Finally we're ont'elly... how did that happen?

11 months from when we first put a hole in the ground to start the foundations, we managed to move in and along the way build our dream home with the help and skills of some fantastic, friends, family and trades. We managed to do quite a bit of the work ourselves, found skills we didn't know we had, build it on budget (which was good, because we didn't have an extra few million to cover an over spend) and on time - not bad for someone who fixes cars!

Over the last few weeks I have contemplated what we have achieved (with the help of a quite few others) and it feels amazing to finally be living in our house. We poured our hearts and souls into the build and with the exception of the garden there isn't that much left to sort out. On the whole, I think we managed to stay pretty positive throughout the build with the relatively small issues experienced paling into insignificance when we look at what we've managed to do. Managing the build alongside working has been very challenging, emotional, sometimes frustrating, really exciting, great fun and at times very tiring, but extremely rewarding. Every success and imperfection we've had a significant part in. Not many people are lucky enough to build their own house and we feel very privileged to have done so. If anyone gets the chance, is prepared to make sacrifices and put in some hard work they should jump at the opportunity!

We were lucky enough to have our build recorded by the talented (not just with the camera) and generally nice fellow Lee Chapman. Thanks to Lee's filming along with the input from the rest of the True North Production team our house build will be visually documented forever. Lee who was on site with us regularly throughout -  helped us to adapt to being filmed with a massive lense in our little faces, keeping it relaxed and interesting and without impacting on progress. It is nice to think we have made a friend through one of the most significant 12 months of our lives and I am sure we will keep in contact in the future. Charlie, Christian, Stokey, Sally, Hayley among others at True North made our self-build journey fun, kept us (and some of the trades) on focus and on time along with providing us with some fantastic improvements to our home, which we wouldn't have thought possible and/or affordable - thanks for that Charlie, we didn't see it initially but in most cases you (and Fliss) were right.

While building, Fliss also managed to plan our wedding and while I moaned and groaned about help with the house on times, she managed to pull off a perfect day and the start of the next (hopefully slightly more relaxed) chapter of our lives together.

A massive thank you to everyone at True North and the friends, family, work colleagues, companies and trades who made it all possible. Here are some sneaky pics of our house which will be on later today, Tuesday 21st October 2014 - 9pm on More4 "Building the Dream."

 House designed, frame and shell erected by Border Oak with design drawings tweaks by Owen Hicks Architecture 

Open plan living space

Oak stairs made by Courtyard Designs, brushed Nickel handrail from Ironmongery direct and glass  from Balustrade UK

Liv's wardrobe handmade by Stuart Carter Furniture and painted by us

 Josh's bedroom not too messy yet

Bathroom tiles from Devant Designs, Hereford, Bathroom suit etc mixed and matched from various suppliers including reclaimed.

We love our new home. I hope you enjoy the programme as much as we enjoyed being part of it...

I will compile a list in a future blog with links where possible of the trades, companies and suppliers who we used along the way. Bye for now...

Filling in the blanks... part due

July 2014, we were now frantically getting ready to move in. All the major works on the house were completed but it is amazing how much time the finishing (and preparing to finish) takes. July seemed to be a really good month for progress, with very visible things happening. 

Starting with the upstairs bathroom. After watching the dry lining being done I decided that I would have a go myself in the upstairs bathroom and made the frame, fixed the plasterboard and tape and jointed. At best it would look alright and at worst it was in the back of the bathroom so wouldn't matter anyway! I don't think it ended up too bad and we have another useful little storage box. 

A bit messy but looks OK, pipe work boxed in

Bathroom floor down ready for painting and tiling

Oak shelf, cut, fitted, oiled and ready for the bathroom suite and radiator 

Tiling taking shape

Reclaimed toiled and sink plumbed in and fitted. Radiator sat on the oak shelf.

Bathroom feature wall

Josh's room all cleaned up and ready for underlay and floorboards to go down.

Nearly there, last couple of boards and Josh room floor will be done

Engineered oak flooring in Olivias room , starting to look like a home upstairs

We've put the same engineered flooring through the upstairs rooms 

While the upstairs progressed, downstairs the Oak architrave and skirting boards also were being fitted. The oak was sourced from a local timber yard just down the road in Mortimers Cross (Good Brothers). We used them for quite a bit of the internal oak finishes as I found them very helpful and the timescales they were able to turn around orders also suited our build. I also hadn't forgotten how they managed to turn around the door linings within a couple of days earlier in the build, which meant the plaster boarding wasn't delayed. 

Oak architrave and skirting boards downstairs

Mitred joints and screw and plug fixing

Caps ready to fill the holes in the oak

Oak ledge doors hung

The quartze worktop supplied and installed by Fontoura in Leominster. Just 7 days from the templating the worktop was installed and the kitchen started to feel like a useable space. 

While the inside progressed a lot was happening on the outside as well.

The sceptic tank - we now have somewhere for the waste to go, which is the last thing that would enable us to move in. 

 Lighting up the oak and sitting area outside the french doors. When we have time for BBQs!

Outside lights by the front and rear doors. A bargain of the interweb. 

Really happy with the Lindab galvanised steel guttering, especially against the roof tiles and grey timber cladding. 

Thats it for now, thanks for looking! Tim 

Filling in the blanks... part uno

I am going to use the next couple of blogs to fill in some of the blanks I missed to write about when we were in the throws of the finishing the house off. We simply didn't have enough time to write properly, but I made some notes and took some photos along the way so I could come back to it later (well now really).

The first of the missing blogs is June 2014. We started to make some progress downstairs that made it feel more like a house than a shell. With the electrics and plumbing first fix sorted, the tiles on the floor we were able to fit the kitchen and the delay in the floor tiles meant that we were able to use the time for Stan Stones to tile the shower room. I fitted most of the kitchen myself, very therapeutic when it goes to plan...

The kitchen has finally been moved into the right part of the house, while we start to assemble units before moving them out of the way to start fitting the units.

 The first and most difficult unit on the who kitchen is put into position and fixed

 Washing machine & dishwasher spaced as the other units go in

We have the bare bones of a kitchen

 The shower room tiling is well under way, with the glass tiles forming the back wall of the shower

Holes in the wall, sealed and tiled

Tiles grouted and ready for the shower, screen, toilet and sink

While the downstairs moves on, Fliss and Mum wallpapered Josh' bedroom

Thanks, for reading the next blog will be soon!

We're in, filmed and the caravan is away...

As I write this post we are now officially in our new home. The Caravan has been re-homed approx 9 miles away (for another home renovation/building project), we've done the last batch of filming for our "Building the Dream" reveal and we have confirmed dates we'll be ont' telly (14th October at 9pm on More 4).

I've made some notes of bits I've missed to blog about, but will definitely come back to those at a later date - for those that are interested and also for our own records in time to come.

I can't tell you how amazing it feels to be finally living in our house, with luxuries like hot water (without the risk of gas running out), heating, a kitchen and dining table big enough to actually use and a bath... Fliss and I are delighted with how it has all come together (just in the nick of time) and it's a good job too because in less than 2 weeks we get married. We've managed to build and be in within 12 months of starting the foundations and to keep to our budget without compromising too much on the finish on the house. The caravan going has really opened up the plot and given us our views back.

It has been absolutely manic trying to get everything finished - firstly so the caravan could move on, secondly so we could actually move in and have bedrooms fully functioning so the kids can sleep in them and thirdly so we were ready for the big reveal filming session. I can't thank my Mum and Dad and also a few of the trades who worked tirelessly to help ensure we were ready for filming.

I also wanted to give a special mention to Stuart Carter of www.stuartcarterfurniture.com who selflessly turned up the day before filming to finish off a couple of jobs for me (with some oak architrave and an oak moulding for the stairs that he rushed through his workshop in the morning for me) and ended up being here nearly all day doing a "few little jobs more". You can tel Stu loves what he does, because not only are the wardrobes and doors he made for us really lovely - he also told me he'd "had fun today." Not sure everyone would have thought the same when they went above and beyond the call of duty.

I am going to try and give some pictures, without giving away too much for the reveal. 

Quick progress update and the money tree

When I started to write this blog on the 10th of June, I got halfway through it and parked it to one side. We had seen slower progress on site, we were waiting for the remainder of the floor tiles to arrive, the remainder of the glass tiles for the shower room (we had 4 tiles that weren't square on the corners and www.stanstones.co.uk sent them back) and the kitchen water and gas carcassing to be carried out.

We took the opportunity to do some more painting (including a re-paint with slight colour change on the triangular areas over the beams) and organise the upstairs bathroom tiling. I've also had a chat with http://www.stuartcarterfurniture.com about the storage problem we have upstairs and so we could see what is affordable (triangular roof shapes, don't make wardrobes too easy). We discussed what we could do and what we were looking for and pricing and we commissioned him to build our upstairs wardrobe along with custom made doors for the storage under the eaves and for the upstairs bedrooms.

That leads on to the budget. I've also been looking at our numbers and whilst I am quietly confident we will still come in on budget, we are however starting to feel the squeeze and decisions will need to be made about what we can afford - at the most difficult time to keep a check on it. We are really happy with the decisions we have made throughout the build, but the money tree isn't fruiting and short of winning the lottery we need to keep the budget in mind. When/if we do manage to come in on budget, I'll be pretty pleased considering this is the first time we have built.

Since starting this blog everything has been moving along at 100 miles per hour, we've now got a fitted kitchen, shower and bathrooms, flooring downstairs, flooring upstairs, skirting boards and door architrave downstairs (and some upstairs), our LPG gas bottle is installed underground, we have a septic tank that is plumbed in and storm drains are pretty much sorted.

We really are just weeks away from being able to move in, but we are still hanging on to complete as much as possible without being tempted to move in before we are finished inside... whats a few more weeks after nearly 4 years in a caravan on site?

Colouring the walls and tiling the floor... we've finally completely agreed on something!

We've had quite a bit of activity on site in the last couple of weeks- at one point we had tilers, electricians, a plumber and us working (note to self whilst it sounds a good idea, with a house our size we were nearly tripping over each other). We've painted all of the house with a least a coat of watered down paint for the plasterboard, with most of it having a least 2 coats already. The main living space walls and ceilings fully painted, the bathroom and shower room also fully painted - just touching up to do one most of the works has been finished. We have also oxalic acid cleaned the internal oak beams and given them a coat of wax oil.

Oak beams cleaned and wax oiled

We've dug the water main into the house and the electrics to the boundary and laid a pipe to pull the BT cable through once we are out of the Caravan.

Whilst we've been doing all of that, the main living space has been tiled with our 600x600 limestone tiles they have been laid, sealed, grouted, cleaned and as I'm typing this the final coat sealer is drying - we've had a slight problem with the half of the tiles still not arrived (luckily enough have arrived for most of the living space to be done, which means we will able to make a start on moving the kitchen back into the house later in the week, we're still waiting for the remaining shipment to arrive in the UK from Germany).

STOP PRESS: It's now I need to drop the bombshell that the floor tiles was the first thing we jointly chose and completely agreed on throughout pretty much the whole build! Even better is that now they are down, we are still delighted with our choice - both of us! Obviously as things have progressed we haven't disagreed on everything, but in terms of picking a finishing product we both loved them almost as soon as we saw them. We chose Jura Grey Limestone 15mm Floor tiles and did quite a bit of hunting around to get them.

We ordered them from a local supplier to find out that they weren't available quick enough so I reverted to trawling the net and found enough to get us to the point that we could start on the kitchen. We've also been very pleased with the tiling and have been lucky to find a tiler http://stanstones.co.uk/ who comes highly recommended locally - and so far, so good!

Cut around the naughty step

1st coat of sealer ready for grouting

The kitchen area is tiled

The pipework on the shower has been carcassed prior to the tiling. The shower room has been partially tiled and should be finished tomorrow.

We've been trying to organise a supplier for the glass balustrade on the landing, but this is proving more expensive than anticipated. We really hope we can afford to do it, but we still need to do some work on this.

It really does feel like we are on the home straight now, still plenty to do but getting closer every day.

TTFN, Tim

What you stairing at?

No I'm not spoiling for a fight, but writing about one of the most exciting bits of the our house build so far. I ached and was bruised, but on Saturday we managed to get the Oak stairs fitted. On Friday AM I popped into the Courtyard Designs Workshop to see the stairs (this time assembled) for one final time.

Our Oak stairs were designed and handmade by Sid at Courtyard Designs, and to say that we love them is a massive understatement. We were involved in the design process all the way through, from the initial on-site discussions about what we envisaged to checking with building control for heights etc and seeing how they might end up looking on a piece of shutter ply in the workshop. They really captured what we were looking for in the styling (and using their expertise and experience managed to interpret the bits we couldn't verbalise).

Installation took a whole day and it was hard and heavy work (especially for an office boy). I ached for a day or so afterwards and I didn't do most of the work, but I do have bruises all over my arms to say I did do some of it! They were a tight fit, with the straight rise taking a couple of hours to put into place (it took over an hour to move the final 50mm as they were eased into place). Once this was in we moved downwards until the turn took shape, routering the existing structural Oak Newel post to fit the treads.

 The straight rise in place

 A rough sketch prior to routering into the existing newell post

Routered, ready to use to form part of the stairs

A blurry pic of the winder

A finished stairs minus the naughty step

From this....

To this..

in just a day

We've left the 1st tread off for now whilst we debate whether it is best fitted before the tiles or after?

We had a day to admire them but it was almost a case of no sooner were they fitted, we had to cover them in plastic and cardboard to protect them whilst we continue with the finishing works...

I've learnt a lot about stairs over the last few weeks, how precise they need to be, the terminology of what is a rise, a tread etc.

Since the stairs went in, we've been busy painting, including the kids making there on screen appearance while mucking in and painting their rooms... obviously when the camera stopped rolling they disappeared or suddenly had arm ache - but I did manage to get a few hours out of them "practicing" how to paint before the camera filmed them.