What a surprise, we’ve had another month of shite weather, a few big storms and possibly the worst flooding the UK has ever experienced. Fortunately it hasn’t caused too many problems as a lot of the work is now inside. We’ve had regular minor floods in the LGF which we put down to the windows not being in, but ironically the worst flood was the day after the windows went in during storm Dennis when we had ~2″ of water throughout the ground floor. After a big cleanup we started flooding 2 days later .. which was good as we got to the root of the problem with faults with a downpipe, a stream running down the side of the house and water coming through the services ducting .. which QSP has now sealed up. Coming days will tell whether we are watertight.
The shell of the house is essentially complete with the guttering finally fixed. QSP have to return to do the window reveals, brown roof and remove spoil but all not urgent.
Kompass, the window guys (Steve, Olly, Paul and Will) have been on-site for the past few weeks installing all the windows. 35+ windows and sliding doors installed and we had to hire a telehandler to move some the bigger ones around. The lounge sliding door was over 4sqm, 350kg that took five of us to lift into place .. QSP would have had a dicky-fit with the breach of ‘t elf and safety. I’m dead pleased with them as people and the Reynaers product – Steve is sufficiently chuffed he wants to bring prospective clients around.
Chris, the plumber, finished his fit-out and is now waiting to commission the system. Andy and son James, the sparkies have started. To their huge credit and with much head scratching and shaking, they adopted my wiring with good humour. All the ceiling elecs are connected up so we can now board and plaster.
Phil, Dan, Chris and Mel are plugging away over the weekends boarding and plastering. We have the first floor rooms plastered and maybe a third of the ground floor boarded out.
The ashlar hearthstones have been cut by Hope stonemasons (Greenstone and Ivy) and been laid byPhil/myself. The fire is sitting there waiting for James to connect up (next week).
After a year Ang is coming into her own. She’s painting rooms, sorting tiles and flooring, arranging the kitchen fit-out and even bought linen fabric to make the curtains.
Mick started last week and has tiled the first floor bathroom .. a lovely job. With my faffing all the FF bathroom needs a floor and is ready to go.
I have spent the past month, er, faffing.
We had a good site cleanup and can now see the house pretty much finished from the exterior. I’m dead chuffed with how the corten and accoya are settling in. Of course we’ve had fakin’ perfect weather to let the corten rust away.
I write this as another blxxdy storm rolls in. Sod this, we’re going to majorca for a few days to grab some sun.