The Self Build Diary - Day 192 - The Business End!

Well another big catch up, in this post I promise not to make any rash promises to update the blog more regularly, it has been so busy, finding the time for everything has been difficult! Here is whats gone on since our last post.

The roof was finished and the chimneys installed.

The chimneys are Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP) and weigh less than 30kg each, they come to site as you see them in the picture and are fixed in place to the masonary, the leadwork that Abode (Our Builders) have done is fabulous and you really cant tell the difference, even at this height, between the real stone and the GRP.

We chose to use GRP very early on in the build, the chimneys on the main house section are dummy stacks and the plans originally had chimney breasts in the house to support them, which seemed like a huge waste of space in the rooms below. We started looking at the options to remove the chimney breasts that supported the chimneys, whilst retaining the the chimney stacks for the planning pwermission. we had three options. we could build the chimneys out in the loft on supports and have them made of the same masonary as the rest of the house, we could have a lightweight chimne similar to the GRPs with thin slips of the stone facings to match the rest of the masonary or the GRPs. We opted for the GRPs as the cost including the man hours to install them came out well under the other options. We also havent had much opportunity to use modern cutting edge techniques on a relatively traditional house design.

So the whole of the house is built and the builders are on with pointing. The tent is performing fabulously in this "changeable" weather! the only downside is that we havent seen the house yet as its still covered up! We thought the tent would be once the roof is on and the windows in, but we have kept it on until the pointing is done.

We are using a raised square pointing which is quite a local style of pointing, originally used to provide protection against the elements when period stone buildings were using inferior stone. Its not required but it looks great and sets off the fabulous brickwork and the yards of sawn stone detailing we have.

So onto inside and my amature project management skills!

The manufacture of our windows has been a bit of a pain as the manufacturer didnt deliver them in the 3-4 weeks that he said it would take, no9te to would be self builders, ask for and set a deadline, to be fair i should have ordered them earlier but its the first time ive done this and im not going to be too hard on myself! We got the first batch delivered last weekend and another batch on thursday, most importantly we got the kitchen windows which we were desperate for as we didnt want to miss our kitchen fitting slot (more on the kitchen in a minute.

Twelve windows went in last week, including the kitchen, and to be honest they look great, they were well worth the wait. They are robust, detailed and are exactly how we imagined they would be!

So the windows went into the kitchen in the nick of time, the kitchen gets delivered on Monday, fitting starts tuesday! so the plasterers rushed to get the kitchen skimmed ahead of boading out some of the other rooms. The kitchen looks spot on now its plastered.

What amazes me is that the more materials you put in a room the bigger it feels! So the plaster will dry out this weekend, and ill seal the room off with polythene tomorrow and pop a dehumidifier in whilst the kitchen is being fitted, just to ensure that excess moisture doesnt damage the kitchen units.

Elsewhere, the underfloor heating on the upperfloors has been installed, it sits above the floorboards in a "siccus" system which is basically strong polystyrene with chanells cut out for the elements and pipework, its a great way on installing a wet UFH system on a wooden joist floor construction. We then boarded over the UFH membranes with 18mm chipboard floating floor, you can buy a concrete composite screedboard, but it is hugely expensive and im told the efficacy of the screedboard isnt worth the 700% price increase on 18mm chipboard.

Jobs for this weekend include putting some woodstain on the window frames finishing quite a few unfinished jobs and my weekley site tidy! Its amazing how much time i have spent tidying this house, if you ask Mrs G its not something im used to doing at home!

Next week the kitchen fitting starts, the plasterboarding continues, ready for the plastering gang to skim the house the week after, more windows will go in and the oak frame for between the kitchen/family lounge and the hall gets installed.

its all go! are we still on target for my overly ambious end of July moving in date???? possibly but we may well just take our time and creep into August, we havent given notice on our rental property yet and i think the most diligent thing to do would be to wait until we have got the plastering done, the eletrical and plumbing second fix is on its way and we have some stairs and glass before we do that, that will give us the first two weeks of august to make sure we are comfortable when we move in rather than have things going on around us? will i be upset if we dont move in in July, my arrogance says yes but actually if we only end up 2 weeks over my ridiculously ambitious deadline set before we even got out of the ground,  i think wcan consider that a result, however we still have a lot to cram into the next 4 to 6 weeks so lots can still go wrong.

The tent is the most valuable asset we have invested in so far.... tent count below

Days tented - 119

This is the number days that the tent has been up and there has been work planned on site

Number of Days saved to weather - 70
The number of days that work would have been called off or that work wouldn't have even started due to rain snow or temperature
No of days done ahead of untented schedule - 54

The number of days in which work has been completed on the site that wouldn't have been worked until the building had a roof on or windows in, this is number of days per trade and doesnt represent man days, if the plumbers have had 3 guys in for a week i have counted this as 5 days, essentially we would add this number of days to the end of the build in a conventional schedule , although we have the roof on the house, until there are windows and doors some things (Not all) wouldnt be able to be completed.