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Small update - late on Friday afternoon we got a call from a senior complaints handler at the Halifax and she took things quite seriously, especially when she found out the ombudsman was involved. It was too late to get much done on Friday but we've been promised a resolution tomorrow and it was acknowledged that someone somewhere has screwed up. We were also given £75 in compo for our troubles as a 'goodwill gesture'. Nice and all but they need to add about three zeros onto that pronto.
Bit of an update chaps, I've lots of pics but for a few reasons that will become clear soon enough I'll hold off on posting them up just yet.
Latest:
We got the money from Halifax. They're gimps, but they paid up in the end.
The house is essentially complete. However there's still a tonne of work to do including rendering the outside, putting in the drive, second fix plumbing, kitchen appliances to fit, a couple of days plastering left to do, doors, skirting and door frames to go on, decorate, wood burner to fit, carpets and curtains. That seems a fairly long list but when I look at what we've done since November it seems tiny! Most of those jobs will be completed in the next couple of weeks. The rendering, outside stuff, carpets and decorating will take longer.
We're hoping to get one of the top floor rooms finished this week (oak floor down, carpentry and painting done) so that we can at least sleep there overnight from this weekend. Our waste treatment plant (a v expensive septic tank with moving parts!) is in and all the utilities are connected so once there's a loo and a shower then we're sorted.
Pics to come, it's been a long and very emotional journey but when you stand in the house that got built against all the odds, by God it's worth it...
Latest:
We got the money from Halifax. They're gimps, but they paid up in the end.
The house is essentially complete. However there's still a tonne of work to do including rendering the outside, putting in the drive, second fix plumbing, kitchen appliances to fit, a couple of days plastering left to do, doors, skirting and door frames to go on, decorate, wood burner to fit, carpets and curtains. That seems a fairly long list but when I look at what we've done since November it seems tiny! Most of those jobs will be completed in the next couple of weeks. The rendering, outside stuff, carpets and decorating will take longer.
We're hoping to get one of the top floor rooms finished this week (oak floor down, carpentry and painting done) so that we can at least sleep there overnight from this weekend. Our waste treatment plant (a v expensive septic tank with moving parts!) is in and all the utilities are connected so once there's a loo and a shower then we're sorted.
Pics to come, it's been a long and very emotional journey but when you stand in the house that got built against all the odds, by God it's worth it...
Ok guys, update time.
Unfortunately between my iPhoto account and my phone, all the photos from October seem to have gone walkies so there's a bit of a jump from the last update but that kind of 'where the hell did that go' thing goes with the territory for self build. Your life becomes completely dysfunctional as your whole life is crammed into a tiny caravan and you can never find anything, you always look crumpled and your shoes are always muddy. Always.
Each of these photos come with some kind of story or drama. In fact, at every turn we encountered challenges with almost every single element of the build. The beams for the block and beam floor upstairs were bowed, meaning that we had to overcompensate with extra screed upstairs to get the floors flat. There was mains gas connected to the site (someone in the past had put it there) but as the connection had no MPAN number we hit a dead end at attempting to get it made live. In the end we simply reported a gas leak so that someone came out and it finally showed up on 'the system'. The plans didn't make sense and the builder had to change stuff as we went along. A young scrote (aged 9!) climbed on the scaffolding one rainy night and nearly killed himself, but thankfully for him the large pile of bricks he knocked over landed on my stone window cill and not him or his mate. He spent an evening in the company of Durham Police for his trouble and I needed a new cill. So many of these annoying and fiddly things just get resolved and buried as there's no time to dwell on them, so forgive my lack of detail in places.
Anyhow - windows arrived. We wanted timber Georgian sash but the cost was nuts. In the end our builder recommended a guy who supplied very decent UPVC sash style and they turned out well. We actually went for the flat finish in the end as the 'wood grain' looks a bit too much like something pretending to be wood. Most people can't tell that they're plastic without rubbing them:
Roof joists arrived but the challenge remained of how to get them up as we couldn't get a crane on site due to nearby overhead cables....improvisation kicked in:
The water connection was an interesting one - one bloke came out and sprayed on the road where he *thought* the mains was. He was the first of about four or five different contractors - one dug the hole, another one made the connection, another one filled it in and then another bloke came out to sprinkle some grass seeds on the verge!
Found a guy to make my door. Even though we had UPVC windows, we were keen to have timber doors. Top one is the rear door, the one with all the panes in is the front door:
The roof trusses went up fast and the roof itself didn't take long. Once the windows were in and the doors were on, it really started to look like a house. There'll be a porch to go on the front too.
So by now we had a roof, electricity, windows and doors. Next came heating and plumbing. We decided to go with UFH on the ground and first block and beam floors and just throw in a few rads on the top floor. The thinking was that there would be so much heat going up into the attic space that UFH up there would be overkill. This also saved us some cash. My missus' company supplied a big Oso tank and boiler. With good mains pressure, things boded well for a nice shower! This is the UFH in the lounge.
![](http://thumbsnap.com/sc/febvpKyx.jpg[/img]</a> <a href="http://thumbsnap.com/febvpKyx" Target="_blank">[img]http://thumbsnap.com/sc/febvpKyx.jpg)
We still had no stairs at this point so it was a scary ladder journey from the top floor to the bottom....
We then needed the concrete screed pouring. By now it was mid-December and bloody cold. Conventional screed dries at a rate of a mm or so each day and it became clear that because of the depth of the screed in places to resolve the bowed beams it would be months before we could get the bathrooms in and the kitchen tiled! We ended up going for some Lafarge jobbie that dries faster, but naturally costs more....
Northumbria Water were still at it. Here I am stuck in my own traffic jam...
By now the floors were dry. The house would never be this clean again. Had I known just how much dust was to be left, I'd have probably tried to find a way to cover the floors up to save the hours and hours of hoovering and mopping that followed the plastering...
As the electrics were going in I ran CAT5e to each floor. The plan was to feed an airport express for decent wifi coverage as the block and beam floor would not be wifi friendly and also provide hard wired ethernet ports for the back of the TVs etc. This was a guess because at this point we didn't even know where the phone point would come in and my router end up. I decided to put it all in my office and hope for the best. Thankfully that's where the BT man decided was the best place for the phone cable to come in. Phew.
Now that the timber sheets for the top floor were down I felt especially proud to see the chimney through my office Velux. Sadly due to all the high trees around, the chimney became the only place with a guaranteed line of sight for the satellite and later ended up with a dish attached to it. My wife doesn't appear to have noticed yet. Shhh.
Boarding out began in earnest.
We also paid a visit at this point to F Jones in Cleveland to look at worktops. My wife was set on granite but as we toured the factory looking at granites from all manner of dangerous places (Iran, Afghanistan, oddball Russian places) we came across a marble that my wife fell in love with. Although it's easily marked and not as hardy as granite it was lovely. Sold. We took along a couple of kitchen unit samples - the grey being the island colour and the cream the rest of the units. Our kitchen is from Ellis Furniture and is part of their hand painted range, as sold by my wife's company. If you're interested, get in touch and I'll get you a price.
It was now my birthday and we took a quick trip to the big smoke to visit the Bond in Motion museum. Well worth a visit:
My birthday dinner was at The Wolseley, where my wife was photo-bombed by SrrAlan Sugar. Couldn't resist a discreet phone pic!
Back at the ranch, it was time for another large hole, this time in the back garden:
For the waste treatment plant, which costs as much as a decent old Merc from the bargain barges thread! It also came with a pump that sounded like some kind of outboard motor, but thankfully once it was buried underground was reduced to a muted hum!
Once that was in the ground attention moved the front, where months of building crap was scooped up and some fresh dolomite laid. My neighbours retarded pet hens can also be spotted bravely playing chicken with the JCB. Sadly both of them were to meet a grisly end at the hands of another neighbours' dog a week or two later so I no longer have the joy of them walking into my house every time the front door is left open. If said dog can also set fire to the hideous cheap prefab garage that my neighbour also recently erected (the one that can be seen with lovely orange wood and fibreglass roof) then I'll definitely buy him a new bone.
Finally, on a cold and wet night in January - I was able to pull the car into the drive for the first time with an actual house there!
Lots more to come, but that takes you up to about 3 weeks ago.....
Unfortunately between my iPhoto account and my phone, all the photos from October seem to have gone walkies so there's a bit of a jump from the last update but that kind of 'where the hell did that go' thing goes with the territory for self build. Your life becomes completely dysfunctional as your whole life is crammed into a tiny caravan and you can never find anything, you always look crumpled and your shoes are always muddy. Always.
Each of these photos come with some kind of story or drama. In fact, at every turn we encountered challenges with almost every single element of the build. The beams for the block and beam floor upstairs were bowed, meaning that we had to overcompensate with extra screed upstairs to get the floors flat. There was mains gas connected to the site (someone in the past had put it there) but as the connection had no MPAN number we hit a dead end at attempting to get it made live. In the end we simply reported a gas leak so that someone came out and it finally showed up on 'the system'. The plans didn't make sense and the builder had to change stuff as we went along. A young scrote (aged 9!) climbed on the scaffolding one rainy night and nearly killed himself, but thankfully for him the large pile of bricks he knocked over landed on my stone window cill and not him or his mate. He spent an evening in the company of Durham Police for his trouble and I needed a new cill. So many of these annoying and fiddly things just get resolved and buried as there's no time to dwell on them, so forgive my lack of detail in places.
Anyhow - windows arrived. We wanted timber Georgian sash but the cost was nuts. In the end our builder recommended a guy who supplied very decent UPVC sash style and they turned out well. We actually went for the flat finish in the end as the 'wood grain' looks a bit too much like something pretending to be wood. Most people can't tell that they're plastic without rubbing them:
Roof joists arrived but the challenge remained of how to get them up as we couldn't get a crane on site due to nearby overhead cables....improvisation kicked in:
The water connection was an interesting one - one bloke came out and sprayed on the road where he *thought* the mains was. He was the first of about four or five different contractors - one dug the hole, another one made the connection, another one filled it in and then another bloke came out to sprinkle some grass seeds on the verge!
Found a guy to make my door. Even though we had UPVC windows, we were keen to have timber doors. Top one is the rear door, the one with all the panes in is the front door:
The roof trusses went up fast and the roof itself didn't take long. Once the windows were in and the doors were on, it really started to look like a house. There'll be a porch to go on the front too.
So by now we had a roof, electricity, windows and doors. Next came heating and plumbing. We decided to go with UFH on the ground and first block and beam floors and just throw in a few rads on the top floor. The thinking was that there would be so much heat going up into the attic space that UFH up there would be overkill. This also saved us some cash. My missus' company supplied a big Oso tank and boiler. With good mains pressure, things boded well for a nice shower! This is the UFH in the lounge.
We still had no stairs at this point so it was a scary ladder journey from the top floor to the bottom....
We then needed the concrete screed pouring. By now it was mid-December and bloody cold. Conventional screed dries at a rate of a mm or so each day and it became clear that because of the depth of the screed in places to resolve the bowed beams it would be months before we could get the bathrooms in and the kitchen tiled! We ended up going for some Lafarge jobbie that dries faster, but naturally costs more....
Northumbria Water were still at it. Here I am stuck in my own traffic jam...
By now the floors were dry. The house would never be this clean again. Had I known just how much dust was to be left, I'd have probably tried to find a way to cover the floors up to save the hours and hours of hoovering and mopping that followed the plastering...
As the electrics were going in I ran CAT5e to each floor. The plan was to feed an airport express for decent wifi coverage as the block and beam floor would not be wifi friendly and also provide hard wired ethernet ports for the back of the TVs etc. This was a guess because at this point we didn't even know where the phone point would come in and my router end up. I decided to put it all in my office and hope for the best. Thankfully that's where the BT man decided was the best place for the phone cable to come in. Phew.
Now that the timber sheets for the top floor were down I felt especially proud to see the chimney through my office Velux. Sadly due to all the high trees around, the chimney became the only place with a guaranteed line of sight for the satellite and later ended up with a dish attached to it. My wife doesn't appear to have noticed yet. Shhh.
Boarding out began in earnest.
We also paid a visit at this point to F Jones in Cleveland to look at worktops. My wife was set on granite but as we toured the factory looking at granites from all manner of dangerous places (Iran, Afghanistan, oddball Russian places) we came across a marble that my wife fell in love with. Although it's easily marked and not as hardy as granite it was lovely. Sold. We took along a couple of kitchen unit samples - the grey being the island colour and the cream the rest of the units. Our kitchen is from Ellis Furniture and is part of their hand painted range, as sold by my wife's company. If you're interested, get in touch and I'll get you a price.
It was now my birthday and we took a quick trip to the big smoke to visit the Bond in Motion museum. Well worth a visit:
My birthday dinner was at The Wolseley, where my wife was photo-bombed by SrrAlan Sugar. Couldn't resist a discreet phone pic!
Back at the ranch, it was time for another large hole, this time in the back garden:
For the waste treatment plant, which costs as much as a decent old Merc from the bargain barges thread! It also came with a pump that sounded like some kind of outboard motor, but thankfully once it was buried underground was reduced to a muted hum!
Once that was in the ground attention moved the front, where months of building crap was scooped up and some fresh dolomite laid. My neighbours retarded pet hens can also be spotted bravely playing chicken with the JCB. Sadly both of them were to meet a grisly end at the hands of another neighbours' dog a week or two later so I no longer have the joy of them walking into my house every time the front door is left open. If said dog can also set fire to the hideous cheap prefab garage that my neighbour also recently erected (the one that can be seen with lovely orange wood and fibreglass roof) then I'll definitely buy him a new bone.
Finally, on a cold and wet night in January - I was able to pull the car into the drive for the first time with an actual house there!
Lots more to come, but that takes you up to about 3 weeks ago.....
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