Progress: [
west
|
east
|
north
|
loft
|
garage
|
tree
]
Soham: Oct 1999 -- ???
-
11 March 2001 -- The
hearth ventilation grille
is fitted. This is the last internal item -- the interior is
FINISHED
!!
-
9 Jan 2001 -- The boarded loft felt a bit stuufy, so we had an
extra ventilation outlet
added
-
1 January 2001 -- beginning of third millennium. 200th
anniversary of the discovery of the first asteroid, Ceres.
-
now at
9280
books
-
30 December 2000 -- we fit
mirrors
in the
bathrooms
-
21 December 2000 -- winter solstice
-
7 October 2000 -- the bend in a piece of network conduit is fixed, by
installing
a new socket
. The
lights
over the kitchen sink are installed. The final
kitchen
wall tiling
, around the cooker hood, is finished.
-
21 September 2000 -- vernal equinox
-
30 April 2000 -- the
electric towel rail
is
installed in the downstairs loo. Blanking plates are fixed over those
network conduit sockets currently unused
-
23 April 2000 -- the utility room cupboards (finally) get
their handles
-
16 April 2000 -- the downstairs loo floor is
(mostly)
tiled
.
-
9 April 2000 -- some door handles and door stops are attached.
-
2 April 2000 -- the
loft stair doors
are
stained.
-
27 February 2000 -- the
kitchen splashbacks
are tiled, and progress is made on tiling the bathroom and the
hall floor
.
-
20 February 2000 --
GRANITE
-- the
kitchen worksurfaces
and proper taps are
(finally!) installed, the new tiler tiles the
en-suite
floor
, the loft plasterboard
is taped
.
-
13 February 2000 -- the loft carpet is laid, and all our junk is now
up in the loft, instead of sitting on the landing
-
6 February 2000 -- a very small amount of bathroom tiling occurs, but
the tilers decide they do not want to do any more. The utility room
cupboard doors
are hung.
-
30 January 2000 -- a small amount of bathroom tiling occurs. The
utility room cupboard walls and area around the loft staircase are
plastered.
-
23 January 2000 --
LOFT DOORS
--
doors
now cover the
small
stairs
up to the
loft storage space
.
-
15 January 2000 --
LOFT STAIRS
-- the
small stairs
up to the
loft
storage space
are installed. Work starts on the utility room
cupboards.
-
9 January 2000 --
BEAMS STAINED
-- the
shower doors
are installed, and a little more
bathroom tiling is done. The decking over the garage workshop is laid,
and the
ceiling
fitted underneath it. The fake
beams are
stained dark brown
.
-
2 January 2000 -- no building work happens this week (well, it is a
holiday!), but we do install the first part of the
Ethernet
.
-
now at
9031
books
-
26 December 1999 --
LOFT BOARDED
-- The
bathroom tiles
are finally delivered
, and some
are fixed
. The side walls in the loft are
insulated and
boarded
. The
secondary
loft ladder
is fitted. We put up
lots
and
lots
and
lots
and
lots
and
lots
of
shelves
.
-
21 December 1999 -- winter solstice
-
19 December 1999 -- The vent hole for the tumble drier is cut, and
the misplaced vent hole for the vacuum cleaner is filled. The final
consignment of furniture and
books
is delivered
from store. We put up
lots
and
lots
of
shelves
.
-
12 December 1999 -- Some of the kitchen worktops have made their way
into the kitchen, but one piece is too small, and so nothing can be
fitted! The utility room
splashbacks are tiled, and
the sink tap fitted
. The final part of the loft insulation is
laid. The
gas fire
is connected. We put up lots
of
shelves
.
-
5 December 1999 -- The
kitchen worktops
are
delivered. The
vacuum cleaner unit
is fitted --
so now we can get rid of some of the plaster dust that's everywhere! The
second consignment of furniture and books is delivered from store. We
put up
lots
of
shelves
.
-
28 November 1999 --
DINING ROOM FLOOR
-- The
drive is
gravelled
. The roof tilers finish their
work: the
final ridge tiles
on the garage, and
the
slope on the chimney
. The groundworks are
finished with a
sophisticated overflow
from the
rainwater tank. The dining room floor is
fully laid,
sanded, and waxed
, and there are enough boards left over to use as
matching skirting
. The kitchen units have gained
their own
skirting
. Despite some work remaining,
we have some furniture and books delivered from store, and try to fit
old shelving to new walls
.
-
21 November 1999 --
DRIVE
--
PVCu bargeboards
are fixed to the garage. The
drive hardcore
is laid, so we are no longer
tramping sticky black mud into the house (building regs says the drive
has to incorporate a "double hammerhead", to be big enough to
allow a fire engine to turn!). Less mud means we can take up the
protective polythene
from the floors, making the
house feel more like home. But until the kitchen and utility room are
complete -- we're still
living out of the hall
.
The dining room floor is
about two thirds laid
,
with sheets of ply laid over the polystyrene, then the
tongued-and-grooved floor boards stuck onto the ply.
-
14 November 1999 --
KITCHEN FLOOR
-- The
kitchen gains
a floor, and cupboard handles
. The
utility room gains
a shelf, a worktop and a sink
,
but only temporary plumbing connections. The ventilation system is
connected up, with vent covers appearing in all the rooms (and a
special bonus exploratory hole
in the landing
ceiling), pumping fresh air into the living rooms, and sucking stale air
out of the "wet "rooms, which means we can now close the
windows. The rainwater pump is
plumbed in
-- and
fires up every time we flush the loo -- and
the
downpipes
are fitted, to supply the tank. The
vacuum
cleaner connections
are fitted, but not yet the machine itself, so
we can't use it to clean up the grunge left from fitting them. The
decorators progress, with a
first coat of stain on
the balustrading
, which brings out the grain nicely. The gangplank
makes way for
a front door step
, making access a
little less exciting. The
garage roller doors
are installed, although only the keyhole pads are visible
from the outside
.
-
7 November 1999 --
GROUNDWORKS
-- more
progress on the ground works, with tanks disappearing, and
oodles of manhole covers
appearing (the foul
water system and rainwater recycling system converge at this point). The
sewage system pump is now connected, with its own
fusebox
and control panel
in the garage. Although the rainwater tank is
installed,
the pump
that allows the rainwater to
flush the loos is not yet, so the
downpipes are
still not connected
into the system. The
dining
room floor
has been delivered, and now the discussions start about
how to fit it. The
kitchen progresses slowly
: an
oven and hob, a sink, and some handleless cupboards (but no work
surfaces or flooring yet). Other essentials are installed:
the TV aerial
, and
the
telephone point
. We even have
our first
curtains
up; so, although we still have to
walk
the gangplank
to get in, the house is nearly finished,
compared to the garage
, anyway.
-
31 October 1999 --
MOVED IN
-- the
hot water tank
is fully plumbed in and the gas
is on, so we have hot water and underfloor heating (bliss!).
The sanitaryware
and the sewage system are in
place, but the pump is not connected, so only shallow baths for now! (We
have a largish pumped
holding tank
, because the
sewer connection is slightly uphill).
Plasterboarding
the loft
has started. The fireplace is
finally
complete
(just waiting for the fire now...). The kitchen is not
yet finished, so all our white goods and stuff are
in
the dining room
for now. But at least we have
the
essentials of life
.
-
26 October 1999 --
we move in
, to a very unfinished house
(electricity in places, and some cold water and drainage, but no
heating, no gas, no kitchen, no baths...)
-
[25 October 1999 -- builder's September estimate of completion date]
-
24th October 1999 -- the electric
fuse boxes
are all finished off, some
sanitaryware
has
appeared, the
hot water tank
is partly plumbed
in, the
boiler
is installed (but no gas to run
these, yet). The fireplace installers, who first appeared on the 18th
with an incorrect hearth, have returned, with an unmodified hearth, but
have managed to install
some of it
this time,
leaving the rest in
kit form
for now.
-
17th October 1999 --
FAKE BEAMS
-- the
groundworks for the
foul water system
have
started, although there's still a lot of
pipework
to be laid and
inspection chambers
to be fitted.
The electrician has started fitting
the fuse boxes
.
Not on the critical path, the
fake beams
are
attached to the render, and the
staircase spindles
are being fixed. We have moved in
a few essentials
,
but are staying in B&Bs until the house is habitable!
-
15 October 1999 -- we move out of
v3.1
.
-
9 October 1999 -- the
4500 litre rainwater
recycling tank
is on site -- but due to a scaffolding problem,
none of the groundworks that were to have been completed this week,
including the deep hole in which to bury the tank, have even been
started! Inside, the
floating floors
have been
laid over the polystyrene: chipboard in most rooms, and
two thicknesses of the more rigid Fermacell
in
the rooms to be floor-tiled. Downstairs we have
internal
doors
, and in one room at least, skirting board. The
kitchen carcass
has appeared.
-
2 October 1999 --
SCAFFOLDING DROPPED
-- the
scaffolding
has been (mostly)
dropped
,
letting us
see the house properly
for the first
time. The underfloor heating is now laid everywhere, adding the pipes
into the
upstairs manifold
and more pipes into
the
master control panel
. The
chipboard
flooring
gets laid directly on the polystyrene. (We had never
thought of polystyrene as a structural material, but now it forms our
floors as well as
our foundations
!) The
hot water tank
has arrived, waiting to be
fitted. One of the advantages of building your own house is designing in
the little features -- like a
drain under the
washing machine
, in anticipation of those unfortunate overflows
(although it isn't yet
going anywhere sophisticated
).
-
25 September 1999 --
PLUMBING
-- the
flooring has arrived
, but so far is installed
only
in the loft
. The underfloor heating is
being laid: it comprises
red plastic water piping
laid in
polystyrene
. The triple pipes run to
local small manifolds
, which feed into the main
manifolds
upstairs
and
downstairs
,
and thence to the
master control area
. This
complexity makes the ordinary
hot water plumbing
look relatively simple, and requires a lot of
criss-cross
piping
.
-
21 September 1999 -- vernal equinox
-
18 September 1999 --
ARTEXED
-- the
front door
is hung. Second fix electrics have
started, with a plethora of light switches, sockets,
smoke
alarms
,
burglar alarm keypads
and
detectors
-- but it
isn't
quite finished
yet. Nearly all the ceilings are
artexed
(it has a very peculiar smell). Floor boards are
up
in the loft
, if not yet fixed.
-
[13 September 1999 -- builder's May estimate of completion date]
The Moon, along with Moonbase Alpha, is blasted out of Earth's
orbit.
-
11 September 1999 --
RENDERED AND GUTTERED
--
second fix has started -- the carpenter has
boxed in
the ventilation tubes
, the plumber has started work on
the waste outlets
, and the staircase is
continued round to
edge the gallery
. The outside
is
partially rendered
(the colour should lighten
up as it dries) and
guttered
. The
apples
are getting past their best. And on the
way back from viewing, we spotted these
his'n'hers
Tardises
.
-
4 September 1999 -- plastering is now complete downstairs, too,
requiring cables to be
hung up out of the way
.
The impossible-to-photograph staircase is being installed. (Vertiginous
view from above
--
below
front view
from front door --
view from below
side
of Dalek hiding place). The underside of the "porch"
has been
weatherboarded in uPVC
. [And finally...
spotted on an industrial estate
whilst shopping
for sanitaryware -- where
do
they keep their stock?]
-
29 August 1999 --
ROOF TILING FINALLY FINISHED
--
roof tiling
has finally finished with
the last bit above the front door
done.
Plastering is complete
upstairs
, and just
starting downstairs, with the
corners
being done
first. Even with
larger tile samples
, it's hard
to judge what the bathroom will look like. The garage is making the
most visible progress
. And the apple tree is
ripe for harvesting
.
-
21 August 1999 --
ROOF TILING (ALL BUT) FINISHED
--
roof tiling
has all but finished. The colour
of
uPVC bargeboards
, worry about which caused
all the delay, looks fine. The ventilation system is being installed,
with
high vents
in the outside walls,
outlet holes
in the ceilings, and
shiny concertina tubes
running up first floor
walls, from ground floor ceilings into the loft, where the
pump and heat exchanger
resides. The vacuum
cleaner system, from the same supplier, has
smaller
pipes
and
lower vents
. The
staircase
and
front door
have been delivered, waiting for installation. The downstairs ceilings
are now completely plasterboarded too, and
wet-plastering
the walls
has just started, making the walls silky smooth to the
touch, but much less interesting to photograph. Outside,
the garage
is beginning to take shape.
-
13 August 1999 --
ROOF TILING RESTARTS
--
roof tiling has restarted
, at long last! First
fix electrics are nearing completion:
here we have
a double power socket, a TV point, conduit for computer cables, a
telephone point, and another double power socket. Life must have been
much simpler before electricity! The
upstairs
ceilings are completely plasterboarded
, but the
downstairs
ones only partially
, because first they had to
rebate
the wiring
. The garage's
concrete slab floor
has been poured.
-
11 August 1999 --
total
eclipse of the sun
-
8 August 1999 -- and the tiles
still
aren't on the roof.
Inside, first fix electrical continues: there are there are
even more wires everywhere
, some of which are now
properly
conduited and boxed
, and some of which
are ready for the
outside lights
.
-
31 July 1999 -- and the tiles still aren't on the roof -- apparently
there has been a delay with the bargeboards and soffits, but everything
is due Real Soon Now. Inside, first fix electrical has started: there
are
wires everywhere
, and we've added
our own hand-written notes
to the electrician.
MDF windowsills are held in place with
giant staples
.
Lots of
little holes
have been drilled in the
exterior walls, to insulate the cavity with
blown
fibre
. And it's difficult to decide on tile colours when the
samples are so small
.
-
24 July 1999 -- the tiles still aren't on the roof. There has been
some internal progress: "first fix" carpentry has started,
which means
door frames
, some
battens
on the concrete ceiling
, to attach the plasterboard to, and some
more battens
crossing the rafters
. The
liner and reinforcing mesh
for the garage slab
are in place. But that's
it
for the week ... and they still
claim they will be finished on time ... which is now only seven weeks
away!
-
20 July 1999 -- 30 years on from that "One Small Step"
-- so when are we going to do it again??
-
17 July 1999 --
CHIMNEY AND FINAL WINDOW
--
the chimney
and
the final bit
of the roof structure
are finished. The roof and window
over the front door
have been complicated enough,
both
inside
and out, to delay the roof tiling by
a week -- as have the
rather complicated varieties of
ridge tiles
. The roof steel beam is no longer supported on a
scrappy pieces of wood [as it was
earlier on
],
but on little pieces of
something stronger
. The
driveway is temporarily covered in
strangely
patterned concrete
, and work on the
garage
has started in earnest.
-
[mid July 1999 -- builder's January estimate of completion date,
before piling hiatus.]
-
10 July 1999 --
ROOFING STARTS
--
roofing has started
, with much battens, felt and
strange
rafter vents
, but the only tiling (with "pre-aged"
look tiles), so far is
half of the back
, with
other tiles
poised ready to lay
, which can be
seen only from the vertiginous top scaffolding. More cross pieces have
been added to the roof trusses, to strengthen the structure -- which
leads us to ask, what is holding
these two halves of
the roof
together? And the apple tree is
in
fruit
.
-
3 July 1999 --
GABLES AND WINDOWS
-- the
gable ends
are bricked in, showing us what the
ladder-like end roof pieces
are for. The roof
tiles and
ridge tiles
are on site.
The windows are fitted
-- all
except
for the one
that will go above the front door. But
the patio doors are wrong
-- they should be all
glass. If we had had better 3-D imaginations, we would have
left the roof space open in this room
-- we'll
have to remember that for the next one we build! Currently our staircase
is
a little narrow
. We get a great view
from roof level
; looking back in the other
direction, we can just see the roof trusses through binoculars, but
not with the the camera zoomed to 50mm
. (If this
was the movies, we could just magically zoom in with the computer and
see them; in real life all we get doing that is
bigger
pixels
.)
-
25 June 1999 -- we have received an offer for
Stars' End 3.1
, so have told the builders
we are now holding them to their end date. Then ... nothing happened all
week!
-
21 June 1999 -- summer solstice
-
19 June 1999 --
ROOF TRUSSES
-- the
roof trusses are in place
. The last piece of
steel, part of the roof support, is in place, but is itself
not that well supported yet
. That open attic roof
trusses will give us
space in the main loft
. The
other parts of the roof are
more complex shapes
.
The "wall plate", significant as a stage in the mortgage,
appears to be this
scrappy piece of timber
screwed to the top of the wall. We can now see the
shape
of the whole house from the front
.
-
12 June 1999 --
WALLS UP TO ROOF LEVEL
--
a third course of scaffolding
takes the
brickwork up to roof level
. The builders decided
they didn't like the lintels over some internal doors [
as
they were originally
], so have
replaced them
with
a much stronger beam
. From
the
front
, it's even beginning to look like
the
drawings
.
-
5 June 1999 --
INTERNAL UPPER WALLS
--
more scaffolding
is in place, ready for the
outer brickwork. It is covered with
piles of bricks
,
which hide the fact that
inner walls
have
appeared upstairs.
All this blockwork
should
give better sound insulation and bookcase supports than flimsy
plasterboard.
-
29 May 1999 --
SOME UPPER WALLS
-- the
walls grow some more
, with the now-completed
concrete first floor being used to support
as yet
only potential upper walls
(and how did we get up there to
photograph it when there is
no staircase
yet?).
The
brick soldier course
at first floor level
provides subtle relief from the mass of brickwork. The
roof trusses
are already on site, if not on
the house yet. Progress might look good, but not much has happened to
the garage since early April, beyond
a crop of
buttercups
.
-
22 May 1999 --
FIRST FLOOR
-- our vantage
point is
not high enough to show the concrete first
floor
nearly completed, but the view from below shows
the beams and blocks
over our heads.
Big steel lintels
run across the corbels to
support the overhang, and
more steelwork
supports the landing floor. With the ceiling blocking out the sky, the
downstairs begins to take shape with
rooms
, not
just walls.
-
15 May 1999 --
HIGHER WALLS
-- the
walls grow higher
, up to the level of the
corbelling
(which supports the first floor
overhang), and
interior walls appear
, too. The
hall brickwork
is nearly finished. No lo-tech
carrying of hods up ladders nowadays: a forklift lifts the pallets up to
a hi-rise platform
. The
pre-made
insulated lintels
look quite hi-tech, too.
-
8 May 1999 --
A LITTLE BIT OF SCAFFOLDING
--
nothing more has happened except a
little bit of
scaffolding
appearing. The builders must be concerned about
progress, too, because they are
working on a
Saturday
. This
corner to corner view
won't be possible once the interior walls are in place.
-
1 May 1999 --
MOST OF THE GROUD FLOOR WALL
--
much of
the ground floor cavity wall
is in
place, a few courses higher than last week around
the
kitchen window and dining room doors
. The front door takes shape,
from
the outside
and from
the
inside, with interior brickwork
. The
fireplace
is a hole in the wall
, and we won't get this view
up the chimney
again. There seems to have
been a small accident with a
palette of bricks
.
-
27 March 1999 --
TRENCHES
--
the garage trenches
are dug. All the trench
bottoms have a skim of concrete, and the
piles are
cut off to a level
, leaving
strange
cylindrical spoil
, like fossilised dragon droppings, where the
piles had been filled with too much concrete.
Birds
have been having fun
in the drying concrete.
-
22 March 1999 --
trenches to hold the concrete
groundbeams
are dug: it's beginning to look like real foundations
now, although not all the
water problems
have
been solved! Hand-crafted
steel lattice work
are to provide reinforcement in the groundbeams between the piles.
-
21 Mar 1999 -- spring equinox
-
14 Mar 1999 --
PILING FINISHES
-- all of
February's yellow circles have become
driven piles
,
no longer hollow, but filled with
reinforcing
steel and concrete
. And one day,
this pile
of topsoil
will be our garden.
-
6 Mar 1999 -- 16 more piles piled. Our plot has awkward access, and
the builders had expressed concern that they might not be able to get
their piling rig on site. So we were expecting some massive, lumbering
juggernaut, not
a cute little escapee
from the SF
film
Short Circuit
. ("Number Five is Alive" and well,
and driving piles in Soham?)
-
27 February 1999 --
PILING STARTS
-- spring
has sprung, as have
piles of piles
, 15 of which
hollow steel tubes are driven
deep
in the
ground.
-
20 February 1999 -- Piling is due to start soon: 29 9"x5m piles
(doncha just love metric units?) for the house, and 12 6"x5m piles
for the garage, are to be driven over the next three weeks. But at the
moment all we have are some
yellow circles
.
-
11 February 1999 -- Neptune: furthest planet from the sun, 1979
-- 1999. After its 20 year foray inside the orbit of its neighbour,
today Pluto once again regains its title of outermost planet of the
Solar System.
-
27 January 1999 -- The architect, the builder, and the structural
engineer dig a second hole: the building regulations inspector says it's
nice stiff clay, and we don't need to go deeper than 2m after all. But
this hole rapidly fills with water, too. And so we need to stop thinking
trench-fill foundations, and start thinking pilings. Both holes are
filled in again, while a new design is drawn up...
-
14 January 1999 --
TOPSOIL STRIPPED
-- ...
and then stops almost straight away: the building regulations inspector
worries that the
surrounding conifers
will leach
all the water
out of the ground, and that we
might need 3m deep foundations, rather than the planned 2m ones.
-
11 January 1999 -- Work starts on the
building
site
, by stripping off the topsoil ...
-
now at
8798
books
-
December 1998 --
PRE-BUILD
--
The plot
just before work begins
-
December 1998 -- we find our builder
-
Royal Greenwich Observatory, 1675--1998. R.I.P.
-
Spring/Summer/Autumn 1998 -- we search hard for another builder...
-
April 1998 -- after a slight hiccup over sewer access is fixed, we
finally buy the plot. But by now our builder has evaporated.
-
21 March 1998 -- we visit the
Home Building and Renovating Show
at Birmingham NEC, and find our roof tiles
-
5 March 1998 -- East Cambridgeshire District Council grants planning
permission
-
Jan 1998 -- now at
8560
books
-
November 1997 -- we apply for planning permission
-
November 1997 -- the vendors accept our second, de-loomed,
Tudor-bethan
house design
-
October 1997 -- the vendors reject our
first
proposed design
as too "looming"
-
October 1997 -- we identify a suitable builder
-
20 September 1997 -- we visit the
Self Build Homes Show
at
Alexandra Palace, to get our momentum going again, and get some detailed
ideas
-
9 September 1997 -- we make an offer for a quarter of an acre in
Soham, subject to planning approval, both from the Council, and from the
vendors (who are to be our neighbours)
-
much of 1997 -- we continue searching for a plot, visiting lots of
patches of scrubby grass, and a few old barns
-
Jan 1997 -- now at
8225
books
-
October 1996 -- we make an offer for a lovely plot in Balsham, at
which point the vendors withdraw it from the market. Apparently they
were simply trying to find out how much it was worth. Grrrr.
-
1996 -- we decide to "self-build", and start searching for
a suitable plot
-
As our story "progresses", we include the odd
astronomical event in our log, to give a feel for the similar kind of
timescales involved
.
Earlier
Stars' End
s