Nearing the end of 2013...

At the beginning of this year all we had were a set of plans, some building regs drawings, a caravan, each other and some dreams.... but now we have the main structure of a house, still living in the Caravan, we're recording the build progress as part of "Building the Dream" and I now have a Fiance. What a difference 12 months makes!!!!

During the Christmas break we have a lot of plans on what we will be doing, but obviously the weather will play a part. We hope to put some more stone on the drive to help tidy it up a bit under foot (after the 11.5 tonne telehandler etc churned it up), paint the gables, feather edge boards and the roof soffits, rafters etc and doing the insulation in the roof!

Just 3 months ago we started to put the foundations in and now as Christmas approaches we have the shell of the house up, roof on and tiled, the upstairs floorboards in place, stud walling upstairs and we can really start to envisage what it will be like to live there.

We've now got nearly 10 days to do as much as we can before the end of the year!

Have a Great Christmas!

Tim & Fliss

There's no point crying over spilt, erm, paint?

We've had an exciting week or so since the last blog which has seen Building control doing an inspection visit, the external roof carpentry finished, felt and batten on, tiling started and we've ordered timber for cladding and roof insulation along with three tins of paint/stain ready to go... well until "the incident"!!!

So I will start with the roof carpentry. It's amazing how much has been achieved in a relatively short amount of time with the roof works, even with some hold ups waiting for materials.

Roof trimmed out for rooflights

External roof carpentry, including attic trusses, roof light windows trimmed out, the centre hand made on site section all ready for felt and batten.

Last Friday saw the roofers come on site and in less than a day our house had felt and batten on, so we were water tight (well the roof anyway). 

Felt and batten on, ready for tiles

We were expecting the roof tiling to be started on Monday and the roofers were on site all ready to go, but there was a hold up with the tile delivery which meant this was delayed until yesterday. 

Very quickly however it has gone from this...

To this...

Tiles stacked in position around the house

Tiles on the back of the house. 

We chose the tiles quite a few weeks ago now and we are both delighted with how they look on the house! Neither Fliss or I wanted the tiles to look too red and we wanted to achieve a rustic look to compliment the way the house will look once it is finished and to blend into the local scenery.

Roof from the front after day 1 of tiling

The oak frame trimmed on the edges with slate soffits

By end of the week the roof will, if not finished, be pretty close. There is still some internal ceiling joist work to be completed, but a few holds ups with materials have delayed this a little. 

I suppose I ought to clear up (no pun intended, but Fliss did most of it if truth be known) the tin of paint incident. To set the scene, we both had a very productive Tuesday with the timber cladding ordered from local Timber Merchants Powell & Co, Kingsland, the first batch of Kingspan Insulation ordered and we (well Fliss) had finally chosen the colouring, "Chicago Grey" from the Sadolin Classic Wood Protection range to go on the timber cladding.

Naturally I was keen to "pop the top off" to have a proper look at the colour... as I did so the cat decided attack me at exactly that point, which lead to a slow motion fall of the tin only rivalled by the baywatch beach run... In my head I shouted nooooooooo and then heroically dived across the floor to rescue the last bit of paint before it left the tin, in reality I stood there like a lemon thinking "oh s**t" that's just wasted best part of £65 while Fliss calmely started to rectify the situation. It went everywhere. All over my shoes, trousers and the carpet in the caravan, but after 2 days of scrubbing with WD40 and blotting with anything that looked like it would remotely absorb, the carpet looks a lot better, and it's nothing that a big rug won't sort! 

#thankgodflissdoesn'tmoanasmuchasme