Picture Update

After the last entry, here's a plethora of images for you. We've been living in the house for 2 weeks now, but we're still busy.
Lowben Drive from the front, stood on the driveway. Garage base is off shot to the left. The blazing sun has burnt the chimney off.

View from the back garden,

and the back garden again - spent a day levelling & raking to get it somewhere near right. Needs a quick rotivate, re-rake, then turf the future lawn.

The entrance hall,

and landing above.

Still minor things to do - put up curtains, change some light fittings, but at least it's taking shape.

I've finally put up the extractor fan in the kitchen, but we're undecided on handles for the cabinets, I ought to put it out to vote!

Nearly there!

We're moving our furniture into Lowben Drive this weekend!
We've bought and erected new beds for the kids, and they're very excited about moving in.
Our painter has finished finally, after dragging it out from <2weeks to nearly 4!
We're very annoyed with him actually, as now we're doing the final clean we realise he didn't use his dust sheet for every coat - we're now scraping it off flooring, worktops & hearths, and cursing him.
If you want something done properly...
We're awaitng the final inspection from Building Control, then we can swap from self build mortgage to regular mortgage and save a few quid, and set the wheels in motion with HM Revenue & Customs regarding reclaiming the VAT.
No pics this post - they'll act as spoilers to anyone who's due to visit shortly. I promise to post some soon, just got to poplish the floors first.
Plan to concrete the garage floor tomorrow morning. as well as being removals man.
A new part of the building regs aims at minimising heat loss via leaks in the fabric of the building. This is checked on completion by carrying out an air test on the property. A large fan is fitted and sealed over the front door frame, and the house pressurised, and the pressure loss measured over time. Generally a house is designed to limit losses to 10 cubic meters per square meter at 50Pa, although by carefully following certain building details 7.5 can be acheived.
Knowing this was immenent I dutifully sealed around every service penetration, made sure I had good joints on all the laps in the vapour membrane; and it all paid off.
Lowben Drive acheived 3.45 - the lowest the engineers had ever recorded!
Maybe we should build houses full time ;-)
(at least i've something to fall back on!)
Do come and visit soon, and experience Wislocki Towers

Painting

Progress is being made with the painting, and we should be substantially complete by the weekend! We're planning to move in shortly. Just a few minor things to complete [like handles on kitchen units, doors, tile utility room floor], and a bunch of landscaping outside. Lowri is kindly modelling the hallway for us. She'll often ask if she can see her room, and likes being taken into the build to check on progress. We've toned down the amount of pink in her bedroom but she doesn't seem to mind.

Bens showing us his socks in the kitchen, while sporting ther remainder of his chicken pox.

And ben again on the landing. I'm pleased with how light the house is turning out to be - some people had expressed concerns, but they are proven to be unfounded.

Lot of cleaning now prior to the big (short) move. We may require volunteers for this process, the shortest route is to throw furniture off the flats balcony, but we may resort to carrying it round.

More Work

Since the last posting, things haven't progressed quite as quickly as we'd have liked.

Combination of factors affecting this - I've been working in Powick (near Worcester), Bristol and Ferndale (near Bournemouth) concurrently. As a result I've been getting home later than has been the recent norm, and therefore getting little or nothing done in the evenings.

We underestimated the shear volume of painting required - 1300 square meters [14000+ sq ft!] of wall & ceiling, all requiring 3+ coats, and the prepping and glossing of the woodwork).

We've painted approx 50% walls/ceilings and glossed approx 15% woodwork ourselves, but now we're getting someone in to finish the painting.

We have however laid our foul drainage and connected it into the sewer (thanks Ken - pictured driving the minidigger), constructed the soil & vent stacks,

dug & concreted the garage foundations and retaining walls each side of the house (thanks Joe, Jake, Gramp), carried out soil percolation tests to assess suitability for rainwater soakaway, completed laying 100square metres of flooring.

Other notable events include Ben learning to ride his bike without stabilisers, Ben crashing at speed onto his face and being kept in hospital overnight with concussion. For the record he was wearing a helmet.

Should be more pics of finished rooms next update, but here's the promised layouts :

I will now offer a plan drawing service to try & recoup some of the build costs!

Mid March Update

A few more pics, and a less than original title, but it's getting late, and I've already been out painting (after work & kids to bed);

loads going on at the moment.

More trouble with plumbers, but progress in general still good.

Been painting walls & ceilings...

installing kitchens and having worktop fitted..

Here's looking from kitchen thru' to sunroom, with tiles stacked ready for laying..

The utility room taking shape - units sink & worktop in, appliances still to stick under right hand side. Straight thru' is the WC.

I'll have to save my autocad drawings as PDFs and publish them so people can view the layout.

Here's some flooring I prepared earlier. We have this in six rooms, so only another 85sqm to lay!

And stairs - meaning Sarah's mum has been able to view upstairs for the first time. Hand railing soon, so watch this space.

Early March Update

Been busy since the last entry
Scaffold has come down, down pipes put up, downpipes removed for painting, three coats of masonry paint, and a light dusting of snow!


Sarah & Ben assembling units for the utility room (in the lounge).



Start putting kitchen units in place

Second fix electrics to commence immanently, and boiler to go in, so heating should be on soon.

Getting Plastered

Plaster has been applied in the last week or so. Here's the landing. Note the absence of stairs to date.










Sun room thru' to kitchen





Hall way - with new front door fitted.

I need a fish eye/wide angle lens to take pics of the bedroom etc, so I'm not bothering to publish them.

De-humidifier running at the moment, though I'm not sure the house/plaster is that wet for it to make much difference.
When it is dry, painting will commence.

Still a lot of work to do to the exterior - we have a few skips worth of rubbish to dispose of, downpipes, drainage, landscaping (driveway, retaining walls, patio, steps & paths). And we have to start it all again on a smaller scale with the garage.

There's still plenty to do if anyone's bored of an evening/weekend!