On the Home Straight.

I haven't managed to keep up to date with this blog, and it's well overdue for a new post.. The build is behind schedule which doesn't particularly surprise me . I don't really mind as I would like to  to stay in my present house (next door ) until the end of the Summer. The house build began on March 8th 2018 and was supposed to be finished  by  March 8th this year, and then it was May this year, and now the date is supposed to be July 18th, but I'm not holding my breath, and anyway, late August  would suit me fine. The interior of the house seems to have remained the same for quite a few months, that is to say, a bit of a mess, but now the walls have gone up its easier to understand the interior and judge the size of the rooms - pretty small! especially when compared to my present house next door with its 13 1/2 foot high ceilings , which is a lot of space to heat in the winter. The new house will feel a lot smaller, but then it is!

The outside structure of the house is completed, including the solar panels on the roof, and the rendering of the lower part . So now the builders are working on the inside, which is quite complicated, what with its Mechanical Heat Recovery and Ventilation System. Google it if you're interested because I'm not up to explaining  it, or how it works, or what I will have to do to it when I live in the house.  There is also underfloor heating which somebody  said can take  quite a long time to actually heat the house. However we are confident we'll be so warm we'll be sitting in swimsuits in mid-winter leaning out of the triple glazed windows in a phenomenally well insulated house, gasping for a breath of cool air, especially with the a log burner going as well.

Trying to negotiate the maze that is the Solar Feed In Tariff ( Government  scheme for paying house holders for extra electricity generated by solar panels)  has been fiendishly bureaucratic and difficult. This scheme has now been stopped - so much for this Government's  (lack of) commitment to Green Energy, but the deadline was met by a whisker. I'm looking forward to selling electricity back to the Grid.

Here follows a small moan about the builders. I note that I mentioned in the last post that I was told to decide , with a day's notice, on the bathroom tiles. Well, they're still not on the walls over 6 months later, and they left it so late to actually order them from the supplier that they had stopped stocking one of the  designs . This has been the story all along - 'you must decide on  floors, handles, doors, paint, external pavers, and so on.........right now!  so I rush about in a panic, making decisions in a mad hurry only to discover that   in fact they don't need  whatever it is they wanted so urgently     after all. This is very annoying and frustrating and has meant that I might  have chosen differently and/or better if I was given more notice.  I wonder if all builds are like this. Now I know why interior designers are used -  a pity I didn't think of this earlier, but I don't suppose I would have wanted to fork out the fee for one..

Some pictures of progress :

Photo taken through the mucky window, this is the rear (East) courtyard. No, the square conrete structure on the right hand side isn't a pond or a paddling pool but  will  be a planting area. The ladder is for the builders to get to the greenhouse , in my back garden next door to have their tea and lunch breaks. I think I'll put a smaller ladder there in order to get up to the top level of the courtyard where there will be large pot planters and maybe even a bit of statuary. I've come round to an appreciation of exposed concrete, though I was alarmed at first to see the concrete courtyard and basement being built  with their thick high retaining walls. I rather like the marks and patterns on it. I think I'm becoming a fan of  mid 20th century Brutalism.

                                                          Kitchen/diner  East.  Ground Floor

Rear room. East.  1st floor

Looking out the rear window. 1st floor

Bathroom,  (West)  1st floor

Bathroom floor being  tiled

Front room  (West) 1st floor

                      Room in the roof  (2nd floor) and shower room with a little  window looking out (west)                        to one of  Brighton's beautiful Elm trees.  Plastered, and with the first spray coat of                              non-toxic  'eco'  paint applied.                                                                                                    

                                            Generous  storeage space in the roof eaves. 2nd floor

 All the scaffolding removed at last and here it is in all it's modest glory. I'm rather pleased  with the solar panelsl;  I like the way the colours of the pink Tamarisk  and the tiled Church Hall roof contrast with  the  blue/ grey zinc. It looks quite 'industrial'. Very different to all the late Victorian houses and Church surrounding it , in this Conservation area . I'm glad the Planners didn't force me to do a pastiche.                         

Front of the house waiting for its front door. To the left the temporary wooden structure stops people falling into the rather scarily deep basement .which will  

have  railings on two sides and steps down  to basement area when it's done.  

Basement. Pretty deep, and quite challenging to grow the vertical garden that I'm planning, as light will be limited. On the other hand it will be very sheltered so it will be interesting to see what plants thrive. Lots of ferns I'm thinking. Plus climbers that'll grow up to the light if they  manage to cling to the concrete. When I can get down to the basement room I'll take some photos. The builders are working from the top of the house to the bottom.

8 months in.

The build is going well. Fingers well crossed, I'm hoping that the worst of the dramas are over  now t the basement problems are solved and there will be no more nail bitingly expensive surprises. The timber frame above ground structure is well on the way to being completed.  It was nailed together ,  using  4 inch long nails launched into the timber with a gas gun. Once this was done, an insulating layer of 2inch thick wood fibre board was attached, followed by a covering of  waterproofing material, and then completely clad in timber . The last layer will be dark grey/blue zinc roofing which will extend down to the top of the ground floor. It should have been on by Christmas, but delivery has been delayed for some reason not clearly specified by the Contractor (my guess is they forgot to order it) Still, the build will be fully waterproof so it's not really important.

I've been instructed by the builders to decide on bathroom tiles and fittings (by tomorrow) Not much chance of that. It's  not at all easy when there are only wall- less spaces to  imagine  a bathroom in. This task  might be heaven for someone who likes shopping, but that someone isn't me. 

                                                       Issie,  architect's assistant

                                          It began to look like a giant cardboard box

                             Now it looks like a wooden box , all timber clad and waiting for zinc

By negotiating the scaffolding and using the internal temporary stairs while wearing a hard hat it's now possible to get inside the structure and gain a feel for the internal layout and dimensions.

Ground floor  (north west)

Ground floor (east)

Ground floor (east)

The small 'concrete garden'  (south east)

The 'concrete garden' with raised beds for planting (north east) Above the concrete can be seen the garden wall, the bottom of which was previous level of the garden before the build. This shows just how much chalk has been excavated. There is another floor below this - the basement- which will soon be revealed.

Ground floor (west) facing the kitchen; the entrance, and stairs to the 1st floor, will be on the left. 

       1st floor, facing the  bedroom/study window (east)

2nd floor loft  (west)

2nd floor loft ,  (east)

looking out of the loft window (west)

Above Ground at last

Progress is now steaming along, as I was assured would happen once the basement troubles were
 solved . Only one relatively short hold -up due to waiting (again) for the architect's schedule for the timber frame. Once the carpenters had received all the necessary paper work and the scaffolders had put up the scaffolding  they started to install the timber framework. They've now reached the top of the build and the height can be judged. It seems very high! but of course no higher than the architect has designed. I'm just hoping that once it's finished it won't feel too overbearing to its surroundings . But the build wouldn't have got planning approval if  that was the case............would it?

The carpenters begin to build the timber framework (facing west)

Scaffolding up and the timber framework  gets going. Note the new wall to the right,  the boundary between the new house and the Church Hall.It's made of reclaimed old bricks to match the old wall which had to be knocked down - it was in a very bad condition anyway, and the new wall should last another 100 years. 

Floor joists being laid to the first floor

Sarah embarking on a sunset tour of the build

9 a.m on a chilly October morning. The roof gable is now partially marked out in timber. That's as tall as it gets.

       

Quite a difficult 4 months

I've posted nothing here since April 24th. This is why. The build staggered to a halt for 6  1/2 weeks from the end of April while the architect, structural engineer, and the contractor had a good old wrangle and the basement part of the build had to be re-designed It's been quite difficult to get to the bottom of it all but the gist is that the structural engineer blamed the architect for 'inaccurate' drawings, and also blamed the contractor for not following the dig instructions; the architect blamed the engineer for not checking his (the architect) drawings before designing the basement, as he should have done, because the architect is not an engineer, and professionals are supposed to check each other's work at every stage;  the contractor blamed the both the engineer and the architect, for what, I'm not entirely sure. So, rather a lot of buck passing was involved, and I ended up having to pay for it all. This involved more fees for the architect and for the engineer, and for the contractor who needed a great deal more concrete in order to make the basement walls thicker than were designed originally. From my point of view, I blame  inadequate communication between all the  'professionals'   involved. Ha! they never tell you about this sort of thing on 'Grand Designs'. I gather it's quite common for this to happen during a construction project.

Not surprisingly I didn't feel much like writing up the blog while all this was going on. Anyway, after all that was settled, the form workers came in at the start of August  to actually form the (newly designed) basement. They worked extremely well and efficiently and were done in less than three weeks. Then the carpenters arrived to start the above ground timber framework. Sadly, after a week this all ground to a halt because they need information from the architect, or his assistant , but as they are both on holiday, nothing more can be progressed before they return. However, I'm  getting fairly used to delays now, and feel pretty sanguine about this one.

A time lapse camera is in place (in the loft room on a tall tripod) to record the work, but it only appears to work intermittently and it's difficult to understand why. But, no great loss as progress has been so slow. However, I hope to get it sorted out now that the build has at last started to get out of the ground .

In the meantime, here's some photos. It has to be said that these are not the most exciting or interesting images in the world, except to those people closely involved,  those who are planning their own house build,  or nerdy house construction fans, of which there might be a considerable community out there. Who knows?

Installing shuttering for the concrete pour.

All shuttered and ready for the Big Pour.

The concrete truck arrives  and the pour is ready to start.

The pouring process was quite exciting. It was a fairly difficult job in such a very 

confined site, and on a boiling hot day too. The formwork team usually work on 

very large sites, including some of those famous double height London basements, 

so I think they were a bit sniffy about my tiny basement job. 

.

The finished job. This will be the  ground  floor. The basement floor is below this, beneath the temporary board that can be seen with lengths of timber lying on it. At  the nearest end of the photo is the very small 'garden'. The compost 'rescued' from the vegetable garden that  was here before  the dig began , has all gone and been replaced by concrete. I had no idea that  the entire space would have to be dug out and replaced by concrete because of the need to have whacking thick concrete walls to stop everything surrounding them from collapsing. Having now said a sad goodbye to the old space and got used to the idea of not being able to save anything that it had previously contained I've now accepted the inevitable. I'm going to have to be very imaginative in terms of creating a garden in such a tiny space. Holes will be drilled into the concrete base for drainage, so there will be a fairly large planter next to the seating area, and there are deep planters along two of the walls. It will be mostly a vertical garden, but I think it'll look good. I'm already planning  a planting scheme,

Here come the carpenters starting to install the timber for the rest of the build.