A week and a bit of steady progress. The foundations are complete and the blockwork is going up around the house .. we’re at head-height through most of the house and the scaffolding is in place to move upwards. Groundworks have started installing the drainage.
Invoices have surfaced for the foundations redesign … fuk.
Windows have come back to bite us, their t&c’s mean we are expected to pay upfront (£60k or more) without seeing anything .. and QSP have had two companies go bust in them in their time. I don’t think we can escape some stage payments but we need to find a company we can trust.
We got quotes in for the staircase and balustrading .. with a 3x range of prices. They don’t go in ’till the end of phase1 but we wanted to check whether they require anything now eg padstones, steelwork. The two we talked to would rather sort it out when we’ve built the shell.
We’ve started thinking of the kitchen and have approached a couple of companies for their design inputs and budgets. Not v impressed with their responses but at least we are getting our heads around the design.
QSP have revised the build plan which a/ pull the timescales back in after slipping 2 weeks in 8 (foundations and bad weather) and b/ give us access to the house earlier to do first fix elecs and plumbing.
I’ve started to work with a sparkie and plumber .. gawd help ’em.
We matured the design and fixing of the corten cladding, the devil is in making it water-tight
The home-controlled static caravan is working reliably .. even Ang is using it (the iPhone-app’d, home-controlled, internet-accessed, wirelessly-enabled electric blanket provided the incentive :).