week 35: pablo in the lab, lights going in up stairs, battens ready for flooring...

This week Pablo has been helping me out stain the remaining boards in the 'meth lab' as the downstairs bedroom has become known for the fumes it gives off whilst staining is going on. Luckily we have carbon masks.


The canopy has been epdm'ed and is now having its cedar cladding installed.

JD hs bee back in fitting LED lights to the first floor ceilings

Zac and Tommy have been installing battens on which I can lay the floorboards. This is a nightmare of a job as they have to correct the lack of flatness in the slab so every batten is individually packed up to meet a datum level. Seeing as I am writing this a little retrospectively I can say they did a great job which made laying the flooring very easy.  

Thea has been onsite helping us select some site music!

The first bit of flooring has now been laid by Doug and I at the top of the stairs. 

Finally the plasterers are back to render the back wall! These jobs are great to see as they really help make the house a lot less like a building site and more like a house.

week 34: coating the floor, epdm on the balcony and starting the canopy...

This weekend I have been using the entire ground floor to stain as many floor boards as possible with the Ciranova Unico Extra White finish. The boards are probably sanded to about 80 or 120 grit and therefore its quite hard work to work this stuff in. Its a bit like warm honey in consistency so takes plenty of elbow grease with a kitchen scourer to get it in. And then you have to wait for it to partially dry before polishing it off. Here showing plenty of planks staked around to dry off before being returned and stacked in the bedroom ready for use.

The following images give an idea of how it will look like when down.

Also this week Micheal has waterproofed the balcony by installing the EPDM (rubber membrane). This is really great as we have had a few leaks before this was done. This photo does not do it justice as ts a really neat job. 

Here Zak stands back to admire his start on the canopy over the front door. 

week 33: 3.5 tonnes of floor...

Wooden flooring arrived on Monday. All 3.5 tonnes of it or 400 pieces however you want to cut it. Luckily I managed to get Simon Veale from Totnes Swimming Club to help out for the day with his machine. He did a great job unloading the flooring on two large palettes and putting right onto the terrace and then helping lift the 80 packs into the house!

Simon and machine seen below moving palletes around the site which was a real help to have a reorg of the site. Amazing what he could do with the telehandler machine in terms of delicate and accurate manovering of palettes etc. 

Probably rather stupidly I took the decision to microbevel each of the 400 boards. Initially I planned to use a router but due to the tonuge and grover section this proved impossible without lots of faff so I and later Pablo used a block plane and glass paper. What a job. We reckoned we could do a pack (5 pieces in 10 minutes if you really focussed) . So thats 800 minutes or 13 hours plus of bevelling. But then I had to put two coats of different products onto both boards. I probably needed my head read but it seemed like a good idea at the time to achieve:

1. A 260mm wide very clean grained engineered floor

2. With a microbel on every edge to emphasise the feeling of planks

3. With a white ciranova unico extra white oil finish

4. With an Osmo Raw top coat for wear protection.  

Here it is staked up in the downstairs bedroom. the planks out of the packs at this stage have been bevelled. The dhumidifier was on the whole time to try and keep the sealed room as dry as possible given at this stage the front door is permanently open.

 The plasterers have been back - this time applying the lime render base coat to the back and sides of the house. Great to get the wood fibre finally covered up. The orange is a mesh that is embedded in the render for strength. These guys drink 8 cups of coffee a day!

Below showing the finished render with downpipes and hoppers in place thanks to Tommy and Michael.

week 32: underfloor heating and tiling gets underway...

This weekend I was doing a last minute dash to lay Devi underfloor electric heating (100 watts per m2) in the bathrooms and cover with self levelling compound before the tilers arrived on the Monday. This was a job that the tilers were going to do but I figured I could save a bit of money and push them on by doing it myself. On the whole it went pretty well but sometimes the cable didn't adhere well to the subfloor despite pva'ing it before sticking down the heating matt and then they occasionally floated up through the self levelling which made the depth of the self levelling hard to gauge. 

Then on Monday the tilers arrived. We bought a moleanos beige honed limestone tile from mandrian stone. We decided to keep it simple and use the same stone for floor and walls in all three bathrooms. Tilers started on the floors. They amazed me by wanting 25 * 25kg bags of adhesive. Even more amazing was that they used all but three bags!

Em's shout with the orientation of the tiles which was a great call. 

Then following days on to the walls and the the boxed out units

They SCP tiling did a great job on the whole with very nice work around the windows as seen below.

 We are very pleased how they turned out.

week 31: down with the scaffolding... almost

The scaffolding is now down on the east, west and north. The cladding is done and capping on and looking really nice. The push now is to get the lime render on the ground floor before the frosts!

The wood fibre board on the ground floor should be exposed for no more than 12 weeks. Ours has probably been up for twice that but the weather has been kind and it does not look too bad.

A view one frosty morning with the early morning sun on the east side. I was in early to do some painting and despite a heavy frost it was warm inside the house. Insulation must be working! Painting is coming on slowly, not a lot of fun but at least we are doing it all white which makes things easy in the short term.

We also have a shiny new consumer unit ready for the house to be connected back up to the grid next week. Means I have to dig the hole in the drive again to expose where the power supply cable needs to be jointed for a second time.

week: 30 bathroom bits...

This week Chris from Smokeless Energy was back in fitting bathroom components ahead of the tilers coming in a few weeks time.
Below the family bathroom shows the boxed out unit built in to accommodate the WC frame, the sink will also be hung off this unit with a large mirrored cupboard above. The green is the MVHR extract

Showing the panel for the bath to sit on and the supports for a small shelf on the far side of the bath for Em to put her glass of wine on (once she finishes being pregnant of course). Also showing the aquapanel boards to take the tiles in the wet areas.

Showing the sink plumbing poking out. The Tilers will work around this before the final fix sanitary ware is installed.

Finally the first bath is installed. We got all our bathroom stuff from Devon Bathroom Centre who have been really good on a trade supply basis. We basically gave them a spreadsheet of everything we wanted and the best prices we could get and they pretty much matched everything in a single order including delivery. The also managed the drilling the extra holes in the Bette steel baths for the shower wand attachments for use in the bath. This was not a job I fancied - trying not to mess up the enameling!

We have opted for Bette baths, Hahns Grohe taps etc and Duravit porcelain. 

Shown below the retractable shower wand mechanism through the corner of the baths. Very neat job by Devon bathrooms.