is forecast for Sunday so it'll probably have to be Monday.

£2 for a 90 degree angle aerial connector and the TV now sits properly on the mount. Not a bad piece of kit for £35 either, would recommend it :)

http://www.tv-wall-brackets.co.uk/Deluxe-Ultra-Slim-LED-TV-Wall-Bracket-23-40-Inches.html

2011-06-09T05:24:00.000-07:00

TV is wall mounted!! Slight problem with the aerial lead (it sticks out too much), but I'm about to solve that with a trip to Maplin :)

I also added some temporary bracing to our temporary gate, which should eke it's use out for another couple of weeks until we get our permanent one.

2011-06-08T03:40:00.001-07:00

LG washing machine purchased. TV mount purchased and already delivered! Will be putting that up later I suspect. Dot and Dab were here this morning, but when they rung me to let them in the gate my phone didnt ring! So they've gone to another job. Showers were forecast for today anyway, so maybe its no bad thing. I'll be glad when the render is finished, the scaffolding is down and all the plastic is taken off the windows, its really getting on my nerves now.

2011-06-06T05:13:00.000-07:00

Couple of pics, nothing special. This is the media unit finished. Just looking now into a wall mount for the tv. Which has to be suitable for this 32" Samsung, and the future 40" Sony we will be getting: And here's Dot And Dab hard at work, well two of them are. Give Eric a break though, he did put up a lot of the boarding by himself!:

2011-06-02T04:54:00.000-07:00

Basecoat of render is finished, so just some skimming / flattening to do over the weekend, and then leave it a week to properly cure before doing the top coat.

Still trying to get sliding folding door company to give us a quote for the replacement glazing.

2011-06-01T04:44:00.000-07:00

Why does it seem to be so difficult to find a washing machine that doesnt look rubbish and doesnt cost a million pounds, now that the Indesit Moon was featured on Watchdog last month for having black mould problems?!

2011-05-31T05:33:00.000-07:00

HUGE update. We've been off work all last week, hence no updates, and we hired a digger and a dumper to do various external works. Here's Emma on her dumper truck: And here's my brother on the digger:

First of all we had to clear all the bits of broken render, and the massive pile of earth that came out of our foundations. It took several days to do that. Then we dug the soakaway in the back garden, then we dug the drainage trench through the drive, you can see this here:

note that in this picture it looks like utter carnage. This is not in any way deceptive! We also had to fell some more trees and clear all that rubbish, then our building inspector came and inspected the new foul drain, with the instruction that we had to insert a rodding eye halfway down, just after the bend you can see in the photo. We did this the day it rained, which was not fun. We'd organised a 20T load of gravel for Friday afternoon, which we knew was setting ourselves a tight deadline, so we had to work fast getting the drain filled in and protected over with paving slabs. Then gravel boards, stakes, and a double-layer of geotextile to form the drive:

Then in came the lorry, flattening everything in its path, including next-door's paving slabs which we will have to replace. This is what twenty tonnes of gravel looks like when it's all just dumped in a pile:

Eventually we got it looking like this:Its still quite uneven - making things flat is the hardest thing you can do with a digger as the bucket wants to make an arc all the time - but we have the top course to come so we'll put up with it for a bit.

We also finished the doors for the media unit in the living room, and plumbed in the toilet which is now fully working.

2011-05-20T05:29:00.000-07:00

To explain the previous post, the NHBC were going to reject the type of render and boards chosen by Dot and Dab, until head guy at JUB (render) rang head guy at NHBC who agreed that the system was indeed acceptable, as they had maintained all along. So eventually after a load of stress, I had a rather humble-sounding NHBC guy on the phone telling me it was ok to proceed after he was obviously told what was what by his boss.

So the house is battened out, and the boards started going on this morning. We're currently thinking about the drive and what specification/depth we want for the gravel etc. I think we want MOT type 3 for the subbase, as this is permeable, and then 35mm ish of 20mm 'traditional cotswold gravel' over the top.

2011-05-19T05:56:00.000-07:00

Stop - coffee time:

Except I've barely had time to think over the last few days, trying to sort the issue with the NHBC not accepting the system Dot and Dab were proposing to use! It's finally sorted now, and the guys can crack on with boarding the house out. I'll explain more later, because my lunchtime has ran out now.

2011-05-17T02:58:00.000-07:00

95% of the render has been stripped off now:

We took the datestone off the wall last night, and there's basically just the front bathroom wall to go now.

2011-05-16T05:13:00.000-07:00

Our caravan has sold for £550, which is not bad. We bought it for nearly £800, but it did have an awning which got ruined.

The film crew came on Saturday morning, so keep an eye out on Sky channel 166 on May the 30th for us looking silly on TV. They were just doing a piece about the heat pump, but were so interested in the story of the build that they want to come back when it's finished and film a piece all about us, which was nice!

Demolition has got as far as the north wall and the wall over the roof and down the side of the kitchen, which isnt bad really. I moved the TV aerial back onto the low mast on the other side of the low roof, and the reception remains perfect, so we might as well just leave it there. Dot'n'Dab have started work this morning on the battening and the rest of the demolition. The second skip is now full, hopefully a third skip will be enough for everything else.

2011-05-11T02:20:00.001-07:00

The demolition is going better than expected. Now I've got the technique sorted I'm flying through it. Hoping to have Andy to help one evening this week, and with the scaffolding going up tomorrow I'm hoping I can actually do ALL the demolition before Monday, thus saving us £900. A further benefit is that the Tyvek and first layer of battens are basically untouched, meaning we should save another large chunk of money from the £1700 quoted to do 'felt and cross battens', as two thirds of that work is not necessary. Things are looking good at this stage.

Last night I put up the final Aquapanel board in the bathroom, which was behind the plug socket we were waiting on our electrician to move for us. We can finish the tiling in the bathroom now (if we didnt have more important things to do)

2011-05-10T03:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry about all those pictures of the caravan, they're for the ebay advert. By next week the caravan will be sold! This is mainly to get it out of the way of doing the drive.

Emma's parents came to help on saturday, and we filled this skip with rubbish: Then Emma and I used the brushcutter and mulching vac to clear loads of the garden, and we also felled the conifer. Lots more clearing to do, but we've made a decent start at it now. We started hacking off the old render, and actually it comes off relatively easily:

Our electrician Martyn also came and relocated the plug socket for the cooker hood into the airing cupboard, and this means we can now finish the tiling in the bathroom. We also sorted out why we had no TV reception aswell. The two aerial sockets were connected together, and the wire from the actual aerial was still coiled up in the wall!! No wonder it didnt work. Anyway, we have perfect reception, which is great news. Unfortunately it does mean we have to buy a TV license, boo. Although not for a few weeks yet - as we've got to take the aerial down in a few days in order to do the re-rendering work.

Dot'N'Dab will be starting on site on Monday, and the following week Emma and I are off work and will be hiring a digger and dumper to shift the pile of earth by the side of the house, dig the soakaway, dig the garage foundations, scrape the ground for the drive, and just generally enjoy playing with large earth-moving equipment again.

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2011-05-03T03:25:00.000-07:00

This weekend I have been mostly suffering from toothache, going to Louise and Murray's wedding, recovering from going to Louise and Murray's wedding, and then on bank holiday Monday I did a bit of grouting and some more garden clearing. The large conifer in the garden is now ready for felling, and I can install and plumb in the toilet now aswell.

I ordered our sofa yesterday aswell, taking advantage of the £200 off at Dwell this weekend, despite the fact that we wont have it delivered until mid-June!

2011-04-26T04:32:00.000-07:00

Ignore pics of generator - unless you want to buy a generator?

Managed to put up a few more tiles in the bathroom this Easter weekend. Really need to get a move on with it though. I want to have the inside of the house completely finished before the re-rendering is started, so we can concentrate on the outside (laying drainage pipe, soakaway, driveway and landscaping)

2011-04-21T05:24:00.000-07:00

Still no TV reception! The aerial is now mounted above head height from the tallest part of the roof, we took the tv itself to my parents and tuned it in to all the new digital channels - and it still doesnt work in our house. All I can think of is there is a problem with the aerial cable itself. We'll have to do some continuity testing over the weekend to rule that out.

And we're going to have to do something about the pidgeons walking on the roof and waking me up at dawn EVERY DAY. Something like a fully automatic sentry gun would do me, although a mat of plastic spikes is probably easier!

2011-04-20T04:30:00.000-07:00

Well, how else are you going to tell which macchiato is which?

2011-04-19T05:16:00.000-07:00

Skirting in kitchen finished last night, with the last little bit round the back of the fridge. Tomorrow is the day we cash the £1500 cheque which makes up the last part of the out-of-court settlement from our builder, fingers crossed!

To my perpetual annoyance come springtime, the garden is doing the whole 'growing' thing again. Still, at least I can get into buying some decent petrol powered death-to-all-living-things garden machinery again! Top of the list is a brushcutter - the Sovereign strimmer I bought last year is a pile of junk (buy cheap, buy twice - so true!). But I am also tempted by a flamethrower, and a mulching garden vac to tidy up afterwards - although Emma can operate that one, I'll be the one in front dealing out the havoc :-D

2011-04-18T05:08:00.000-07:00

Because the low media units I planned would interfere with the skirting board, I went and got them on Friday, built them up, and then trimmed the skirting around them:

They're 'floating' on a pair of Ikea shelves, and will ultimately have doors but I havent done those yet. I also dismantled our hatstand, using the actual hat hooks in my own side of the wardrobe. And tackled some more of our garden with the chainsaw.

2011-04-15T05:26:00.000-07:00

I did a lot of the caulking around the door frames and skirting boards last night. Just sort of adds the finishing touch and makes everything look finished. I shouldnt have done it around the aluminium sliding folding door frame though, that just made a mess :)

2011-04-11T05:12:00.000-07:00

Skirting boards: Scotia to the sliding folding doors:

A lot of the skirting boards are bowed, leading to some less-than-satisfactory corners, however I'm sure with some filler they'll look fine. The room is really starting to look finished now! The long edges need their second coat of paint first, so they're still sitting in the middle of the floor.

We ran the pyrolitic cleaning function on the oven on Saturday - great success! Although you still need to clean the glass door yourself, boo. The pizza stone also came up spotless :)

We also bought a new pedal bin and bread bin, and a microfibre mop for the kitchen.

2011-04-07T07:30:00.000-07:00

Trimmed over the entrance to the kitchen, the strip is a bit light but will do the job. Cant use the proper thingy to click it down onto (not without taking up a load of flooring anyway), so will probably just press it into some dabs of glue. Scotia up to the sliding folding door track is perfect size and colour but need skirting boards at either side fitted first.

2011-04-06T04:41:00.000-07:00

Skirting boards delivered this morning.