Month: July 2016

Last week the grey painting was completed on the outside and so we are now ready for the scaffolding to come down. Upstairs is now nearly completely painted, but downstairs is still too much of a workshop for the painters to start. The tiler has laid the black limestone tiles in the wet room, which means the plasterers can start next on the tadelakt plaster.

Henry and Dan finished mounting the kitchen doors and appliances, whilst this weekend Peter came home to help with putting together the drawers.Just the worktops to sort out now.
Surprisingly Ella ( the cat ) finally decided to do a thorough explore of the house whilst we were making the drawers. Upstairs, downstairs and on the scaffolding – before she decided it was time to find a comfy place to sleep.

Lots going on again this week, though the outside painting has been held up waiting for more paint. The garage now has window frames and the back layer of the cladding has been started.Inside, the kitchen units are now up on the walls, though the appliances, doors and drawers are still to be added. But visually the biggest difference has been the arrival of the oak staircase. The handrail and glass panels will be added in the next couple of weeks.

Though the photos this week are all of the kitchen, there has been lots of other work going on. The grey paint is steadily covering the main part of the house, so watch out in a couple of weeks for the first photo of the outside without scaffolding. Inside the joinery work has continued on door architraves and started on the window seat in the corner of the living room. Also the cladding of the pod where it juts inside the house has started – will post a photo next week when it is completed.

And so to the kitchen – the one bit where we get hands on. The kitchen arrived in flat pack from last week – all 200 boxes of it. Kathryn and Rob gamely volunteered to come down to help up put the carcasses together.So by the end of the day 23 of the boxes had been converted into the units. Amazingly with no missing parts or major hiccups in the build.It is now over to the builders to secure them to the walls and put in the electrical items. And at some point I suppose we should think about what worktop to put on top.

It has been a busy week with 5 different groups of people on site. The painters have started outside with a coat of Osmo Natural Oil woodstain. The Douglas Fir cladding would have naturally gone grey, but at different rates depending on how much sunlight the wood was exposed to. Giving a coat of woodstain means that it will grey with age more evenly.

Inside, the tilers have started on the Travertine floor as you can see from this photo of the living room.

The plasterers turned up for a day to do a base coat of lime plaster in the wet room. Also Gary turned up with a digger so now the holes in the field are filled in with the mounds of subsoil evened out along the edge of the ditch.

And the regular team were still hard at work – fitting skirting boards inside, doing woodwork on the bookcases, and doing the fiddly job of fitting the aluminium capping to the roof cladding. The mesh is to stop insects making a home between the boards.

To round of the week, Ikea delivered the kitchen – all 200 boxes worth.