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!

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 ...