Four weeks have gone by and, despite the ongoing weather, great progress has been made. There are two reasons for this – firstly QSP and their subcontractors: roofers, joiners, groundworkers got on with the work in hand and secondly I went away, couldn’t interfere and left them to it.
Three weeks (ski) touring soviet brutalism in Kazakhstan was a very welcome break from living through a rather wet autumn and winter in a static caravan continually on top of hairy-arsed people you barely know (no, not Ang, the builders). It was a distinct pleasure travelling in the remote steppe, visiting the biggest steel mill and town in the world, the polygon – site of 40 yrs of Russian nuclear testing, abandoned military airfields, towns overcast with polluted coal smoke, breaking down in -20oC steppe 100km from anything, skiing 10″ of snow over a boulder field. Yes … I’m a weird fukker.
Anyway, I returned and had a manic week assisting the bldrs with the net result that they have handed the house back to us. yeah – oh yeah baby : ) We have the four roofs on, 90% of the cladding finished, scaffolding removed, drainage in and the site cabins/fencing all removed. We can finally see the house we dreamt of nearly four years ago.
There remains a month or more of work for QSP to finish their phase of work (the water-tight shell) and then the years of work for us to truly finish the project.
Kompass and Steve, the new windows guys have (hopefully) come up trumps with a start date to install the windows on the wk 13th Jan.
A few things stand-out for us in the design:
– the corten/accoya mix of cladding is a beautiful blend of colour and texture, a testament to sheffield history and a contemporary build that manages to integrate into the outdoors due to the brown colouring. (yes I’m sure others will disagree – but – am I bovvered ?)
– the rectangular areas comprising the house (>300cu m) break up the size nicely.
– the lounge with its views opening into the garden is great
– the hallway, with the openness, local ashlar stone and large amounts of glass.
– the upstairs bedroom and roof open out into the garden and surroundings.
