Our View

Today is so grim here in east kent, yup it's end of May and it's 12 degrees, grey and raining - absolutely miserable.

But.... 2 days ago on bank holiday Monday the sun shone over Whitstable and here's a photo taken by my good friend Emma of the view looking out from what will be our bedroom to cheer us all up...... some day soon the sun will shine again :)))))

Look at the colour of that beautiful sky!

First Floor Joists being Installed

Came back from brief trip away to find that not only had the steels gone in but we're starting to get a ceiling to the ground floor. Interesting as some parts are open from the ground right up to the roof so we're starting to get the feel of what is going to be like with a partially ceilinged living room! 

What looks like a ladder forms the base of the bridge to Ruby's room 

View through loving room ceiling to blue skies :)

 

Hmm..

Steels Go In

Here comes the start of the heavy engineering bit of the structure, all this extremely expensive steel work is to stop our house from ever being blown away in the event of a hurricane or even a tsunami. Of course all the other houses around that have stood for many many years without steel reinforcements will be blown/washed away and we'll be laughing and going nowhere!

This steel cross is on a diagonal wall that faces North East running up one corner of the dining area and master bedroom and is adjacent to the 3 meter wide windows. We would have liked a long slim window in here to mirror the one in the kitchen and to catch the morning rays but were told it wasn't possible by the architect because of the reinforcement - we're kicking ourselves now for not pushing this one as there definitely would've been a way around it and it would've been so nice - so instead we're just going to have to fill the space with some piece fabby piece of art...any offers?

In the foreground are the steels that will form the little bridge from the landing to Ruby's room

A detail for those interested. 

I love this picture below, these 2 birds were there the whole time I was visiting the site - it's like they thought we'd build the frame especially for them..."we love it up here, such great views... tweet tweet"

Save 50% on Build Costs - Uh Oh....

Just read this article on the Homebuilding & Renovating website and it looks like we've just done everything we can to build the most expensive house possible. According to the writer, to save costs we should have built a square house with as few corners as possible (and certainly no curves) with large concrete tiles on the roof and shoved some more rooms in the roof to get extra floor space for your buck rather than keeping it open and glazing some of it. Why on earth did we get carried away, us and our fancy ways eh?

Take a look;

http://www.homebuilding.co.uk/advice/costs/save-fifty-percent?utm_campaign=HR+Newsletter+nonsubs+May13&utm_source=emailCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=

Addendum - maybe we could've gone and bought a Barrett Home if that's what we were motivated by

Catch Up 5 - Few more pictures

You can see the former for our lovely one metre diameter West facing round window in the dining area- we will have another of these on the front face of the garage so Will can have lots of lovely light to do his 'man things'

Curved wall to living room

Again, oh so tiny living room :)

Looking from North into kitchen/dining area

Catch Up 4 - First Level of Scaffolding

Bt the beginning of May the first level of scaffolding went up allowing us to walk round the property almost at first floor level but, rather more importantly allowing the brick layers to build a little higher!

See what a lovely skyline this makes looking from the front of the house - rather majestic methinks.

Will with a critical eye!

and directing those builders from on high

Ah, Ruby and me enjoying our elevated evening view over Whitstable and out to sea ...

Catch Up 3 - Walls are Coming Up

Once the new brickies were on site they worked pretty fast bringing the walls up. These pictures show where we were by 24th April

Living Room - Willy's constantly telling me that it's going to be sooooooo small!

Concrete Jungle

Nice Curve :)

Catch Up 2 - Beam & Block Floor

This was a nice stage to reach - good to be able to stand and see the levels and to our delight the floor will be higher that we had imagined meaning great views from pretty much everywhere :)

Beams Delivered

Flooring Installed

Catch Up 1 - Photos

Am obviously very bad at this blog lark! Trouble is we have had lulls in the build for several reasons - weather - problems with details from structural engineer etc - and then I get fed up and don't want to write about it and by the time we're back on building I've almost forgotten that I'd decided to do this blog.
Right now I've been encouraged on by a very kind lady, Nadia, who has featured this blog on her website in a list of 'Top 5 Inspirational Build Blogs' http://www.kensyard.co.uk/blog/2013/top-5-inspirational-self-build-blogs/ . She has accurately described my blog as 'sporadic' but that is no excuse not to continue!

So.... the last images in March were after the all the ground works were completed. Next the walls were built to damp proof course level and a membrane laid and covered with sand (next door's cat found this to be a fine place to dump over the next few days until the floor was laid - there'll probably be fossilised cat faeces under the house in years to come)

Me in the dining room dog in the garden