Stairs, windows and mmmm.... heating

Lots going on now, we're just waiting on the large sliding glass doors, front door and back glazed door to complete the glazing. The massive windows in our bedroom are now in - amazing!!

Plastering inside is nearly complete with the painter following on behind and last week all the stair cases went in making moving around the house soooo much easier. Here's Ruby sitting on the stairs to her mezzanine sleeping area looking decidedly more interested in her phone than anything else!

Apparently I'm to paint the risers in ombre greens :-D Here's the stairs in the spare bedroom -

- the main staircase is in oak so it's now covered to protect it. The plumbers have been busy and got the underfloor heating fired up over the weekend - what joy it was to see the plumes of vapour and feel the warmth permeate the house..

February 14th Photos

There's been a little more plastering, a few more windows gone in but it still feels slow. We are still waiting on the biggest bit of the glazing which is the sliding doors at the end of the dining room and the two huge windows which are the same size in the master bedroom which will open up to expose the views and also expose us should anyone in the houses below care to look up! We've been told that these should both be in by the first week in March so patience patience.....

More internal shots from January

The mess that is our house right now

Makeshift staircase & first layer of plaster

Spooky windowless kitchen/dining room

Plastering buckets in my kitchen

Looking up to part built mezzanine

Will's wonky picture makes our bedroom look like a tent - plastered note

Our lovely curve on staircase in spare bedroom <3

Strange angles in the spare bedroom

Slice of light over our roof

January Progress

Well, January 2014 is upon us and we should've had our first Christmas in our new house but it was not to be .... so, the roof is pretty much finished although the garage is yet to be built as we needed to keep the space available for access, and the plasterers are in. Here's a few pics of what's going on inside.

December - bit of progress on the build and a bit of Christmas ... ooh and a bit of crochet

Our last Christmas in Blean - Hurrah!!! (No wise cracks from anyone please)

Crochet has kept me going through these last few months so here's a bit of that just to brighten things up a little

A portaloo, nasty temporary door and a skip full of rubbish

Electricians putting in the first fix through the utility room

Archie & Greg came home for Christmas

Such a joy to see the beautiful slates going on. December 2013

Starting to really look like a house now - the garage at the front is still to be added hence the strange blank look to the front view

Yay!! That's our House!

Spotted from the Primary School on the road below ours - with it's pink felt hat on... this was very exciting as we hadn't seen it from this angle before

And here's some action shots of Will spraying the soffits and facias at the workshop. This was in an endeavour to save us money and speed things up on the build....sadly it was weeks before they went up!

Last Steels to the roof

At the beginning of October, one sunny day, the very last steels were bought to site and carefully lowered in place 

Why is it so fascinating watching a crane? The driver wasn't at all fascinated with what he was doing, when I arrived he looked like he had fallen asleep in his cab. Very funny later though when he couldn't get the truck out of the mud, he woke up then :)

Lovely sky through our roof

Time to take a break and enjoy the satisfaction of the seeing the last steel in place 

Progress on the Roof in September

Once we had the joy of receiving the news from the planning department that we had been approved at the new height we were able to progress in earnest, happy in the knowledge that what we were building wouldn't have to be taken down or fought for.... in fact we could approach the site with a lightness of step and stand back and admire how lovely how house-to-be was looking...

A few photos showing the progress of roof trusses

This complicated gable above the master bedroom seems to have caused a lot of "head scratching"!!

Spot the grinning brickies!

This shows just how perfectly our house sits in the road :)

Roof Construction Pics during nail biting re-application

Steels and trusses

Will -"Hmm yep that's high!! ....."

The Height Issue and how it was Resolved

So, back in July I left this blog with the news that our house had grown too high, not in fact by 400mm as I said in the last post but by well over a metre. If our house stood in splendid isolation you would never know but unfortunately it's very near it's neighbours and so the error was glaringly obvious!
As I said previously, we decided that the most simple solution would be to alter the pitch of the roof so our architect provided us with new drawings to submit to the council as a non material amendment which should only take 2 weeks to go through. This was not the right thing to do!! After a week we received yet another call from the council to say that the change in pitch altered the look of the house too much and so they needed a complete new full application which would take another 2 months to be dealt with.... aaargh!! Back to the stomach churning! This would obviously cost us lots more and keep the build on hold for way longer plus the costs and practical conundrums of making the alterations.
After much discussion and worry and more phone calls to the council we decided instead to submit a new full application at the new higher height and hope that we wouldn't receive objections. This was not totally straight forward because at the very same time we learnt that our architect had gone in to administration - it all happens on this build :(((
We took the project to another local architect to make the new drawings and swiftly submit to the council - even more cost and talk of the builder taking away the scaffolding, portaloo etc because of the ongoing hire costs. After a few weeks we made the difficult decision to instruct the builder to pick up tools again and carry on as we'd had no signs of any objections being submitted. This was a particularly horrid few weeks though as the thought of paying for the roof construction with the chance of being made to take it down again was just so scary. Luckily it was the right decision and the relief was enormous when the application was passed - with NO objections too so what was that all about?!!!

But, hey I love this photo :)

Our house is so curvy!

More frustration - can our nerves stand it?

Well, three weeks ago today a crane was booked in to lift the first steels on to the roof and if that had happened we would now be well on the way to having a completed roof...... but No!!! - on this build things couldn't possibly be that simple!

Two days before the crane was due we took a call from our case officer at Canterbury City Council who told us that they'd been contacted by someone in the road who said that the house was too high - everything went on stop. We had to wait a nail biting week for a meeting on site with the case officer and our builders. Indeed, the tops of our walls on the gables had reached as high as the next door house which, on our plans, should have been 400mm lower. The builders have constructed as per the drawings and set the house as deep in the ground as it should be but the council insisted that we would have to put in a new planning application showing the house at the height it will be in relation to next door if we carry on building. With this option, we run the gauntlet of objections from locals (although we didn't receive a single objection to our original application) with a small risk of the application being refused and the expensive roof that we would've put up having to be taken down again. This just seemed too scary.

We contacted our architect who said he could revise the pitch of the roof from 45° to 31° which would bring us down sufficient to be the same height as next door. Will called the council to discuss this option and the case officer said she would be happy with this and we would only need to put in an application for a 'non material ammendment' which would be dealt with in the office (not out to the public) and that she would recommend passing it. So this is what we've done now.

The change of pitch won't make a vast amount of difference to the house as the roof was very high and I think that some of the vaulted ceilings would've felt vast. The bad side of all this is that it's taking a long time to make the amendments - the builder is finding the drawings from the architect to be missing important details, they also have to bring back the brickies to remove and cut some of the blocks and get the steel guys to change some of the details so all in all yet another very frustrating delay in what was meant to be a 40 week build ...... never again!!!

First floor coming up

It's getting exciting now. We're starting to see the bedrooms landing etc take shape.  Not a straight line or 45º angle in sight!