Wee house emerges.....

...from the scaffolding. At last, we can see what our house looks like. Mind you, it still seems a bit "soulless" without its windows, gutters and downpipes, but it won't be long now before they are fitted.

The first picture was taken from the top of the hill and shows how well the house blends into the landscape. (If you didn't know, clicking on the picture enlarges it, and reverts to normal size by clicking the back arrow).

Little has been done during the last week, but we did "entertain" our dear friends Jenny (number one fan of the blog) & David last weekend. Still some way to go before their room is ready to be occupied though! Patience please Jenny.

I almost forgot - the sprinkler lads were back on Monday - scrambling hither and thither, and we now have all their plumbing done for the whole house. All it needs to finish it off is connection to the water supply and the neat little heads that can be fitted once the plasterboard is installed.

We've run into another slight problem, this time with the staircase to the mezzanine floor. It seems that once again we have some discrepancies between the drawing and the actual dimensions of the finished walls. I'm sure its nothing too serious, we'll just have to modify our ideas a little. What we want is a steel backbone to form the basis of the staircase, and then wooden treads fitted onto the steel. The balustrades will be acrylic rather than wood. This should give more of a feeling a spaciousness. I now need to get the stress engineer to do the calculations and then get Malcom and Graham from the steel fabricator's to make the structure.

Its surprising what you have to do now to conform to building regulations. The entrance to the house has to be level to allow for wheelchair access, and the entrance door opening has to provide 775 mm clear opening. This means that the choice of doors is quite restricted because few companies make a 36" wide door in oak. We've found a door we like, but can't find a matching sidelight so we'll probably have to have one made specially - ah well, its only money!

I did meet Tony the "Guttering Man" on Tuesday. Tony's company supplies and fits aluminium guttering. We agreed where all the downpipes will go and he should start on Monday 27th after Roy has installed all the drainage to take the roof rainwater to the harvesting tank. Roy starts the excavations next Monday - digging the service trench, and the rather large hole for the harvesting tank so lots of activity with diggers and dumper trucks. He's also got to find the end of the soil pipe that has already been laid to the site. No-one seems to know exactly where it is!

There was little to do this weekend apart from a bit of clearing up as we're having a "topping out" ceremony on Sunday with my family coming to join in. Pity the windows aren't in yet as the winds blowing through the house. Still, it should keep the bubbly chilled.

Jan & Rog